The Ultimate Showdown: Hootsuite vs Buffer

“Hootsuite vs Buffer?” is a common question asked by social media marketers. Both Hootsuite and Buffer allow you to manage your social media accounts in one place. Both are also valuable marketing tools for large and small businesses. You must also understand what each one does. Hootsuite vs Buffer is an ultimate showdown because they both offer great services. Updating your social media is a full-time job. It requires even more time the more your brand expands. Both Hootsuite and Buffer are post scheduling tools for social networks. They are used for sharing content on all of your social media channels. Both have innovative features, like social listening tools and the ability to post to Instagram Stories.

Social media requires you to schedule posts, address customer questions, find prospects do market research, and so much more. To ease the amount of work you have to do yourself, there are management platforms that handle many of these tasks for you. Their names are, you guessed it: Hootsuite and Buffer. This article is going to discuss Hootsuite vs Buffer and compare the differences between Buffer and Hootsuite, their pricing (free plans and paid plans), whether or not they offer free trials, and more. We will also discuss some other social media dashboards.

social media management dashboards

Buffer vs Hootsuite

Hootsuite and Buffer are both leaders in terms of social media management tools. Again, Buffer vs Hootsuite is a difficult question to answer. That’s because it depends on what fits your company’s needs the best. Buffer and Hootsuite work best for small-to-medium sized companies. However, they each attract different audiences more effectively for a variety of reasons. Let’s learn more about Buffer vs Hootsuite, and determine which is best for your business.

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is a social media management platform that takes the place of a social media manager’s role. The platform itself can perform a whole host of tasks, including: creating unique content, scheduling when to release posts, as well as managing different team members and measuring metrics like ROI, or return on investment.

Social Media Scheduling

Timing is everything. This is true for almost everything in life, but especially social media. Imagine getting ready to go to the big sale at your favorite store, going to the bank to withdraw money, and when you finally get to your store, you are told the sale does not start until next week. You just wasted your time, energy, and gas money to be disappointed. The same idea is applicable to social media. You do not want to post at 3 a.m. when few people awake and most likely will not see your post. You want to make sure you post at the proper time to ensure it is reaching your audience to the best of its ability.

Also, you would not want to post 20 different photos at once. Most people would likely skip over your posts and get aggravated with their feed being taken over. You want to create posts that are attractive for your audience at a time that will allow a lot of exposure. Essentially, you want to use a solution that identifies the best time to post.

This is exactly what Hootsuite does. To do this, you choose “new post,” choose what account(s) you want to deliver the post from and select “schedule for later.” This posts will be added to your stream of scheduled posts and can be posted when it is appropriate.

buffer or hootsuite

Monitoring & Analytics

For businesses, it is integral to recognize when people are interacting with your posts. This way you are able to interact back and determine what posts are of interest to your audience. Hootsuite simplifies this process so you have access to all comments, reposts, new followers, etc. from different social media platforms, all available in one platform. You are able to see who retweets your tweet on Twitter as well as who just followed you on Instagram all at once. These streams are also customizable, which is extremely convenient.

Hootsuite also offers several different built-in analytics. You can measure performance overtime and see what period you experience the greatest volume of interactions with your posts. You can see how many engagements in the last month you had along with new followers. This can help you taper your posts to what your followers seem interested in most and eliminates time wasted on posts that were not intriguing to your target market. Hootsuite generates a graph that reveals different insights over time and how they have changed.

What is Buffer?

Buffer is similar to Hootsuite, as it performs many of the same functions. It is also a social media management tool that can be utilized to eliminate having multiple social media positions within a company. Buffer helps foster the concept of properly spacing posts out to avoid flooding its followers’ feeds. Buffer follows the schedule you create for what time to share each post. This way followers can be sure to experience great content, without the hassle of remembering to post at the exact time you want to. Buffer also grants access to all the different comments, followers, engagements, etc across multiple social media platforms all in one place. Buffer’s core customer base is small businesses.

