Work Smarter with Twitter and HootSuite. Alexandra Samuel

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      When it comes to using HootSuite, again, this book isn’t an intro guide. Instead, I focus on the aspects of HootSuite that allow you to use Twitter more efficiently and effectively. If you need help getting started, HootSuite’s own Getting Started guides (online) cover the nuts and bolts.

      Full disclosure: I started using HootSuite before I knew it was a Vancouver success story. Because I live in Vancouver, I know its founder and many of its employees. HootSuite also has a partnership with Vision Critical, my employer, to offer a Twitter survey tool that is managed from within the HootSuite dashboard. Later in this book, there’s a quick overview of two major alternatives, but HootSuite is the tool that I find most useful in organizing my Twitter experience.

      Finally, things change fast in the world of social media! For updates and comments about how things have changed since this book came out, please visit http://alexlov.es/twitterupdate.

      About Me

      I joined Twitter as @awsamuel in early 2007 (putting me in the first million of its now 200 million users). This book draws on my experience not only as an enthusiastic user, but as a social media researcher, trainer, and strategist. From my PhD research at Harvard, where I began my dissertation work by investigating the impact of the internet on the modern workplace, to my role leading social media for online research giant Vision Critical, I have spent sixteen years advising professionals and organizations on their web, social, and Twitter strategies.

      Over the years, I’ve shared some of what I’ve learned on my blogs—at hbr.org, on Oprah.com, and on my own site at alexandrasamuel.com—and in training sessions across North America and overseas. In that work, I’ve found that the combination of Twitter and HootSuite offers an efficient way to organize your reading experience so that it’s relationship-centered and context-specific: through lists and column views. HootSuite also helps you build those relationships by scheduling your tweets more easily and allowing you to maintain the Twitter presence you want.

      So let’s get started.