Back in August, HootSuite wanted to kick their internal development and improvement into high gear, so they scheduled a two-day hackathon. “#HootHackathon is a two day sprint to build something new, fix something old or just create something awesome.” Projects are wide-ranging, and inspiration comes from a variety of sources, but most important are HootSuite’s Feedback Forum entries – comments and suggests and requests from HootSuite users. HootSuite made it a goal to build three of the most-requested features in the forums, and this is the third one (the first was being able to see who’s retweeting you and the second was viewing Twitter relationships).
New Follower Stream
Like we talked about when we reviewed tabs and streams, you can add new streams to tabs based on your connected network. Each network has a variety of stream options available. When it comes to Twitter, you can choose from a variety of stream “wizards” including: Home Feed, Mentions, Direct Messages (Inbox or Outbox), Sent Tweets, Favorite Tweets, Retweets, Scheduled Tweets, Searches, Keywords, Lists. Now, HootSuite has added “New Followers” to the list of available streams for your Twitter accounts.
To get started, log into your HootSuite Dashboard, select the Tab you want to add this stream to (for instance, I have a tab for my personal Twitter account and one for my branded Twitter account, so I will be adding this stream to both tabs), and click on Add Stream. The Add Stream wizrd will come up and you select the Twitter account you want to use, and then scroll down and click on the + button for the New Followers stream. This will place the stream to the far right within that tab, and you can drag it around if you want to re-order them at all.
What’s interesting is that this is far more than just a list of the most recent people who have followed you – you can get that by clicking on your Follower count on Twitter. What the stream gives you is the most recent tweet by each of those most recent followers! A quick glance will help you identify people who have followed you and are talking about topics that you may be interested in.
We talked in the previous update about how the HootSuite Dashboard is getting stronger and stronger for relationship management and influencer marketing, and this is yet another great feature for that purpose. Monitoring new followers for potential long-term relationships, whether they’re a potential client or influencer or something else, is an integral part to a successful social media strategy. Thanks to this update, I can see that Bjoern from Germany decided to follow my branded account and his most recent tweet is a link to an article entitled “The Curse of Content Marketing.” That’s a really interesting title! And it demonstrates that he’s interesting in a topic that I’m interested in too, so I click on his profile and find that he’s just getting started in my industry, and can see that he’s following my branded account but not my personal account.
The whole point of a “dashboard” is to give you access to a lot of information quickly, in an organized way. One glance at your vehicle’s dashboard can tell you your speed, fuel reserve, fuel consumption, outside temperature and more. Taking the time to set up and use your HootSuite Dashboard can have the same benefit.
We’ll be looking forward to the other features HootSuite plans to release anxiously, and will certainly let you know what they are when they’re announced. In the meantime, I would encourage you to dive into my series on HootSuite: How to Make the Most of Your HootSuite Account, where we cover the basics like setting up your dashboard and scheduling content, to more advanced topics like Teams and more. You can also grab a free trial of HootSuite (thanks for using my affiliate link! I appreciate the support), or contact me directly for help getting started.