Whether you’re managing social media campaigns for your own business or for multiple businesses as a consultant, the right tools are the keys to success. There are several different platforms that you can use to schedule your tweets, keep up to date with accounts, and track activity. Which is more valuable though? Which is a better fit for you? Well, I’m here to help with that.
First, let’s talk about the cost. TweetDeck is free always. HootSuite has both a free version and a pro version. The pro version is available for $9.99 per month. They do offer a free 30 day trial so that you can try it out and see the differences between the free and paid versions.
Next, I’ll get into capabilities. Both TweetDeck and HootSuite allow you to schedule posts in advance. The paid version of HootSuite allows you to bulk schedule updates using an imported CSV file. Both of these platforms also allow you to update social networks Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. However, HootSuite has more features that allow you to update your Facebook Business and Brand Pages, Foursquare, WordPress.com and more.
As far as multiple accounts and users go, they both allow you to add multiple social media accounts so you can manage everything at once.
TweetDeck combines all of your accounts into one window whereas HootSuite provides a tabbed interface with a tab for each account you add. The special feature you will find with HootSuite is that you can add multiple users because of it’s browser based interface, allowing you to create posts from multiple users and even allowing them to add a signature to each of their specific posts. Since TweetDeck is not browser based, this isn’t an available option.
What do I personally use? Hootsuite. I firmly believe that if you are running multiple social media campaigns, then HootSuite is the right platform for you. It is absolutely worth the $10 a month if for nothing else than to be able to schedule all of your messages in one place at the same time. The added capabilities that come with the pro version more than pay for itself.
If you are one person running your own Twitter page for your business, then TweetDeck is definitely not a bad option. When you start to run multiple pages across multiple accounts for multiple users –you will definitely need to use HootSuite. As I said before, the pro tools really are valuable.
So, what do you use? Have you had a great experience with TweetDeck? Not sure that the tools in HootSuite are worth the extra $10 a month? Comment below!
