HootSuite

Hoot Suite! This is a bit of a weird review for me. HootSuite is technically adult-friendly. You can use it for pretty much any kind of industry. But, it’s built-in such a way that it integrates with mainstream social media. It’s intended to be used as a singular access point for all of your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter interactions. Instead of going to all of your socials one by one, you can do all of your work from the HootSuite dashboard. It’s been that way for over a decade now. They’ve really made a name for themselves in mainstream spaces. So, they’re a real shoe-in for anyone running social media campaigns, especially organic ones.

The million-dollar question is: How would you use social media in the adult industry? Well, that’s your problem. I’m here to talk about how HootSuite can actually help you keep track of all of your socials from one dashboard. This website pretty much pioneered the approach. The actual social media platforms only really caught up years after the fact. And yes, while they have their own platforms, to a degree, HootSuite still manages to stay ahead because they can integrate with social media networks that belong to different companies.

There’s also some amazing integration with site engines like WordPress. On top of that, you even get some useless crap like MySpace and Tumblr. I say useless, because MySpace is basically dead in the water and Tumblr doesn’t allow porn anymore. That place used to be smut-central, but the ban-hammer ruined it. So, if you’re using any or all of these websites for some reason, HootSuite can be the solution you’ve been looking for if you’re finding it hard to micro-manage all of your feeds.

Tabs and Streams

The entire design ideology of HootSuite follows roughly the same approach as Tweetdeck, if you’ve ever used that service before. Basically, posts get shoved onto a stack and they appear on your screen, one by one, in narrow columns. They populate the screen, so you get multiple columns at a time and you’re basically seeing all of your posts from various socials in one place. You’re free to scroll through and even rearrange the way that they’re fed in so that you can easily keep track of what’s going on. But, the idea is that you want to see the most recent organic activity across your socials in one place.

There’s also a really neat overview of the engagements you’ve gotten, so that you know just how alluring your posts are. You don’t want to waste your time trying to appeal to a wide demographic only to find out that you’ve been wasting your time. If people don’t like the shit you’re posting; you want to know first. You also want to keep an eye out for spam-bots and annoying non-customers who are just there to ruin your day. You can find all the naysayers in one place thanks to HootSuite’s quick and simple dashboard. It’s all neatly organized for you.

A Bit Outdated

Naturally, since I just talked up the design, I have to now gripe about it, because I am a spoiled bastard. Well, there’s that and also, I’m brutally honest. I have to say, this dashboard is fucking outdated and it is kind of flawed, especially in this day and age. Sure, at first sight, it appears to have all the bells and whistles in place. But, over the past few years, a ton of professionals have complained about missing features and poor arrangement of elements on the dashboard that could be done a lot better. People also like to compare HootSuite’s design to those of their competitors’ to point out that this company is intentionally stale. They don’t innovate or change up their design.

A couple of common gripes I’ve heard about, for example, are that you can’t hide people’s comments from your posts through HootSuite. You can only delete them. This is fucking dumb. Hiding comments is the way to go. If you delete someone’s comment, that’s just going to encourage them to comment again. On top of that, I’m pretty sure that there are tiny little mistakes here and there, like not being able to publish a scheduled post immediately. So, if you schedule a post… you have to wait for it. That doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The biggest problem with the dashboard, though, has to do with the columns themselves. When you’re just starting out, you’re going to love them. There’s one column per every linked feed. One column for your Facebook posts, another for your tweets. It’s perfect, right? Wrong. When you start scaling and add new integrations, this is going to become a living nightmare.

You’re going to have posts coming in every few minutes or so, if you’re really popular and the dashboard will fucking explode. There’s no way to prevent this. It’s going to be a fucking waterfall of social feeds that you can’t make heads or tails of. It’s such a nonsensical and irresponsible way to sort all of your feeds. I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that they haven’t done a major overhaul. They’ve been around for over a decade and they’re millionaires. Surely, they can afford it.

Set in Their Ways

The main problem with HootSuite is that they’re dead set in their ways and they seem to be rolling with the legacy approach. Microsoft does it, so why not HootSuite? Basically, they don’t give two shits about innovation, because they caught the first wave when it came and went. They became famous and successful and they know that innovation is risky.

They might lose some of their long time whales. So, instead, they just try and convince you that their way is the best way, because they have legacy. It’s really dumb backwards logic. Older does not automatically mean better. HootSuite could gradually improve their design and their features, but they’re scared of change. They’d rather stay floating on top than trying to soar into the clouds, lest they try too hard and fall on their asses.

They’re the software solution equivalent to a grumpy old man. That’s how I see it. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve seen other social aggregators that do the same things HootSuite does, but in a much better way with significantly better UIs. Prove me wrong. I don’t have any reason to lie to you. I mean, I am technically recommending HootSuite with this review. I’m not saying you should stay away from them. I’m just saying that it’s going to take you a while to get used to their platform and you will be diving into a tried and tested way of doing things that is unlikely to change for better or for worse. They’re the safe bet, not the innovative one.

Paying for HootSuite

They’ve got four tiers. First up, there’s the $19 a month professional tier that allows you 10 social profiles with unlimited scheduling, but only through one user. This is the one-man team solution for lonely webmasters who only have one project running at a time. I don’t see how you could market two different services with just the one professional subscription, to be honest.

This is your starter kit through which you get to know the software. Personally, I’d recommend that you start here, because at the very least you won’t have spent that much money just getting started. Do keep in mind, though, that the prices they list come with a fine print that says that you have to pay annually. This pisses me the fuck off. See, this is what I meant when I said they’re outdated across the board. Most subscription services I’ve reviewed on this entire goddamn site list their prices as annual and monthly, separately, right next to each other. Not HootSuite. No, they just say $19.99 and they drop an asterisk. Go fishing for the fine print yourself, losers. It’s annoying.

Next up, there’s the team tier. Nothing to brag about here. It’s $99 a month and you get 20 social profiles with 3 users. So, you pay five times as much for about three times the value. Yay. What a bargain. If you want to pay them even more money, you can drop $599 a month for 35 social profiles and more than five users – whatever that means. They literally just wrote more than five users; I’m not kidding.

Finally, there’s the enterprise tier and I sincerely doubt anyone has ever actually made that request before. That’s the button for the OG gangsters with the big bucks. You press the enterprise button when you’re already a millionaire, after the whole porn webmaster business has made you rich.

Look, I don’t dislike HootSuite, obviously. I think they’re great. But, they’re fucking outdated and they need to pick up the pace or they’re going to get buried by a bunch of smaller teams on innovation alone. Try their demos before you buy, as always and decide for yourselves.