Both Hootsuite and Buffer have strengths as social media marketing tools. However, they take different approaches. The core of Hootsuite is Streams, columns of information. A Stream could be a series of posts on one social network. With Buffer, whenever you find an item you want to share, you add it to your "buffer," and the software publishes it on your behalf at an agreed time. Think of Buffer as being one big queue, where you add posts, which Buffer "uses" at agreed times.