What’s New in Hootsuite

Sparkcentral is a best-in-class solution that brings 1:1 conversational messaging via Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, WhatsApp, WeChat, SMS, and web/in-app chat to Hootsuite, as well as deep integrations to many of the business applications on which you run your business. It is now available from Hootsuite as a standalone offering. Learn more

We’ve refreshed and updated the Hootsuite Enterprise Certification Course for 2021! As part of their software plans, Hootsuite Enterprise customers receive this comprehensive, industry-leading training free of charge.

Use the Instagram Grid app to remix your photos and share them with your followers on Instagram directly from Hootsuite. This app is currently available only for personal Instagram profiles. See the app directory for more information.

Engage with your customers via direct messaging through your Google My Business account—right in Hootsuite—to meet your customers where they are. See the app directory for more information.

When evaluating insights data within Hootsuite Analytics reports, you can now select multiple saved searches to compare within the same tile. This is helpful for:

• Comparing your brand against competitors for share of voice, sentiment, reach and volume of conversation between your brand and competitors
• Tracking different campaigns through multiple searches
• Comparing products tracked through multiple searches

This is a new Insights metric within Hootsuite Analytics that aggregates sentiment across sources into one net value, making it easier to gauge the relative sentiment of your search and track how conversations from your search are evolving over time.

We’ve added options to help you modify the appearance and content of word clouds in Insights.

• Use filters to show or hide emojis, hashtags, locations, organizations, people, keywords, and phrases.
• Customize word size by volume and trending
• Customize color by default, topic type, gender, sentiment, volume, trending, random, or none
• Adjust cloud size and specify how many words to include in the tile

You can now create up to 10 images and/or videos in one Instagram post with the Hootsuite desktop or mobile app. View and schedule carousel posts within the entire social calendar with team members, publish posts via mobile, and track their performance.

We’ve updated account disconnection messages to help you resolve issues in cases where your Twitter account access is revoked or suspended. See the help article for more information.

Easily find the content that you want to share in Hootsuite Amplify. Amplify users can now choose to filter content based on:

• Social network
• Media type (image or video)
• Share history (shared or not shared)
• Personalization (able to personalize or not)

Users can also use the Sort By option to sort content in the content feed.

Resolved an issue where Hootsuite mobile users were unable to open links within the Android app.

Posts in LinkedIn streams now appear in chronological order.

It's easier than ever to create reports in Analytics and get the insights you need. With the new and improved Analytics templates gallery, you can now browse through our ever-growing list of report templates to get started quickly. We've also added a search option right in the templates gallery so you can find and create the reports you need in just a few clicks.

Resolved an issue that was causing Amplify push notifications to not send.

Between January and March of 2021, the following two Instagram changes will occur:

• Each Instagram account will be limited to publishing a maximum of 60 Instagram posts from Hootsuite (or any other third-party publisher) within a rolling 30-day period. To publish more than 60 posts within a 30-day period, you can go to Instagram directly.

• Instagram accounts linked to Facebook Pages with large audiences may be asked to confirm their identity and secure their account before they can resume publishing via Hootsuite. This process involves (1) enabling two-factor authentication to protect the account from unauthorized access and (2) confirming your primary location by turning on your mobile device's location services.

Instagram and Facebook have made changes that affect publishing—the option to tag Instagram and Facebook posts with a location is no longer available. For more information, see this Help Center announcement.

Here’s our monthly roundup of everything that’s new in Hootsuite!

Resolved an issue in the Hootsuite mobile app for Android that was showing an error “Instagram not installed” when attempting to publish from the Hootsuite mobile app to Instagram via the mobile notification workflow.

Amplify Content Admins can now customize and preview their Amplify posts in the same Composer you use to schedule branded content. You can then choose to schedule or publish right away. Contributors will still need approval before content is published to Amplify. Read more on how this works in this help article.

Business and Enterprise users can now track the number of followers for personal LinkedIn accounts using Hootsuite Analytics. This is helpful for Amplify admins to compare and track audience size and growth for individual agents or advisors to better understand content reach and performance. See metrics and definitions in this help article.

To help you get to social listening with just a click, we’ve moved Hootsuite Insights powered by Brandwatch out of the “Other Apps” drawer and into the left navigation.

Get more information on line and area charts by clicking the white markers in Hootsuite Analytics. The markers show more information about that day’s posts to help you easily attribute spikes to certain events.

We’ve updated Composer to make it easier to see successfully sent/scheduled posts and address any issues that come up. You will now see messages with more information on the social network and specific social accounts that were successfully sent. If you’re sending to multiple networks and any posts are unsuccessful,

YouTube URLs now generate link previews when you’re creating your social posts in Composer.

