Three Reasons Why You Should Join Hootsuite University during #HSUchat

If you reside in and around the greater Vancouver area, you most likely have heard of one the leading social media management tools called Hootsuite. The brief company history is that it was founded by CEO, Ryan Holmes, in 2008 in Vancouver, BC. Their tool essentially allows community managers, social media individuals, any companies of any size, manage their social media presence more easily with their easy-to-use dashboard and to leverage their system in more depth, they even have a “University” where anyone can get certified via online courses. At Hootsuite, they definitely have fun with design, check out this nerdy owl:

For the past few months or so, I’ve attended their weekly tweet chat (#HSUchat). They occur every Tuesday from 11 to 12 pm PST and the topic is about anything social media related. Some of the past topics included Facebook content strategy, LinkedIn Network building, ROI strategies for Twitter and more.

First, before I share the three reasons why you should attend, let’s go over the definition of a tweet chat. What is a tweet chat? It’s simple; a tweet chat is a chat session pre-organized by a specific person or group during a specific day and time on a certain topic chosen by the organizer(s). The organizer comes up with a hashtag such as #HSUchat (it stands for "Hootsuite University chat”), so that each participant can search the ongoing conversation happening and use that specific hashtag to jump into the conversation.

Now, why should you care about #HSUchat? I’ll share three main reasons why and how this could apply to you or your organization.

1) Continue Learning about Developments in Social Media including Best Practices. If you'd like to get a sense of the topic that the owls are covering, you can simply view their Storify page but what’s interesting about each chat each week is that they encompass everything from strategy building, ROI strategies, best practices, new social media trends, content creation, tips and tricks across all of the current social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ while covering the latest, up-and-coming platforms too.

2) Meet More Twitter Users from All Across the World. The beauty about these virtual tweet chats is that you get to interact with all sorts of participants from anywhere around the globe. In the past, I’ve conversed with people from France, Denmark, all over the United States, a few locals right here in Vancouver and of course, others across Canada. Now, putting aside geographical diversity, the variety of folks attending work in all types of company sizes (small, medium and large) from various industries including technology like ourselves, retail, consumer products and even higher education to name a few. As proof, I’m putting the spotlight on a Canadian participant to show you that it’s great to meet more tweeps virtually:

3) Connect with a Top Leading Social Media Brand. There is no doubt that it’s insightful to be a part of this tweet chat when you know that it’s run by a company that’s always in-the-know when it comes to social media. Of course, for us as a company, I’ve mentioned this in the past, we like to take some time to support the great, local companies around our area, so here we are. If you’re looking for social media knowledge, this is the hour to spend with them, where you can also get to know their brand while having fun learning with others in the social media space. We think that they’re an awesome tool and they think the same of us. We might just have to organize a second “hootup” with them – the owls at the nest are super friendly.

In conclusion, whether you’re a small or big fish in this social media world, you can each learn something from the weekly #HSUchat and since our customers are so tech savvy, and connected themselves, this is a great way for them to also connect with us more actively than any other times if we happen to be on the tweet chat. I hope that you find this article useful and I invite you to share it with others. If you’re a current attendee, feel free to comment and tell us why you attend. Or, you could tweet us over at @cawebhosting too.

Felice Lam
Online Community Manager
Canadian Web Hosting