Did anyone else skip a vacation this summer because they were too busy making great social media management software? No. Well, here at Spredfast, we were hard at work making our platform better so you can become a social media hero at your office. We’ve made some pretty big changes here, and finally released some things we meant to release earlier (ahh, Facebook, we love you, but sometimes your API can be so fickle).

Here’s the breakdown for those of you who prefer Twitter to WordPress:

• New Account and Initiative Creation Wizards
• Approval Teams and Approval Paths
• Facebook Events
• Social Bookmarking Support (external likes)
• Facebook Photos Improvements
• Facebook Video
• Facebook Insights

The SXSW Interactive Festival is just amazing. There are too many ways to describe it to make any rise above the rest. It’s just an amazing time to network and share ideas. We love it, so we need your help to make it a reality. Now, you don’t have to do much, really.

Here are things that you don’t have to do to get us to SXSWi:

• Pay us $1.6 Million (some VCs already did that)
• Bribe the SXSWi panel of advisors (no comment)
• Sue anybody whose name even remotely ends in a word like “fast” (other companies are doing that, so it’s passe now)
• Wear red pants (our founder does that once a week)
• Buy our product (although we wish you would)

Nope, you don’t have to do any of that. All we need you to do is VOTE for us.

Easy, right? Click just two little thumbs up icons. Even certain presidents could do that.

Here are the two sessions we’d like you to vote for. We appreciate your help and thank you in advance for your vote.

That Tweet Equalled How Much In Sales!? Ken Cho, co-founder of Spredfast, will walk through how integration with the traditional marketing and sales tools with social media tools can help hone in on what’s actually making and impact, what those reliable metrics are and how this can improve the company’s bottom line.

You Can Do that?! – Managing/Analyzing Social Media As people are drowning in a sea of social media tools, the first step in staying above water is picking the right tool with the options and features you need without being overwhelming – this makes it quite the challenge to know which one(s) to use. This panel will help you sort through all of the choices.

As an equally avid user of Facebook, the idea of having my check-in community be the same as my Facebook community is very powerful. I have spent the last several years cultivating a Facebook community that I enjoy sharing information with, posting jokes, pictures, stories and generally sharing my life with on a daily basis. In other words, these people have become something between a real friend and just another person on the street. Many of them are real friends, but all of them are now more than strangers. And the answer to the question, “Has my check-in behavior changed?” is a resounding yes.

It has changed, but not entirely in good ways.

Foursquare and Gowalla Drop-Off

I have seen a noticeable drop in my Foursquare and Gowalla activity. I find myself wondering if I need to check into these services when I have just checked into Places for just about everyone I know online to see. What’s more, I’ve noticed a drop in check-ins by other people too. What this experience has taught me about myself is that the main reason I check-in now is to let my peeps know where I am and what I am up to. The days when being the mayor, getting badges, or finding items was an enticement have passed me by. Is there a term for that? Game-mechanics fatigue? Either way, I don’t care about that stuff as much. Granted, there are little instances of exclusion to that statement. I still want to be the mayor of my workplace, and I still want that I’m On A Boat badge, but that really is about it. Maybe I’m just old, or maybe I have too many more important things to worry about to spend much time caring about that fact that I lost the mayorship of the dry cleaners to Cali Pete.

Check-In Reluctance

On the other hand, I find that I am more reluctant to check-in to certain places using Facebook Places. Before you go too far into the gutter with that, let me explain. I used to check-in to work every day in order to keep @chonuff from becoming mayor (always good to out-social-media the social media company CEO). With Facebook Places, I don’t feel as good about those check-ins. Every check-in shows up on my wall and in the news feeds of my friends, along side all of the other content. In comparison, these check-in reports are measly and weak, and there are too many of them. They pollute the content integrity of the stream we are all creating. In Foursquare, the only point was to create a stream of these check-ins, so each one seems just as valid as any other. In Facebook, my check-in to the 3rd coffee shop of the day seems (seems? IS!) inconsequential next to the link about Noor and Ramsey being kidnapped. I don’t like inserting these piddly check-ins next to content that carries more weight.

