How to Schedule in Bulk using Hootsuite

One of the most common excuses I hear from people for not using Social Media is that they don’t have enough time. Social Media Management Tools like Hootsuite enable you to manage your time better by scheduling a load of updates in one go. This can be particularly effective for social media marketers who are scheduling their tweets around specific marketing campaigns.

Scheduling in Bulk...

1. Log into Hootsuite

2. Click into the top left-hand corner, like you are about to write an update.

3. Select the ‘Schedule’ button, followed by the ‘Schedule in Bulk’ button as above…

4. This will open a new window, ‘Bulk Schedule Updates’. Select ‘Download Sample.csv and open this in Excel. You'll see three columns, Column A is for the date and time (follow their format), Column B is for your update/tweet and Column C is for your URL.

You can schedule up to 200 messages at a time but you can’t schedule the same message twice.

Once you’ve written your updates, save the CSV file and then you are ready to upload them to Hootsuite. Simply choose your file and then choose which account the updates are for.

If you make a mistake – Hootsuite will let you know and

not upload your updates until you have corrected the problem in the excel spread-sheet, saved it and then choose it again.

For example, the problem with this upload is that 2 tweets have been scheduled for the same time…

When you have uploaded your updates successfully Hootsuite will let you know, see left…

Here's a run through of the Hootsuite rules for Scheduling Updates in Bulk:

• - Format: DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM,"MESSAGE","URL"

• - All dates/times are relative to currently selected time zone

• - URLs must contain "http://"

Example message: 16/11/2010 17:35,"Your message here","http://website.com"

• - Schedule messages at least 10 minutes from upload time

• - Assign times in 5 minute increments

• - Only one messages per time slot

• - Duplicate messages are not allowed

If you are interested in learning more about social media marketing and would like to attend a workshop, have one to one training or discuss other options please call Helen on 01905 23902.

How do I build my social media strategy?

In short like you would build any other marketing strategy.

1. Why am I doing this in the first place?

First you need to establish what it is that you want. Would you like more leads into your website, to expand your audience on Twitter or Facebook, build a network of local business prospects or publicise an upcoming event?

2. Who are my target audience?

Once you’ve clarified what it is that you’re trying to achieve, the next question is who is my target audience and where do they hang out? So if you are a local arts and crafts company looking for direct customers and some local resellers, you need to decide what type of social media they use. Probably Facebook and Twitter will be most popular for the consumers and to target specific resellers, LinkedIn and local business retail groups.

If you are a company who only deals with large construction firms and project management companies, you need to think what type of social media might they use and where do they hang out. Mostly LinkedIn also easy to target specific companies and individuals and maybe Twitter.

3. What resources do I have?

Once you’ve decided what it is you want and who you wish to target, you might ask yourself how much time and money do I have to spend. If you have a limited budget you might decide to only use free social media sites that you can manage internally. If you have a little more money you might want to decide whether it would be best to get some help and outsource some of the responsibility. Set yourself a time limit so that you can measure the effect of your campaign.

4. What’s my plan?

Planning is vital. It is all too easy to start using social media tools without a proper plan or strategy and then wonder where your time went and why you have very little to show for all your effort. If you create a schedule, delegate some of the time it takes to the people best suited to using the different social media tools available.

5. How do I know whether it’s been a success?

Once you’ve reached your deadline – whether this is a month or six weeks, you need to think – how many web leads did I used to receive into my website? How many leads do I receive now? Or have the number of phone enquiries improved? Do I have more facebook Likes? Etc. Where do I rank in Google? Has this improved?

6. Test and repeat.

Once you have carried out your initial social media marketing experiment, see what worked well, what didn’t work – change it and repeat. Getting your Social Media Marketing right for your company is a learning curve, but you have to start somewhere to see if it could work for you. With many things, it’s a case of seeing what works best and persisting with these.

Social Media is not a mystical, science where just a few experts hold all the answers. Social Media owes a lot of it’s success to how free, easy and generally accessible it is.

Thanks to Paul Brindley http://twitter.com/midsinsolvency who recommended this Blog Topic at our Professional Panel meeting on Monday, I hope it answers your question Paul?

To everyone else if you’re still not sure – please give me a call on 01905 23902, I’ll be happy to point you in the right direction.