Amplify users can view and share content via email using our weekly digest or when admins use the email button on the stream. We’ve updated the reporting to include how this externally shared content is performing with users:

• Emails or Amplify workplace posts that admins are already sending today count towards Amplify share metrics
• Share flow from email/workplace encourages users to onboard with a similar share flow to what they would use in the Amplify app to increase familiarity and increase ability to record adoption.
• When new users receive a “this week in Amplify” email and are prompted to log into Amplify to share, the newly onboarded user will be counted

We’ve refreshed the UI in Hootsuite Insights powered by Brandwatch following our platform-wide refresh of Hootsuite back in July. Find the new look in your dashboard with enhancements to performance.

In the past, account-level and post-level metrics had to overlap to be exported to Adobe Analytics. Now, you can split out account-level and post-level data into separate, custom events and expand on the Impact metrics dictionary to analyze metrics specific to your posts.

Fixed an issue that caused Arabic characters to be turned into symbols when exporting as a PDF from Analytics.

Now available in Hootsuite Impact in standalone and Hootsuite Analytics: track your video consumption more easily with revamped metrics that give you the full context.

In addition to the previously included metrics, video metrics will also be included with reactions, impressions, shares, comments, and clicks. You’ll also see these metrics on the previous 500 posts per active LinkedIn connection.

For more information on the metrics available, please check out the Impact Metrics Dictionary under the LinkedIn tab.

We’ve made some updates to improve the performance and functionality of your Impact Content:

• By default, you’ll see 100 posts instead of 10 in the UI, with the ability to load up to 1,000 posts
• When exporting to CSV, you can include up to 1000 posts.
• ROI is now included as a column.
• When configuring your columns, you can now hover over to get a description of the metric for quick context.
• Filters have been simplified with the different categories flattening into one encompassing field as tags, so you don’t need to keep track of which category is relevant.
• When filtering, Impact now suggests tags as you type to make it easier to select the correct one.

Share products from your Shopify stores to your social networks with Hootsuite and reply to tweets with products from your store.

Quickly find the right image for your social post without leaving Hootsuite. Dash uses AI-powered auto-tagging to organize your digital assets.

We’ve added five new Impact report templates in Analytics to help you monitor key metrics across all your social accounts with the click of a button:

• Facebook Overview: Paid & Organic
• Instagram Overview: Paid & Organic
• Linkedin Overview: Paid & Organic
• Twitter Overview: Paid & Organic
• Youtube Overview

Start with templates and customize as you like. When you’re ready, schedule to send weekly or monthly.

Turn data into insights faster with Iris™, your personal AI analyst. Cut through the noise, uncover emerging trends, and spot important conversations that others miss.

• Save time. Iris automatically detects significant peaks in conversation and analyzes the causes, saving you from sifting through data yourself
• Don’t miss a thing. With millions of conversations happening in real time, Iris spots previously invisible insights so you can be confident you’ve got the full picture
• Benchmark your analysis. Getting a second opinion is always a good idea. Compare your analysis to Iris’s and get the best insights from both worlds.

Use the new topic wheel in Hootsuite Insights saved searches to get more context, with key conversations broken down into subtopics. You can click any keyword to see linked mentions.

Now it’s easier to resize your tiles in Hootsuite Analytics: Just hover over the bottom right corner and drag to your desired size. We’ve also added more size options to fit in your reports.

To help you quickly resolve social network disconnections, we’ve updated disconnection messaging to include more details about the reason for disconnection.

To make it easier to create and schedule posts, we’ve added more user education to help you work around known limitations in Composer.

• New tips and workflow changes make it easier to switch organizations, remove grey bars bordering LinkedIn posts, and make location tagging selections that get more accurate results.
• New messaging informs you when options are unavailable for the profile type you’ve selected, such as video posts for LinkedIn personal profiles, mentions for LinkedIn and Facebook personal profiles, and publishing to Facebook personal profiles.

Synapview allows you to easily monitor your competitors and hashtags that are relevant to your business on multiple social networks. Supported networks include Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. No account required.

Amplify has moved into your main Hootsuite Dashboard to make it easier to access for social sellers. You’ll be able to quickly access other areas of Hootsuite such as the Analytics Social Selling Leaderboard.

In April 2020, Facebook extended their response window to 21 days to help businesses manage larger messaging volumes due to COVID-19. As of July 30, the response window has been restored to the original 7 days. We’ve updated product alerts to let users know if they try to respond to a message older than 7 days.

Resolved an issue where the Composer was not displaying an error for videos being posted to Instagram that did not meet the required video aspect ratio.

Resolved an issue where when attempting to download an analytics report from email, users received the error “wrong link error.”

We’ve made it easier to see the difference between your paid and organic Hootsuite Impact connections in Hootsuite Analytics reports.

• Icons: We’ve updated the icons so that the paid icons are in black and the organic icons are in color
• Text: When hovering over a tile for more details, you can see which platform the data is being pulled from

We’ve updated Quick Search error messaging to give you clearer instructions on what you’ll need to do to fix any issues to get searching quicker.

Resolved an issue where the Facebook Activity stream was not updating and displayed no content.

You can now create and schedule Instagram Stories with Hootsuite! Manage stories with the rest of your social calendar, then fine-tune and publish them on mobile when they’re ready to go. Check out our step-by-step guide.

