HootSuite For iPhone Review

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About the author:  David Lanning is the founder of Tweetalize and CEO of Galapagos Collection, Inc. David has more than 20 years of experience in the retail industry with a specialization in retail promotions and online marketing. Read more from this author...

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For the past two weeks, I’ve been experimenting with the new Twitter client for the iPhone from HootSuite.

As is the case with virtually all of the Twitter apps available for the iPhone, you need to weigh the pros and cons and decide for your own particular use what is most important. Or, as I do… you can use different Twitter apps for different purposes.

Here are some of the features that I found to be brilliant on the HootSuite iPhone Twitter client:

• Multiple account management. I have several different Twitter accounts, for various businesses I own… and a couple of personal accounts. Having the ability to manage all of these accounts from a single app is HUGE! While HootSuite is not the only iPhone app that allows you to do this, it does make it incredibly easy and intuitive. Sending a Tweet from a single, or multiple accounts is as easy as tapping the profile pictures at the top of the screen.

• Tracking Statistics on the go. In theory, this is great. HootSuite allows you to view the stats from your Tweets containing links that you have sent. In an esthetically pleasing line chart, you can view the click thru of all of your ow.ly links that you have Tweeted. The only drawback here is that the link must be sent via HootSuite using the ow.ly link shortener. I prefer to shorten links with my URL as the root, which makes this feature not as useful to me.

• Scheduling Tweets. I’m a BIG fan of using time wisely and scheduling Tweets when appropriate. I won’t go into the power of effectively scheduling Tweets right now… that will be in another post coming soon. But, I can tell you that spreading out Tweets over peak time periods will dramatically increase your social media marketing efforts. HootSuite allows you to easily schedule Tweets, and re-Tweets, to be posted to your Twitter account at a future time.

• Twitter lists. Lists are an integral part of my time management and social media strategy. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to view my Twitter lists on HootSuite for the iPhone. But, I’m confident that this will be addressed and added to the standard features.

UPDATE: I found the list feature. It’s a little buried, but HootSuite does have the ability to keep track of the lists you make on Twitter.

• Attaching pictures and link shortening. The ability to attach images and automatically shrink links is pretty much expected in every iPhone Twitter client… nothing that stands out here above and beyond the competitors.

Bottom line…

HootSuite is an excellent overall Twitter client for the iPhone. I would recommend for business use as well as personal use for Twitter management.

Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons…

Pros: Ability to managing multiple accounts, send Tweets from multiple accounts simultaneously and Tweet scheduling.

Cons: Stats are only useful when using ow.ly shortening, unable to use lists (see update above).

Price: $1.99

Twitter: @hootsuite