Hootsuite is the perfect management tool for all of your church, social media accounts.

Hootsuite announced two big pieces of news this week that really do make it the perfect social media management tool for churches. New this week, Hootsuite allows users to automatically schedule posts and has added Google + to it’s list of supported social networks.

That’s right. You can manage your Facebook (personal and fan page), Twitter, LinkedIn, and NOW Google + . As you read articles and see content you’d like to share, you can automatically schedule content to any and all of your social networks with the click of the little “Hootlet”.

These exciting updates have prompted me to share why I think churches should use Hootsuite to manage their social media accounts. I’ve been using Hootsuite as a paid user for over 2 years now, and can honestly say it is the best $6 (I got in early) I spend each month to help me get personal and “business” value out of social media.

Why use Hootsuite to manage your social media accounts?

What is wrong with logging into 4 browser tabs at once on three different web browsers? Nothing (I managed my social media accounts this way for a long time). You don’t necessarily need Hootsuite, but it sure does make things easier. The following are some benefits I’ve experienced:

#1 It saves me boatloads of time.

The primary time-waster and click-sucker on Twitter is bouncing between your Twitter user lists, hashtag streams, and custom searches. In order to see all these “streams” at once, you have to open a bunch of browser tabs. If you are active on a personal Twitter account, and managing your church twitter account, now you have to do the same thing in a different browser.

After a while, you’ll start forgetting who is who, what is what, and you are bound to make some mistakes or waste a lot of time.

This is a snap shot of a few streams that I have created on a “tab” inside of Hootsuite. The first column is a list of local tweeters and close friends that I interact with regularly. Next, is a list of my fellow community leaders on Michael Hyatt’s blog. The last one pictured, is a hashtag I follow for church and social media (#chsocm).

As you can see, it makes it easy to scan through the tweets and respond as necessary. I have another “tab” with streams for my businesses, church, etc. I work them like a job each morning and because they are all in one place, I don’t have to fire up additional browsers with a bunch of tabs. It’s all in one place. This allows me to manage all of my Twitter accounts in less than 30 minutes each day. Sweet.

#2 Manually scheduling and now automatically schedule tweets/fb posts/g+ posts/linkedin posts in one place.

Admittedly, I’ve been using Buffer App to handle automatic scheduling of tweets. Now with Hootlet, I can handle all of it in house. Whenever I know I’ve got a really busy day or am going to be off for a few days, I can easily manually and automatically schedule social media content to go out  to all of my networks.

I don’t have to worry about falling off the face of the social media earth.

#3 Learn more about people you are interacting with quickly.

When I run across an interesting tweet or see a new person commenting on a Facebook post, I can quickly look up a bunch of information about that person right inside of Hootsuite.

You can see here, that I learn a lot about the user and in the case of Twitter, I can follow them, reply, retweet, or add them to a list right inside of Hootsuite. This makes it easier to follow new people and learn more about them when you are replying and interacting, whether on Twitter, or on any other social network.

If you manage social media for your church, you need to consider using Hootsuite.

I’ve listed only three benefits, but there are many more, particularly if you are working with a team to manage social media accounts. The tool has made it easy for me to manage my personal social media accounts, church social media accounts, and all of my client accounts. It is an indispensable part of my daily social media engagement.

The best part is that you can use it for free before deciding to upgrade to the Pro account.

Happy Hootsuiting.