Hootsuite Celebrates 2 Million Users

Hootsuite, a professional social media management system, has now reached 2 million unique accounts as of July. Launched in December 2008, Hootsuite is now an integral parts of millions of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media accounts.

For those who haven't heard of Hootsuite before, it bills itself as the first and best social media dashboard. See the image above, which you can click to enlarge. As a social media dashboard, it allows users to post and schedule messages to sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. It features both a free and paid version, with the paid version offering many more features and the ability to manage many more accounts without being bothered by ads.

Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Hootsuite is also used by many marketing and public relations teams to manage teams and allow multiple people to manage the same social media accounts. It can also serve as a central location where users can monitor analytic reports and the success of their social media campaigns. Hootsuite gives paid members access to reports and results tracking. This is one of the most useful aspects of Hootsuite. It can be difficult to create the most successful social media campaigns possible without data about what does or doesn't work. It's a basic marketing 101 tenet that gathering data after a campaign is just as important as the planning and execution.

If you've contemplated starting to go big time with your social media efforts, Hootsuite could be a good investment. If nothing else, the success of something like Hootsuite tells us that social media is here to stay, and literally millions of people agree with that idea!

QR Codes: The future of marketing?


Could QR Codes become the future of marketing?

QR codes, or Quick Response codes, are a type of bar code that can be read by taking a photo. Specifically, they're meant to be scanned by smart phone cameras by anyone nearby who has access to this type of technology. If you own a phone that can download apps and take pictures, you can scan QR codes!

Of course, that raises the next question: so what? Why would you want to read a fancy bar code? The reason is because unlike traditional bar codes, QR codes store a great deal more information. This makes them perfect for doing nifty things like connecting the user to a special video on their phone, sending them directly to the right website or giving them a special one-time-use coupon!

Because of the type of information QR codes can store and distribute, they're a perfect fit for advertising. If executed well, they can be a great addition to a more traditional print or public advertising piece. Imagine a magazine ad that mentions entering a contest, only to include a QR code that takes the viewer directly to the contest page. That turns ads into something more than just something to glance at, but instead something to interact with. The most important thing when including QR codes in marketing efforts is to make sure to reward the QR code scanner with something more than a boring sales pitch or a normal website.

For more on the technology behind QR codes, check out Wikipedia. For some more thoughts on the marketing side of QR codes, check out this article: How QR Codes Can Grow Your Business.

Foursquare: Social Media Game or Privacy Invasion?


Even if you don’t keep abreast of the most cutting-edge social media and technology ventures, you might have heard of Foursquare. The social media game allows users to post their location on Facebook and Twitter. Users then win "badges," such as the 9-5 badge that signifies that they've checked into their workplace location 15 out of the last 30 days. When they post a specific location more than anyone else over 30 days, they become “mayors” of that location.


Foursquare has raised some privacy and safety concerns because users
are announcing not only where they are – but where they aren’t (home, for instance). Some enterprising souls demonstrated this with a biting and funny website called pleaserobme.com While no longer active, when the site was created it posted an updated list of people who were not home based on their Foursquare posts. If they had previously posted their home's address, it was easy to show where on a map the empty home was located. For more about this site, check out Techcrunch's article.