The Usual Facebook Privacy Oversight

It wouldn’t be Facebook if they didn’t totally screw up some important aspect of the privacy implications of their software. The fact that I can check-in people to places before they’ve granted permission for other people to do so is ridiculous. Sure, Facebook at least launched with the ability for people to control this (they’ve missed that step in the past) but the fact that the default setting for 500 million people is “Sure, go ahead and check me in until I tell you to stop” is just a blatant ploy on their part to drive adoption. They know that the majority of users won’t pay attention to the reports of them checking into places they haven’t been to or checked into themselves, and they’ll be too lazy to go change the settings. In fact, most will probably be OK with it eventually, and Facebook just saved them a few minutes of time. Still, the arrogance which Facebook approaches the world regarding privacy, secure in the knowledge that “this too shall pass,” is irritating. Just once, I’d like to see them make the right choice, setting business aside. As a public service, here is a great post by Beth Kanter on how to control your Facebook privacy.

Facebook Places Crushes

Irritating privacy stance aside, Facebook Places has the potential to crush the other location-based services. Not only do they have the installed base to use their service, they have several other advantages:

First, they already have a better ability to make the check-in more interactive. I can tag other people (although I don’t until I see those people checking in themselves, or I ask them if I can) there with me. Also, a conversation can form around the check-in through the usual comment mechanisms. Adding photos, etc. is probably just a flip of the switch for Facebook.

Second, with the size of their development staff, Facebook can build in the best of the game mechanics, pulling what works from all of the existing services.

Finally, with such a large user base, Facebook is a mecca for business to flock to to make deals. Foursquare has worked hard to strike actual deals with venues, but Facebook has the clout to do it better.

Aaron Strout, of Powered and Citizen Marketer 2.1, blogged that he thinks, “Facebook doesn’t want to crush the players in the location-based field, it wants to provide the scale and infrastructure that they’ve been sorely lacking.” in essence, facebook wants to be the platform on which other location-based services build. I disagree with this, because if that was Facebook’s aim, they would have simply built an API, as opposed to launching an actual feature of their own. I think Facebook wants to take it all for themselves.

Opportunities for Business

I believe businesses can capitalize on this opportunity.

• They should deal with Facebook, offer incentives to people who check-in to their locations.
  
• Utilize the data Facebook will share about people to target your Facebook ads.
  
• Remind people to check-in when they are at your location.
  

What do you think? Does Facebook Places spell the end for the other location-based services? Can your business utilize Facebook Places?

And then the Whrrl.

Then Loopt.

Then…

It feels like your friend has multiplied 10 fold, like Michael Keaton in Multiplicity.

I’ll admit that I am a multiple checekr inner, with at least some of those tools, because I have different sets of friends on each platform. Or, at least that is what I tell myself. I can’t really remember why I started to use more than one location-based check-in application, but ever since I set up that second account, I have been a regular double-dipper in the check-in bowl of guacamole. If I were totally honest, I would say that it is the game mechanics in each that keep me around. I want to earn new items and pins, mayorships and badges (e.g. I want that I’m on a Boat badge something fierce), points and society memberships. I remember Aaron Strout of Powered tweeting that he liked to check in on Gowalla and share it to Facebook because he liked the look of the post, and he that he shared his Foursquare check-ins on Twitter for the links.

I’d bet everyone has a different, good reason to use multiple services, but it is getting a little out of hand, isn’t it?

I often wonder how businesses and organizations are going to cope with the plethora of location-based applications. Do they have to run simultaneous contests and campaigns to get people to check-in at their store locations or events in order to cover all of their customers’ disparate check-in application preferences?

Well, the world may be changing. BrightKite has been beta testing a service called Check.In, which lets you check in across multiple services at once. Only trouble is, it seems impossible to get all the services to find the same place. Oh, and it’s not a mobile app but rather a mobile site you have to browse to. Hmmm. I sense a fail whale kite somewhere in there.

Last night, though, big events happened. Facebook launched its Places feature, and they did it in partnership with the major location-based services. Essentially, I can find a place and check-in, without ever leaving Facebook. I can push those check-ins out to some services, like Yelp. For others, like Foursquare, I can push my check-ins into Places. For what it’s worth, I’m not sure how different that is from sharing my check-ins into Facebook from Foursquare, just like I could yesterday.

One thing is clear, though. Just about everyone I “know” via social media is on Facebook, so my lame excuse for needing multiple services just went poof! And if Facebook can copy the game mechanics of these other services so that I can have a little fun at the same time that I’m announcing to the criminal world that my house is empty, I don’t know why I would ever need Foursquare or Gowalla or Loopt or Whrrl or any of the others.

The whole checking in thing might have just gotten a lot easier for us all. We just might be able to put our phones away after one check in. Won’t that be nice.

All businesses require their investments to create more value than they cost.

I’ve always believed that a large part of the value that Spredfast brings to the table is the ability to provide the data one would need to quantify the ROI of their social media efforts. There is more to it than that, but this is the most important part of the value of our system.

