Well, it was a long time coming...HOOTSUITE CERTIFIED!!

After a bumpy road of technical difficulties, crazy finals schedules, and with no short amount of ADHD, I am finally a certified HootSuite Professional!!  And I couldn't be more excited about this.  Before the beginning of this semester I had no idea what HootSuite was or how to use it.  But after taking Dr. Karen Freberg's course as well as going through the certification process, I know without a doubt that HootSuite is a tool I hope to use in whatever professional career I end up in.

This social media tool is one that all businesses, companies, and brands should incorporate into their marketing and social media plans.  It has many organizational and analytic benefits.  For example, throughout the course of the semester, my Social Media class were separated into groups to take a department on campus and propose a social media campaign for them.  My group was assigned to the McConnell Center, one of the more prominent scholarship programs on campus.  Going into the initial meetings with our client, my partner and I quickly discovered that one of the major hurdles our client would be facing is the fact that there is currently a severe lack of manpower for any kind of social media team (we're talking one person handling all the PR and social media with little to no social media literacy at all).  We wanted to give our client a tool that would help save her time and keep her organized with all their social media platforms.  Our first plan of action, introduce the McConnell Center to HootSuite.  It allows the one person running the media show to schedule tweets and Facebook posts, as well as having all of the current McConnell Center pages in one place at one time.  There is no time wasted signing in and out of all the different outlets.  So far, our client as been nothing but thrilled with HootSuite and it has helped make her daily job more manageable. So for any companies out there that are in the same situation, I really urge you to sign up with HootSuite.

I really enjoyed how during the certification videos, they not only spoke about how HootSuite helps you to track hashtags and conversations in one area, thereby making it easier to respond quickly to any positive or negative feedback, but insight on proper ways to handle any bad tweets or messages going viral about your company.  They help with things to say or what do to if you don't have an immediate answer for an impending crisis.

My only recommendation for the certification process is maybe make new videos that are more interactive.  For people with attention deficit like me, sometimes it was hard to sit still or not kind of check out during some of the videos.  Which is upsetting because there is so much to learn about this great resource!!  If there were, say, little quiz questions after each section, that would have made the process easier to focus on as well as making sure the viewer is picking up on needed information.


My HootSuite Profile