The Hootsuite Guide to Managing Multiple Twitter Profiles

Hootsuite is the ultimate Twitter toolbox. With HootSuite, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles, add multiple editors, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success.

HootSuite lets you manage your entire Twitter experience from one easy-to-use interface. You can check stats and analytics right from the dashboard, search Twitter for keyword information, reply and direct message tweeple in your conversation.

Settings

Add a New Profile

Once you have logged in the first thing you need to do is add a new profile.

Click on the <Settings> button at the bottom of the page,

On the Account tab fill out your Account Name and Profile Info.

You will also notice an Enable Auto-Initial option.. by enabling this and entering your initials, Hootsuite will add your initials to your tweets. This is especially useful if you have multiple editors and you want to keep track of who tweeted what.

Click on the <Save Account Info> button,

To add a profile click on the Profiles tab, then either the Click Here link or the <Add Profile> button,

Enter your Twitter login and password then click <Submit>,

If your Twitter avatar is not visible click on the <Sync Avatars With Twitter> button to sync,

If you have multiple Twitter profiles repeat this process and add them all,

Add Users

Hootsuite allows you to create multiple users and assign them to any (or all) of the profiles already created. This can be particularly useful if you manage a personal profile and a business profile.

For example, if you have a Twitter profile for your business, you can add your employees to that Twitter profile. Those users can tweet, see stats, etc for your business profile only.. but not your personal profile.

To add a new user click on the Users tab,

Enter the new users details then click on <Add User>. For this user I have selected for their password to be email to them.

Repeat this process for all the new users you wish to add,

Note that the Admin user has full administrative rights and can tweet, etc from ALL accounts and doesn’t need to be assigned to any.

Assigning Users to Profile(s)

Now that you have created some users, you need to assign these users to a profile (or profiles).

Click back on the Profiles tab, then click on the Edit link next to the profile you want to assign these users to,

Select the users you want to assign to this profile, then click the <Save Changes> button.

You can assign all (or some) of these users to one or more of your profiles.. totally up to you how you want to manage things.

Done!

Employee1, Employee2 and Employee3 can now send tweets, access stats, etc.. only from the profile(s) that they have been assigned.

When these users login to Hootsuite, they will only be able to see the socialguide profile and none of the others.

Adding your RSS Feed

You can add your blog’s RSS feed to Hootsuite and have it tweeted out through your different profiles, every time you publish a new post.

Click on the RSS/Atom tab,

Then click on the <Add New Feed> button,

Enter your Feed URL, how often you want Hootsuite to check for new posts, how many new posts to tweet, an optional prepended message and the profiles you want to tweet from.. then click <Save Feed>,

Ping.fm Integration

You can send new tweets from Hootsuite to your Ping.fm account.

Click on the Ping.fm tab, paste in your Ping.fm application key , select the profiles you want to send tweets from then click on <Save Ping.fm Settings>,

For a guide on how to setup Ping.fm.. checkout my guide here.

The Dashboard

To access the dashboard click on the <Streams> button at the bottom of the page,

Add New Tab

From the dashboard you can setup each of your separate profiles in its own tab.. and customise the columns you want displayed in each profile.

To do this click on the “plus” button to add a new tab,

I am going to name this tab the same as the name of my Twitter profile.. tabs can have any name you want.

Also, set the refresh time then click <Create Tab>,

Add Column

You will now want to add some columns. Basically a column is a customised view of what Twitter information you want to display for that particular profile.

Click on Add Column,

Now select the Type of view that you want to display, choose the profile (I’m choosing the “matthewtommasi” profile as that is what I have named my tab), then click on <Create Column>,

You have just added a new column (for that profile).. in your new tab,

You can add up to four columns.. with each column displaying different feeds.

Just repeat the above steps selecting a different feed for each of the columns you add,

You can change the type of feed the column displays at any time by click on the <Column Preferences> button on any column,

You can drag-and-drop these columns to easily reorder their positions.

Just repeat these steps of Adding a New tab, then Adding Columns for the rest of your profiles,

You can drag-and-drop these tabs to easily reorder their positions.

Tweeting

Hootsuite allows you send out tweets from one or more (or all) profiles,

You can also schedule your tweets by clicking on Send Later, then specifying then time and date,

URLs can be shrunk by pasting them into the Shrink It field,

Before

After

Stats

You can view statistics around your tweets by clicking on the <Stats> button then selecting a profile,

Hootsuite is a fantastic application that lets you easily manage your multiple Twitter profiles and is perfect for the power Twitter user.

Happy tweeting!

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