While writing the title for this post, I realised that this “10-day challenge” is soon coming to an end. Despite all the frustrations that I’ve had with HootSuite (the free version), it actually saddens me that this trial is coming to an end. (Not that I can’t use HootSuite after this trial…)

I didn’t want to end it without exploring the Pro version of HootSuite (which is the one I usually recommend to people who are looking for a social media management tool anyway), so I thought I’d bite the bullet and get the Pro subscription. The process is quite easy – you get the first month for free, after which you pay $9.99 (that’s £6.20, the price of a Frappuccino and a duffin (which, if you ask me, Starbucks should’ve called MoNut in honour of Movember, but anyway…)). After that, you get a list of add-ons you can apply to your account. When you upgrade from a Free account to Pro, you get an additional user who can use your account. “How is this different from me giving someone access to my account?“. I’d reply with two answers:

1. Never. Ever. Give access to your account. Any account for that matter.
2.  If I have an account and you have an account as well, we can share scheduled tweets, you can edit mine, I can edit yours, we can share a content calendar. This is perfect for a team of two. However, you can add up to 9 additional users (for $10 each).

Other add-ons you can get are:

• HootCare ($5), personalised customer care, Monday to Friday, prioritised support with guaranteed response within 4 hours. You can also have HootCare in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French.
• Vanity URL ($49.99), you can get personalised ow.ly links, including HootSuite Pro statistics.
• HootSuite Archive (from $10): with the Free version you can save up to 100 templates; this is useful if you have a bank  of tweets/social posts and are tired of storing them in an Excel spreadsheet on SharePoint or Dropbox; store them on HootSuite and retrieve whenever, wherever. On the Pro version, you can add additional archived messages, with 10k additional template space for only $10.

From Brazil with (HootSuite) Love

Now, something very interesting happened today: around noon, I started seeing a spike in traffic to my blog. Now, yes I did squeak at my desk and yes I did get a few awkward looks from colleagues, BUT it was totally justified. However, when I delved deeper into Google Analytics I noticed one thing – I was getting quite a lot of traffic…from Brazil! While at first I was a bit unsure of this (but then again, who am I to question Google Analytics?), I went to HootSuite and checked the link stream I had set up and, lo and behold, I started seeing people sharing my articles. Interestingly enough, they were all from Brazil and they seemed to be quite interested in my article on Engagement vs. Consumption on Facebook. Thanks to HootSuite, I was able to see a stream of people sharing articles from my blog, so I could see the shares (HootSuite) and the traffic that they drove (Google Analytics).

The result? Well, the Engagement article now has over 2k views, and brnrd.me had almost 1k pageviews yesterday, with 70% of that traffic coming from Brazil. So, “obrigado pela letura“.

This is just to say – while I haven’t enjoyed HootSuite much as an engagement platform or application, I can see its usefulness on the Pro plan.

Now, granted, the added notifications don’t work for me on the Pro plan, but that’s merely because of the “Italian bug” I talked about in my previous article. Besides, I find it quite bizarre that, while the streams i have set up on HootSuite Web don’t seem to sync up with the iOS app, the app recognised me as a Pro user right away. Regardless of that, it looks like the Pro version has opened so many doors and features that I wouldn’t be able to get with the Free version. I’ll delve more into it tomorrow and, of course, report on it.