I really encourage you to try and attend the Buzz2010 session if you still can. If you can’t, look for the presentation to be posted afterwards. It will be worth your while.

If you do end up attending, look for our own Scott McCaskill there and say hi!

Image credit: Stephanie Chandler

You know what they say about idle hands. Rather than wait around while Google and Facebook fight over us (hey, it could happen!), we try to stay hard at work making social media safe, easy and effective for our clients. Come tomorrow evening, your ability to manage your social media presence just got better.

As always, for those of you who don’t want to read all of the details, here are the highlights. Detailed descriptions follow.

Improvements to Listening and Communicating

• Facebook Notes
• Facebook Events
• Facebook Likes From External Web Pages
• Facebook Comments Stream
• TubeMogul Beta
• Content Labels for Social Streams

Improvements to Managing & Streamlining

• Social Inbox

Improvements to Measuring & Reporting

• Facebook Page Insights
• Filter Analytics by Content Labels

Facebook Notes

We’ve added support for Facebook Notes so that you can be the blogger you know you want to be, no matter where you want to publish. Facebook Notes are a great, viral way to communicate in Facebook because they allow you more room to pontificate, but you can also tag people. Plus, your friends and fans see the Notes in their feeds and can share them across their social graphs.

Facebook Events

It is recognized best practice to utilize Facebook Events as a way to drive more registrants to your physical events. Now you can create Facebook Events right from Spredfast, asking your supporters and clients to both “attend” the event in Facebook, spreading the word across their social graph, as well as register for the real event by following the link you provide.

Facebook Likes From External Web Pages

You’re hip, right? You’re using Facebook Plug-Ins on your website, allowing your site visitors to Like your content and share it in Facebook. Wouldn’t you like to know how many of those Likes you’ve gotten without having to browse through your website page by page.? You can, with Spredfast. Now you can upload a list of URLs that have Facebook Like Plug Ins, and we’ll track how many Likes you’re racking up on each page.

Faecbook Comments Stream

Do you have a lively Facebook presence, with lots of great content that everyone loves to comment on? If you do, I bet you’d like to be able to manage those comments really easily, instead of having to search all over Facebook. It’s easy to do with Spredfast. Simply create a new Comments Stream and we’ll deliver to you every comment left on the content you publish. You can easily find the newest comments, see them in context with your content and other comments, and respond right away.

TubeMogul Beta

We’ve launched a beta version fo our TubeMogul integration. Got video you want to put a lot of places? TubeMogul is perfect for you because it allows you to post video to literally dozens of sites with the push of a button. And now, you don’t even have to log into TubeMogul to do it. You can upload video through Spredfast, select which sites you want to publish to, publish it, and we’ll measure the interaction with each video, right alongside all of your other social media engagement.

Content Labels for Social Streams

We heard such high praise for the ability to label the outbound content you produce that we decided to extend it to the inbound content you discover through your listening. Now you can label each and every item in a stream, so that when you export the stream data, you can easily sort and analyze the kinds of mentions and buzz you’re generating.

Social Inbox

We’ve always heard that the Social Stream and the Inbox were great tools that helped you listen to the social media conversation taking place about your brand or mission and participate efficiently in that conversation. We’ve also heard that you always learned a lot about your marketplace by listening, and you wrote better content because of what you learned. Well, none of that has changed. What has changed is how incredibly easy and useful our new UI is. We’ve made it exponentially easier to navigate the streams you use, and maneuver through your Inbox. Literally, you see which stream you want to read, select it and off you go!

Facebook Page Insights

Facebook Insights packs a lot of great information about what happens on your Page. The problem was, you had to go all the way into each Page to get the information. Now, you can get the most important Page metrics for each and every Page you operate, all from within the Spredfast Analytics dashboard. We show you the totals and change in your fanbase and all of the interactions your fans take. You can easily bounce that up against your published content and see how your actions are driving your Page engagement.

Filter Analytics by Content Labels

As promised, the content labels you’ve been applying to your outbound content can now be used as filters on the analytics. Want to know how much response-oriented activity, engagement and reach you’re generating? Easy. Want to see how your coupon-related content is faring? Done.

We hope that sounds good enough to you to give Spredfast a try. We’re committed to creating the most powerful social media management system possible, so you can easily become the social media hero of your office.

