How to Use Hootsuite to Post to Multiple LinkedIn Groups

One of the advantages to using a social media management system like Hootsuite is that it allows you to share a status update with multiple LinkedIn groups, In the following video, I show you how to add LinkedIn groups to your Hootsuite account, and post an update to them:

How to Easily Manage Your Social Media Presence

One of the biggest frustrations small business owners have with social media is trying to manage it and their company operations at the same time. This is particularly true of solopreneurs. I feel your pain, because I have the same challenge! It’s not easy balancing client work with my own social media marketing. But I have found a tool that has helped me manage my time more effectively, and is one that I recommend to my clients as well. It’s Hootsuite.

HootSuite Extends Google+ Pages to All Users

Here’s some good news for time-crunched small business owners! HootSuite Extends Google+ Pages to All Users – HootSuite Social Media Management.  If you’ve been hesitating about building your presence on Google+, Hootsuite just made it a whole lot easier. The social scheduling service recently added LinkedIn company pages too.

Related articles

• HootSuite adds Instagram, SlideShare and more to its App Directory (gabrielcatalano.com)
• HootSuite launches AutoSchedule feature for Hootlet browser extension, for ‘smart’ tweet-scheduling (thenextweb.com)

Facebook Insights Still Registers Third Party Shares

[tweetmeme]Here’s some good news for Facebook page admins who rely on third party tools like Hootsuite to schedule posts. Any post that gets shared on your page  is being registered by Facebook Insights. A couple of weeks ago, I reported that Facebook had removed the “share” button from posts that came from a third party app. But even though developers said this was not a bug, and was intended by design, it looks like it was a bug that has now been fixed!

I have continued to use Hootsuite to schedule some of my Facebook posts, and observed that the “share” button was displayed on my page, and in fact, has been used from time to time. Reportedly, Hootsuite had come up with a workaround, but any shares would not be picked up by Facebook Insights. I’m happy to report this is not the case. As you can see in the images below, a post that was shared on Facebook was recorded in the Insights.

If you have a different experience, please post it below. But for now at least, things seem to be back to normal on Facebook – at least until things change again! 🙂

Facebook Removes “Share” Feature from Third-Party App Posts

They’ve done it again! Facebook has removed the “share” feature from posts that come from third-party apps like Hootsuite. The scuttlebutt says this is to cut down on spam. Many businesses use third party apps to schedule posts ahead of time. Removing this feature will make it difficult for businesses to get their content shared – which is a big component of showing up in the News Feed. Small business owners, in particular, don’t have time to be on Facebook 24 hours a day – monitoring their pages. But there are people who say, “Good! Facebook wasn’t intended for business.” Well, guess what, folks? Facebook sure likes those ad dollars that businesses bring in!

Third-party Workaround

Hootsuite and NetworkedBlogs have designed a workaround to this problem. In the picture below, you’ll see that Hootsuite has added its own “Share” button. However, these shares don’t get included in Facebook Insights.

Facebook’s Decision – Crazy Smart or Simply Dumb?

As a Facebook admin for several client pages, this move is puzzling to me. A couple months back, Facebook “fixed the bug” that was hurting the Edge Rank of third-party posts. But it seems as if there might be an internal war going on over the ability to schedule posts rather than interacting on Facebook in real-time.

My feeling is that if Facebook continues down this path, they will be sending businesses right into the arms of an anxiously awaiting Google+. I guess, as the saying goes, “time will tell.”

What do you think of this development? Please share your comments below and on my Facebook page! I’d love to hear from you there too. Visit www.fb.com/gloriarandcopywriter to become a fan. As an added incentive, I’m giving away a free website analysis to my 500th fan. I only need 7 more fans to get there, so you better hurry!

9 Tools for Capturing Social Media Metrics

Social media will be  the top priority over search engine optimization for 45% of marketers this year, according to a recent emarketer.com survey.  With that much attention being given, it’s becoming more important for marketers to be able to gauge their ROI from social media.  MarketingVox recently put together a list of 9 tools to help assess social media metrics:

Google Analytics – This free tool lets you track incoming links and the activities of the users they send.

Omniture – For a fee, Omniture has tools to track your Facebook and Twitter metrics.

PostRank Analytics – Not only does PostRank measure social engagement on other platforms and services, it allows you to see the messages and comments from other sites that contribute to your stats.

HootSuite – This Twitter manager offers click data that enables you to see if those clicks translate into transactions or impressions on your other sites.

Addictomatic – This search engine puts together a visual representation of your presence across social media sites. It can help marketers identify which elements of a corporate presence should be improved, such as photo or video results.

Tweetlevel – The PR firm Edelman came up with this tool to measure a person’s importance on Twitter. Besides taking into account how many followers a Twitter user has, it places more importance on whether the Twitter user actively participates within the community, and how much trust people have in what the user is saying.

Twitalyzer – Web Analytics Demystified built this analytics application which allows people to track their Twitter use over time. One metric, the signal-to-noise ratio, measures how often people pass information, as opposed to anecdote.

Twinfluence Rank – An automated third party tool developed by Innovation Insight president Guy Hagen, Twinfluence uses APIs to measure influence and includes factors such as the quality of the group of followers.

The Mirror – This system is a partnership between Omnicom’s Fleishman-Hillard, Inc. and analytics firm evolve24. The Mirror captures data from both traditional and social media, analyzes it and provides real-time metrics based on such things as topic, stakeholder, sentiment, share of voice, influence and reputation impact.