Buffer Instead of Regular Posting

Using Buffer for posting on social accounts is very useful. One of the main things Buffer offers is consistency with your social media efforts. You start to constantly share posts similar in nature at the same time every week, which can foster a community between users and increase your engagement.

For example, if you post a quiz for users to take every Tuesday at 3 p.m., users are going to start anticipating it and looking forward to taking it every week. They can then refer other friends to do the same, which expands your outreach.

With Buffer, you can be assured your posts are going to be released at the precise time you want them to, therefore helping relieve stress. Buffer provides peace of mind and can help strengthen your relationship with your customers. If you think about it, you want to be spending your time conducting research and staying ahead of your competition. Being innovative is necessary for a company to thrive and maintain its loyal customer base.

Buffer also used to offer Buffer Reply for conversation management and customer service, but it was sunset in 2020.

buffer vs hootsuite

Buffer or Hootsuite?

When considering Buffer or Hootsuite, there are some differences. Both have strengths and weaknesses. One might be more effective for your business than the other. I am going to give you the full breakdown so you can make the decision on whether to use Buffer or Hootsuite.

Hootsuite Impression

Hootsuite used to look like Microsoft. However, since 2017, Hootsuite has significantly changed its appearance. Its interface is much more intuitive and much more simple to navigate than ever before. The set up is actually quite simple and scheduling posts is as easy as hitting a simple button.

Buffer Impression

Buffer also offers a very clean interface. It is also easy to use and very simple to navigate. The interface is more appealing to look at and work with than Hootsuite (in our opinion), so bonus points for Buffer’s appearance.

Hootsuite Price

In making your decision in terms of Buffer or Hootsuite, pricing is a very valid point to consider. Hootsuite is priced at $29.99/month for their pro plan and is billed annually. Their free version is very basic and not extensive enough for most businesses. Every plan Hootsuite offers comes with unlimited scheduling for posts.

Buffer Price

Buffer’s pro plan costs $15/month and is billed monthly. If you want access to the analyze feature, it is going to come at a cost of an additional $50/month. That makes the total $65/month. Its analytics feature provides more in-depth reporting than Hootsuite, so if this is a necessity for your company, then Buffer it is.

hootsuite vs buffer

Social Media Management Dashboards

We have mentioned a lot about Hootsuite vs Buffer, but now we are going to discuss social media management dashboards. Implementing your social media strategy might sound difficult, but there are many social media dashboards and tools that can help you. We know that posting manually on multiple occurrences throughout the day is just not doable, which is why social media management dashboards were invented: to help you out. There are so many different social media dashboards out there, so I am going to cover three of the best.

Later

The first social media dashboard that is efficient is called Later. Later performs best with Instagram scheduling. It offers an image-based content calendar schedule so you can visually see what posts you are going to be sharing in the following month. Visualizing helps you remember what is being posted when. It also partners with Instagram’s API, which means you are promised security on your account information.

Sendible

Sendible works great for businesses that serve other clients. It shows your engagement levels transmitted from your social media platforms and gives you great insights. You can see the reach your post achieved and much more. It can also store all of your clients accounts in one place.

the ultimate showdown: hootsuite vs buffer

The Value of Social Media

When it comes down to it, Hootsuite vs Buffer is not the determining factor of the success of a company. This is because your effort and dedication to ensuring your social media is running to the best of its ability is far more important than the question of Hootsuite vs Buffer. As the world shifts to being online, social media holds so much more power than ever before. That’s why you want to make sure you are properly engaging with your followers. For help with determining Hootsuite vs Buffer. To enhance your social media, contact SEO Design Chicago today!

FAQ:

  • What are the differences between Hootsuite and Buffer?
  • Is Hootsuite or Buffer cheaper?
  • What are some social media management tools?
  • What are the features of Hootsuite?
  • Is Hootsuite free to use?

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