June 4, 2014
Hootsuite quietly ushered in a rebrand and updated service offering overnight, but it wasn’t long until Twitter feeds were booming with the news.
The familiar owl icon has now been replaced with what resembles an avian Darth Vadar. Hootsuite has definitely met the dark side mirroring the change of logo with a simple monochrome dashboard design.
As great as these design changes are for UI and visual appeal of the platform, the key game changers in Hootsuite’s update are the two new and updated offerings below;
- Content recommender and autoscheduler
- Custom Hootsuite University programmes
Hootsuite has had its autoscheduler function for quite a while now, but it hasn’t been receiving particularly great feedback on its maximisation of content engagement. Freshly rebuffed, the new scheduler promises to be a learnt tool that posts at peak times, based on the most recent data fed back from your account, meaning your optimal posting times are constantly updating.
This is complemented with a new feature to the dashboard, content recommendations. Recommendations will be set by each profile you house in the dashboard. The tool will use keywords set by the user to pull in content from around the web to nominate for autoscheduling. As with autoscheduling the content recommendation is a learnt tool which will constantly optimise recommendations based on the pieces you elect to share. Although this is a new tool for Hootsuite, browser plugins such as Buffer have been offering this service for quite a while now, releasing an update to their recommended content tool only days before Hootsuite released theirs… Coincidence? I don’t think so!
Hootsuite University is known for being a great resource for Social Media marketers to get their foot in the door of the industry, while being quite restrictive on pre-set modules and content. Hootsuite have opened this service up to a wider audience with the introduction of bespoke program creation within their University platform. New elective’s focus on social media best practice and risk aversion, with the hope of the program being taking on by large corporations to widen social media education within their workforce.
As awesome as these new features sound, could Hootsuite be shooting itself in the foot by losing its key USP of simplicity in favour of more robust features? With a reported 87% rise in EMEA revenue since Q1 2013, changes should be met with caution. It’s evidently not broke in the eyes of the consumers, so why fix it?
Let us know what you think.
Image credit: Hootsuite Twitter