Okay, so you read 6 Ways The Average Person Can Use Twitter Without Feeling Like A Loser. You’re convinced you want to try this thing out and see where it takes you. But when you hop onto the Twitter homepage and sign up, you still don’t quite “get it”. And that’s okay, because to be honest, the native Twitter interface is kinda clumsy and is missing several key features. You want Twitter to be easy on the eyes, contain what you want it to contain, and be insanely easy to use. Enter HootSuite.

HootSuite is billed as the “professional Twitter client”, but it’s much more than that. I was looking for a place to handle multiple Twitter accounts (for business purposes). I found every Twitter-related need fulfilled under one roof. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Need #1: Sending out a new tweet.

Easy as pie. The Hootsuite box at the top lets you type up a new tweet with a running counter of what you’ve got left (for those unfamiliar, Twitter only lets you use 140 characters in a tweet). I can click on the profile picture of whichever Twitter profile I want this to post to (it will put a little green checkmark on top of the selected picture). If I want to, I can post to all of my Twitter accounts, or just a select few. It also has a wonderful little box for you to enter in a URL to shrink using Ow.ly, HootSuite’s URL shortener.

Need #2: Scheduling future tweets.

When you click on the “Send Later” link, the box opens up to reveal a little scheduler, allowing you to post tweets for the future. This is a great piece of integration. Just like URL shortening, tweet scheduling was something that previously needed a separate service. Here it is, just a click away. For example, I will be scheduling a tweet to announce this post that will hit Twitter tomorrow morning. I’ll probably still be in bed.

Need #3: A clean, sharper, customizable interface.

On Twitter’s official site, looking at all these different things shown above had to be done on separate pages. Here we can see them all at a glance: your home feed (where your tweets are integrated with the tweeters you are following), your mentions (when somebody makes a public reference to you or replies to something you tweeted), your direct messages (private tweets sent directly to you), and the tweets that you’ve sent. These are all columns I added. They can be moved, rearranged, or deleted. Other column options include search terms (great for monitoring a topic of discussion), among others.

At the top of the page, there is also the ability to add tabs – in my case, one for each account that I am managing – and a “Featured” tab, which has two columns: one with Hootsuite’s official Twitter stream, and one of their favorite tweeters. This “at a glance” feature makes it easy to navigate your Twitter account.

Need #4: Twitter Statistics.

Now here’s where things get good: sharing a link on Twitter is great, but it’s nice to know if people are clicking on your links at all. Previously, this meant using a specific URL shortener – bit.ly is the most popular one – and checking back with it to see how it is performing. HootSuite’s URL shortener tracks the link for you, and provides the statistics in real-time with just a click. In this case, it turns out 4 people were interested in watching the 12-minute video of a guy beating Super Mario World on YouTube (hey, give me a break, it’s late at night). When posting links to The Practical Nerd, this can come in handy, so that I can determine how my links are performing.

Need #5: Easy sharing.

If I had a nickel for every service I’ve used to automatically tweet a link… well, I’d have about 15-20 cents. But that’s not the point. When I want to share a link on Twitter, I like to use a solid bookmarklet for one-click access. My most recent move was using TBUZZ, which automatically inserted a shortened URL for me to share with the world. The only snag was that I constantly had to open a new pop-up to log into Twitter any time I started a new Firefox session.

But HootSuite again solves the problem with the Hootlet, a cute name for a sharp little bookmarklet. When I’m on a webpage that I want to share with the world, I click the Hootlet in my bookmarklets toolbar, and up pops a little box for me to fill in:

As you can see, the Hootlet has already shortened the URL for me (using their shortener, meaning I can track the link’s performance), adds the title of the page, and has all the other features of a HootSuite tweet: selecting profiles, scheduling for later, etc. It’s also lightning-quick.

Conclusion: It’s a winner!

HootSuite has all the features that I could possibly think of, under one roof. This is a completely integrated solution for any Twitter user, professional or recreational. It makes tweeting as easy as a few clicks. Want to make it your desktop solution, as opposed to a web-based program? I use Google Chrome’s great feature that turns any web page into its own desktop application. Then I use TrayIt!, a simple little program that allows me to minimize HootSuite to my system tray:

Now Hootsuite runs in the background (using Google Chrome’s extremely lightweight browser), and if I ever want to bring it up, I just click on that little owl there.

Do you have your own favorite Twitter client? Or have you tried HootSuite? Share with all of us in the comments!

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