As is often the case, when I fall in love with a product I’m not shy about recommending it! Lately, TweetDeck and Hootsuite are in my bag of commonly recommended tools, much to the puzzlement of Twitter friends who are curious about the advantage of using both. Mystery solved! Here’s why TweetDeck and Hootsuite are better together:
TweetDeck manages my Tweeps
Hootsuite manages my Tweeting
About TweetDeck
Once you have any number of followers, catching the “interesting” things becomes a challenge. After I got hassled for missing an engagement announced via Twitter (how could I let that happen?!) I got a little more serious about figuring out a solution. With TweetDeck you can organize Tweeps into “streams” or columns by keyword, or other manually selected list. For example, I’ve got lists for:
- Real-life friends
- Michigan tweeps
- Industry leaders
- Search phrases I’m watching
- And the standard set of all friends, replies and direct messages
- (And I’d like more columns if anyone at Tweedeck happens to be listening!)
Without TweetDeck, Twitter would have become an exercise in futility a long time ago. Some people favor similar tools such as Twhirl, and I hear Seesmic has a neat new gizmo (Seesmic Desktop). However, TweetDeck does what I need it to do, so I’ve got no incentive to switch unless it breaks or ceases to keep up with the times. (So far, they’ve done a nice job of adding functionality over time.)
About Hootsuite
Once you acquire any number of Twitter accounts or “personas,” you have a new challenge. TweetDeck only allows you to manage one account. Enter Hootsuite. Hootsuite also offers some “sweet” extras even if you don’t have multiple accounts. These include:
- Shortening of TRACKABLE urls, made more useful with…
- Visualization of the url statistics (much like Google Analytics for your tweeted links)
- User management if you are sharing tweeting responsibilities with a group of people
- The scheduling of tweets for later (Steve Woodruff explains this and other TweetDeck/Hootsuite advantages succinctly in his blog)
Features such as the ability to assign unique username and passwords to individuals managing the same Twitter account are exactly what Twitter needs to be more useful in the corporate world where things like security matter. That sort of evolution makes the future of Twitter look bright!
6 Comments
I will give HootSuite a try, thanks! I just replaced Tweetdeck with Nambu for Mac OS X. It’s a native app so it’s much faster than Tweetdeck and Twhirl. You are a Mac shop, right? Give it a try, would be interested to hear your opinions.
http://www.nambu.com/
I’m likin’ Hootsuite. If you link to something using the Ow.ly shortner you can track how many of your followers click. Thanks for the heads up!
Actually, Tweetdeck allows for multiple accounts, as well as facebook and a plethora of another accounts
Hi Kyle! You’re correct – since this post was published, Tweetdeck has implemented a number of new features, including multiple accounts. It’s a wonderful thing.
Hey Catherine,
You give a great answer. Of course a lot has changed since April. Both services have many more features and are very similar.
Still I think using both is best for me.
Simply Hootsuite for tweeting & stats. And Tweetdeck for following multiple conversations, groups, and searches.
Arvell Craig
@gebedo
TweetDeck allows multiple Twitter accounts but NOT multiple Facebook accounts, which makes it much less attractive to me now. I just loaded HootSuite and look forward to exploring the options.
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