HootSuite is one of the popular social media submission tools. It has a free and paid version. The free version is usually sufficient and makes it easy to manage your social media submissions. HootSuite provides access to a social media dashboard from where you can manage and measure your social networks.

Tools such as HootSuite are great if you want to start using social media for your business. allow you to target multiple social networks and schedule your postings at times you think will achieve the best results. These are important social media tips that can help avoid failure on social media.

Some of the main features of HootSuite are:

• Post to multiple social networks
• Manage multiple accounts on social networks
• Schedule messages and tweets
• Analyse social media traffic and brand mentions
• Automatically Submit Blog Posts (RSS)
• Use Shortened Custom URL’s
• Access to Mobile App

Multiple Networks

Hootsuite supports a number of popular social networks for business including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare, WordPress, MySpace, Mixi and Ping.Fm. By adding all your social networks at one place, you can save time and post to multiple social networks at once using the HootSuite dashboard.

Schedule Messages

There are many social media submission tools like HootSuite. One of the great features of HootSuite, that sets it apart from many of its competitors, is the ability to schedule your posts.  Scheduling your posts offers many benefits. It ensures your time sensitive messages never get miss their due date. You can plan better as you can draft various messages at the same time and schedule them for different days. You can also schedule to send your messages at a time your audience is most likely to be online.

Analyse Social Media Traffic

Keeping a close watch on your statistics is a great way to avoid failure on social media. Stats show you what is working and what is not and allows you to refine your strategy accordingly. HootSuite lets you create custom reports from over 30 individual report modules. You can even track brand sentiment, follower growth, or incorporate Facebook Insights and Google analytics into your dashboard.  However, the free version only offers access to limited reporting features. Nevertheless, I don’t see this as a big downside as there are many other free tools  to measure your social media influence that you can use.

Automatically Submit Blog Posts Using RSS

In my experience of using HootSuite, this is one the best features that was added to HootSuite. If you use blogging as part of your online strategy, you will find this tool extremely useful. You can add your Blog’s RSS feed in order for HootSuite to retrieve new posts and publish it to your social media profiles automatically. This can fully automate submission of your new blog posts across your social profiles.

Use Shortened Custom URL’s (Ow.ly)

The character limits in posts imposed by social networks such as Twitter have resulted in widespread use of shortened URL services for posting links to your web pages. HootSuite includes the facility to shorten your links using Ow.ly, one of the leading free custom URL shortening services. This also makes it possible to get individual link stats and summary stats to measure the success of your messaging.

Access to Mobile Apps

You also have access to the dashboard on your mobile so you can access it wherever you go. You can download free apps for your iPhone/ iPad, BlackBerry or Android mobile device so you can monitor and message from anywhere.