We’ve updated our Advanced Social Advertising course with 8 new videos that dive deep into advertising with Google Ads.

We’ve updated our Social Marketing course with new video content on using LinkedIn as a community building and marketing tool. For a sample, watch Building Your Community with LinkedIn.

We’ve made Inbox a little smarter with machine learning that analyzes your saved replies and adds a Suggested badge to replies that are frequently used for similar messages. Over time, this will make it easier for Inbox users to provide fast, relevant, on-brand, personalized responses to customers.

We’re beyond excited to announce that we’ve redesigned the Hootsuite dashboard (desktop and mobile) with a fresh new look and a bunch of usability enhancements. Sign in now and click the opt-in button to give it a try today!

Here are a few improvements we’ve made:

• Streamlined and simplified left navigation
• Made the Compose button available on every screen
• Organized streams into boards in a new left panel so they’re easier to scan
• Updated design and colors for a clean, unified feel

Keep the seller in one window while they post, engage and measure in the Hootsuite Dashboard for a smoother and intuitive user experience.

Additional Improvements include:

1. Social profile visibility: Added visibility in the share flow that allows users to see which of their social profiles they are sharing to
2. Multi network sharing: Post to Amplify in Hootsuite Composer - choose as many networks to post to
3. Authentication: Amplify will recognize if a users is already authenticated within Hootsuite

Hootsuite Analytics report templates now compare the current period to the previous timeframe by default, helping you get useful insights faster. We’ve also updated the thumbnail images of report templates so they look great in any resolution.

We’ve made adjustments to headings, navigation, buttons, and text to make the dashboard more accessible to everyone. This also includes adding alt text to images. You’ll find these updates in:

• Composer
• Media library (including auto-populating alt text for free images and GIFs)
• Auto-scheduler
• Bulk composer
• Planner
• Post Performance
• Reports

Here’s a quick tour of what’s new in the Hootsuite dashboard for the month of July.

You can now also attach multiple images (up to 9) to LinkedIn posts in the Hootsuite Mobile Composer. See this help article for more information.

Get easy access to help articles right within Hootsuite without opening another browser tab! On the Help menu, click Product Help to search help articles while you continue working in Hootsuite.

Resolved an issue where some older Amplify posts were missing their associated image within the Amplify Admin app stream.

See the bigger picture—and discover what content resonates with your audience—with added Instagram Business profile- and post-level metrics. Here’s a look at the new metrics:

• Post-level (photo, video and carousel posts)
  • Engagement
  • Impressions
  • Reach
  • Saves
  • Video views
• Profile-level
  • Impressions
  • Reach
  • Follower count
  • Email contacts
  • Phone call clicks
  • Text message clicks
  • Get Directions clicks
  • Website clicks
  • Profile views
  • Audience

For a full list of metrics with definitions, see this help article.

Review your Amplify engagement metrics in Hootsuite Analytics with the new Amplify Leaderboard section (under Quick Views). Amplify users who have access to Hootsuite Analytics can review their performance for available engagement metrics compared to their peers through the leaderboard. For more information, see this help article.

Hootsuite Impact users can now use an expanded metrics library to create and organize custom calculated metrics based on type of formula: post or platform. Calculated metrics will appear both in Hootsuite Impact and in Impact in Hootsuite Analytics.

You can now export a PDF report of your Team Performance Dashboard. This feature is available to all team admins. Learn more in this help article.

Upload SRT files to your Facebook and Twitter videos to ensure your video is accessible to everyone. Learn more in this help article.

Resolved an issue some users were seeing where the “Preferences” button was unresponsive in a Twitter “List” stream.

Resolved an issue where searching for a specific team member or social profile in an organization wouldn’t show it in search results.

Resolved an issue some users were experiencing where when editing an already scheduled LinkedIn post that contained a custom link preview, the preview appeared blank.

Resolved an issue where some users couldn’t reply to Youtube comments in their Hootsuite Youtube streams.

Report and Post Performance exports are now automatically sent to your email address when they are ready for download. You can also stay on the same page to download your file as soon as it’s ready. This change reduces the number of timeouts that occur due to data-heavy reports and lets you continue working without the need to stay on the same page.

To reduce issues with reports timing out (which sometimes happened if you selected a long time period or a large number of social accounts), reports are now sent directly to your email. Just click the Export button to export. If you like, you can stay on the page to grab the link for download as soon as it’s ready.

This update applies to Post Performance and Reports sections, for all file formats.

You can now duplicate and delete your reports in Hootsuite Analytics. To see the new options, point to a report and click the three-dot menu that appears.

Bit.ly is a link shortener service that was previously an add-on for Business and Enterprise customers. Integration for Bit.ly will now come standard for those plans.

You can now export your post performance to PDF to share with your team. Modify the columns to metrics that are most important to you for each social network. Your PDF will be exported accordingly, including all post images. For more information, see this help article.