Hootsuite Launches EMEA Social Business Event, Connect via Hootsuite: London

LONDON, ENGLAND--(Marketwired - June 4, 2014) - Hootsuite, the world's most widely used social relationship platform, is today making key announcements during its first European business conference Connect via Hootsuite: London (#CvHL). The business event is bringing together global brands, partners and thought leaders to discuss the key industry trends and best practices in social business strategy. Connect via Hootsuite welcomes hundreds of top businesses and social experts to cover topics from crisis communications and security compliance, to social media at scale and driving business ROI. The conference is Hootsuite's first London event following strong 2014 momentum in EMEA.

Regional EMEA Growth

Hootsuite's expansion in EMEA extends the success of the company, founded in 2008 in Vancouver, Canada. Staff in EMEA has tripled to 110 of the company's 530 global staff (2014 YTD). Throughout Europe, Hootsuite now counts 2.5 million users and is available in 16 languages, nine of which are specific to EMEA. Since January 2014, more than 100 new EMEA enterprise customers have signed with Hootsuite, bringing the total to more than 400 in the region, and over 1,300 globally. Key EMEA customers include 1&1 Internet, adidas, BASF, Cambridge University Press, Celesio, Expedia, Nintendo of Europe, UK Ministry of Defense, LateRooms.com, Network Rail, NATO, Swarovski Group, Thales, WDR, Victorinox and Virgin.

Hootsuite has also seen a rapid growth in revenue in EMEA, with an 87 percent jump since Q1 2013. The Hootsuite Enterprise customer base has increased by 131 percent, Hootsuite Pro customers by 49 percent, and Hootsuite Free customers by 54 percent.

"I'm incredibly proud to be a part of Hootsuite's expansion into Europe. Two years ago we on-boarded our first enterprise customer and today, with a strong team of customer success managers and launch specialists throughout the region, we are set up to amplify our customers' success in social business. Hootsuite's accelerated investment in product innovation, coupled with our extensive ecosystem of partners and social networks across the world, will continue to enable our customers to revolutionise the way they communicate," comments Joseph Smith, General Manager Hootsuite EMEA.

Today, Hootsuite has an innovative and thriving ecosystem of 100+ app integrations, technology partnerships, agencies and solution partners. The growing ecosystem enables global brands to scale and flex their business strategies to cater for specific regions. This network of best-in-breed partner integrations accelerates the ability to harness the value of social relationships and drive social transformation across the business. Customers can choose the tools best suited for their business needs, such as video sharing platforms, file repositories, content discovery, marketing automation, as well as CRM platforms, enabling them to leverage their existing investments.

Key announcements from Connect via Hootsuite: London

Custom Education for Enterprises

Hootsuite has announced a new Custom Education programme to better enable and empower enterprise employees to effectively and responsibly engage on social media. In today's rapidly changing digital landscape, training is crucial for any large organisation to keep up and remain competitive. Early adopters are already rolling out Custom Education across their organisation to address this growing skills gap by developing employee skills and competencies, increasing employee engagement online, building brand advocacy and mitigating social media risk. Hootsuite's Custom Education gives clients a bespoke education platform, tailored content and a cutting-edge curriculum that includes selected lessons from the already existing Hootsuite University, online training platform.

A more refined brand

As part of CvHL, Hootsuite has unveiled a brand refresh which represents the flexibility, confidence and simplicity that over nine million people worldwide have come to rely on with Hootsuite. Dee Anna McPherson, VP of Marketing comments: "The Hootsuite brand has always, and will continue to, reflect the fun, lively and approachable culture of the company. However, use of social media is far more sophisticated today and our brand identity needs to represent the way the company, and the market, has matured."

Suggested content publishing feature

Hootsuite has beta-released a suggested content feature within Publisher, which is designed to help businesses discover rich and engaging content that is relevant to their business. With a few keywords, customers can create an entire week's publishing schedule designed to engage prospects around the topics that matter most. Each post is automatically scheduled for the best possible time to go out using Hootsuite's existing auto-scheduling algorithm. Customers can fine tune results by replacing posts, editing their publishing schedule, or personalising the suggested messages. The more they use suggested content the more the system learns the type of articles and posts they prefer. Available now in Pro and Enterprise.

More information:

• Connect Via Hootsuite London: https://socialbusiness.hootsuite.com/connectviahootsuite.html
• Media Kit: http://media.hootsuite.com/media-kit

About HootSuite

Hootsuite is a global social relationship platform for organisations to collaboratively execute strategies across social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ Pages from one secure, web-based dashboard. Advanced functionality includes tools for audience engagement, team collaboration, account security and comprehensive analytics for end-to-end measurement and reporting. Founded in 2008 in Vancouver, the company has more than 9 million users and 744 of the Fortune 1000 companies use Hootsuite. The EMEA headquarters, based in London, currently manages over 400 Enterprise customers. To learn more, visit www.hootsuite.com and follow @HootSuite_UK on Twitter.