TweetDeck and Hootsuite – Better Together
Apr
9
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!
Tags: Twitter
12 Comments »
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Andrew
April 10, 2009 at 2:01 pm
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/
Brett
April 17, 2009 at 4:43 pm
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!
kyle
July 30, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Actually, Tweetdeck allows for multiple accounts, as well as facebook and a plethora of another accounts
Library Day in the Life: day 5 : meldinme
August 1, 2009 at 10:45 pm
[...] TweetDeck and Hootsuite – Better Together (From April – and it appears some of the features on the blogger’s wishlist have been instituted in the new version of HootSuite.) [...]
catherine juon
August 4, 2009 at 12:34 am
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.
Church Markting TV
December 8, 2009 at 3:51 pm
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
Robert Sokol
December 30, 2009 at 3:36 pm
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.
Heather
March 13, 2010 at 12:10 am
I’m lovin Hootsuite. I haven’t used Tweetdeck, but will load it up too. What I find most annoying about Twitter is the inability to compose a tweet to a contact (or just view their current profile) by selecting from a drop-down list of tweeps, much like email will do when you start typing a name in your “to” field. Forces me to have to remember the twitter handle and well, frankly, I’ve got enough to remember. Am I missing something? Does Tweetdeck do this?
Agree with your idea about multiple user logins for one account and loved your post.
Catherine Juon
March 16, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Hi Heather, enjoy TweetDeck! Other alternatives you might want to look at:
The easiest way to look up a name is within Twitter itself at http://twitter.com/invitations/find_on_twitter. If I hear of an autofill feature, I’ll post it here. Thanks for contributing, Heather!
Carey
March 18, 2010 at 3:56 pm
This sounds great but don’t you need to download Tweetdeck to your desktop and Hootsuite is browser driven? I looking to use one of these because I have multiple Twitter accounts. Thanks for this post.
carlos
April 2, 2010 at 3:16 pm
I’m fully converted to HootSuite. I run a stand alone version on my Mac and the Android app on my Motorola Droid. The one thing you said you use Tweetdeck for is easily accomplished in HootSuite (and you get lots more columns and tabs to play with).
I really liked Tweetdeck while I was using it and it’s great for someone with a single account with more emphasis on social than on networking, but once you cross the line with multiple accounts, tabbed searches and lists and the ability to track stats on the links you offer up there’s simply no comparison. I can tell if clicks came from twitter, a twitter client, facebook…. I’m even starting to use it to shrink links for services that don’t play well with twitter!
Unless you can come up with something better than managing your tweeps, there’s no reason to run both.
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May 18, 2010 at 12:24 am
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