A continuing series on physician online reputation.   For more KevinMD minutes, please visit my YouTube channel.

I want to talk about a tool that I think is essential for any physician who uses social media. It’s called Hootsuite. I use Hootsuite in three ways.

First to monitor conversations on Twitter. You could assign streams to any topics imaginable. For me I have a topic dedicated to health communications and social media, the #hcsm hashtag. I have a stream dedicated to thought leaders on Twitter: my essential list.

Second, I use Hootsuite to monitor my mentions on Twitter, not only my Twitter handle @kevinmd but also my name, Kevin Pho.

Finally, I use Hootsuite to manage pages and mentions on other social media platforms. You can monitor mentions on Facebook. You can also manage posts on Linkedin and Google+.

Hootsuite comes in two versions, free and paid, but the free version is powerful enough for the majority of physicians.  It’s is an essential social media tool and I highly recommend it to any physician using social media.

Kevin Pho is an internal medicine physician and co-author of Establishing, Managing, and Protecting Your Online Reputation: A Social Media Guide for Physicians and Medical Practices. He is on the editorial board of contributors, USA Today, and is founder and editor, KevinMD.com, also on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.