Get started with Hootsuite - for franchisees

If you manage a franchise or a branch in a business with multiple locations, you can use Hootsuite to build an active online social presence. With Hootsuite, you can create and schedule posts for all of your social accounts in one place, use pre-approved messages and images from your head office, and engage with leads and customers.

Join Hootsuite and connect your social accounts

After a company administrator adds you to the Hootsuite account, you’ll receive an email from a corporate admin with details about Hootsuite, as well as a welcome email from Hootsuite. Make sure you have both of these emails handy, and then follow these steps.

1. In the invitation email from Hootsuite, select Create your account.
2. Create and enter a password for Hootsuite, and then select Create Account.
3. In the email from your corporate admin, select the quick connection link.
4. On the Hootsuite page that appears, start connecting your social accounts. One at a time, select each account that you want to connect and enter your login credentials.
5. Select Continue, select your local team from the Teams list, select Continue again, and then select Continue to the Hootsuite dashboard.

If you have any problems connecting your accounts or getting started with Hootsuite, contact the corporate administrator for your business, who can resolve issues directly with Hootsuite if needed.

For more about adding social accounts, see Connect a social account to Hootsuite.

Monitor feeds and engage with your audience

Hootsuite streams are feeds that display the content from your connected social accounts and allow you to participate in conversations relevant to your industry. You can use streams to monitor activity across all of your accounts; engage with your audience; and monitor specific keywords, topics, hashtags, brand mentions, and competitors in one place.

After you've connected your social accounts to Hootsuite, you can go to More, select Streams, and then select Add Stream to create a new stream. To organize or categorize your streams, add boards by selecting New board and choosing a stream type.

Create a few boards and streams and scroll through them to see what works best for you. You can easily create and delete streams, so don't be afraid to explore.

Here are some resources we recommend reading to get the most out of Streams:

• To learn more about adding streams, see Your first boards and streams.
• To learn about using boards, see Use boards to organize your streams.
• For suggestions on how to organize your streams and how to set up the best streams for your location’s objectives, see Practice social listening and engagement with streams.
• For details about using Streams to engage with your audience in each social network, see Engage with your audience in Streams.

Create, schedule, and publish content

You can create, schedule, and publish your social media content to multiple social networks from one place.

To get started, go to Create, and then select an option.

Select your social accounts, and then create your post. In addition to text, you can include mentions or tags, links, images, videos, GIFs, emoji, and hashtags.

As you compose your post, you can preview how it will look on the right. When you're ready, you can publish it, save it as a draft, or schedule it for later.

For additional information, see:

• Create and publish posts
• Save and edit drafts
• Create and schedule content in a calendar

View and manage your scheduled posts in a calendar

To view or manage your scheduled content, go to Plan. You can create new posts and organize, edit, or delete existing posts in a helpful, calendar view.

• Select a day in the calendar to create new content to schedule and publish on that day.
• Review and manage your scheduled content in a list view, or a weekly or monthly calendar view.
• Work on draft posts from a list of all drafts, or view drafts with scheduled dates alongside your other scheduled content in the calendar.

Find and use content in your content library

The content library in Hootsuite contains pre-approved post templates and images supplied by your corporate or organization administrator. This helps you stay on brand and saves you time when creating social posts.

Access and browse your content libraries in your content calendar. Within the content library, you can view when each asset was added or last used, the number of times it’s been used, its tags, and if applicable, how long it will be available.

1. Go to Plan.
2. Select Content at the top of the calendar, and then select Content Library.
3. Select a content library from the list. You can select Images or Messages in the top right to filter by asset type. You can also sort assets by age or popularity, availability, or tag.
   
4. Select an asset, and then select Create at the top of the content library to start a post using the image or template. Templates that contain links will always contain the full link, so consider adding a shortener before publishing or scheduling the post.

Engage with your audience in Inbox 2.0

As a social manager of your business or franchise location, you’ll want to make sure you’re responding to messages effectively. Your Hootsuite account includes a message Inbox that automatically collects social conversations in one place. Here you can manage, respond to, assign, and resolve messages. For example, you might use Inbox to respond to customer inquiries about your local business, or you might assign a message to the corporate office (the corporate office might also assign messages to you for location-specific conversations).

For additional information about using Inbox, see the following resources:

• Inbox 2.0 quick start guide - for agents
• Work with conversations in Inbox 2.0

For a video walkthrough, watch Get started with Hootsuite Inbox 2.0.

Next steps

Here are some great ways to extend Hootsuite functionality and advance your Hootsuite knowledge.

Extend Hootsuite functionality with apps

Visit Hootsuite Apps to select from a library of free and third-party apps developed to increase your productivity with Hootsuite.

Select More, and then select App library to explore the app library.

For additional information, see:

• Install or uninstall apps
• Popular apps

Manage social media on the go with Hootsuite mobile

Download Hootsuite mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android from your device's app store to manage your social media on the go. For more information, see Hootsuite Mobile Apps.

Advance your skills with Hootsuite Academy

Master new social media skills and expand your Hootsuite knowledge with free online courses. Visit Hootsuite Academy to explore our courses and certification options.