As always, we recognize that not everyone knows Spredfast as well as we do, so if any of the descriptions above don’t make sense to you, please feel free to reach out to us. We love our product and we love talking with people, so we’ll be happy to answer any questions or explain any feature in more detail. Here’s how you can reach us:

Twitter: @spredfast

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Spredfast

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/companies/306252/

Email: ken@spredfast.com , scott@spredfast.com , or james@spredfast.com

Web: http://www.spredfast.com

Image Credit: johnscotthaydon

Let’s be honest, though, navigating the Social Streams took some patience. Well, no more. Introducing the Social Inbox.

We’ve taken out all of the hassle of navigating the social streams, but left all of the goodness of being able to browse the persistent searches you need to:

• Listen in on the conversation about your brand, mission, company or organization
• Learn from the conversation so that you can write more engaging content
• Engage with the people you meet in the social online world

With a simple to use left navigation that includes all of your Social Streams as well as the full Inbox feature set, you can quickly move from one stream to the next and the expanded viewing pane lets you see more of the content you want to read.

If you are a current Spredfast client, we hope you enjoy the new interface and find it makes your listening easier. If you aren’t a client of Spredfast, what are you waiting for? The Social Inbox is just one of many features that let you make the most of your social media presence. Check out our feature set or start a free trial. We’d love to talk.

I only half mean it. Facebook isn’t all bad for business. Mark Zuckerberg and Co. do provide a platform to engage with 500 million people in a targeted way. Oh, and it’s free. Those are all good things.

But the devil is in the details, no? Why is it that Facebook can have such a robust platform in 2010 and still screw up so badly when it comes to providing the kinds of things that organizations and business need to reach people?

The reality is that organizations and business don’t have the time or the inclination to do all of their engagement directly in Facebook. There are other social networks out there that also matter. Hello, Twitter! So, organizations and business turn to social media management systems like Spredfast to make their engagement more efficient. This is where it breaks down for Facebook. Here are a few examples:

Posts via 3^rd party applications do not have a share link

That’s right! Posts that come from 3^rd party applications can not be shared in Facebook like posts that are made directly in Facebook. Not even the mighty Causes, which has more insider opportunities with Facebook than Martha Stewart had at ImClone, has managed to get a Share link to appear on posts made through their system. 

But why? The ability to share content within Facebook is one of the core tenants of the community, and there is no difference between the content being created directly in Facebook and that being created in a 3^rd party application. It’s not like the companies have an opportunity to abuse anything by having a share link. It’s the person who reads the content  that decides to share it.

Updates from Pages made via 3^rd Party applications cannot be targeted

Seems silly, right? The Facebook API provides a way to create and send the update, but it doesn’t provide a way to target the update. Why would you release an API method that only covers half of the functionality necessary to be useful? Unless Facebook wants companies to spam portions of a Page’s fan base with a message that doesn’t apply to them.

The ability to target the updates from Pages is extremely useful for anyone who administers a Page, because you can customize content for the specific segments of your audience, providing only valuable information.  Facebook would only be doing their members a service by allowing companies and organizations (which are allowed to have Pages, of course) to target updates.

Not all of the Insights for Pages data can be pulled through 3^rd party applications

What Page administrator doesn’t want to know what is going on with their Page? The Insights feature is very cool and provides a ton of great data, but administrators using a 3^rd party application to create content for their Page can not pull all of the Insights data out with that same 3^rd party application because of the way Facebook has structured the Insights API. Forcing Page administrators to log into Facebook for certain activities while others to be done outside just seems inefficient. Provide a full service via the API or none at all.

Some may say that Facebook should make it easy for companies and organizations to engage with people inside the community because Facebook is a social network for people. To that I say, “That boat has already sailed!” Facebook opened the door to companies and non-profits when they created the Page. They’re in now, so Facebook should be doing everything it can to make it possible for companies and non-profits to interact in the same way that everybody else does. 

The Altimter Group and Jeremiah Owyang published a great report on how to market using a Facebook Page. Spredfast was honored to be among the resources Jeremiah tapped to research that report. The link to the Altimeter presentation on Slideshare is provided at the bottom of this post. We hope you take time to read through the 25 Do’s and Dont’s that Spredfast preaches with our clients.

The Do’s:

On a Page

1. Take advantage of the ability to create custom content on a tab using the static FBML application, and make this tab the default landing page to new visitors.
2. On the Wall tab, make sure you show content from the Page and from Fans, and auto-expand comments, so it is clear to visitors that there is a level of engagement happening on the Page.
3. Be very involved in the conversation happening on your Page.
4. Update the content on the Page regularly with a mixture of original wall post content, wall post referrals to other pertinent content, video and photos. Try not to post to the wall more than 3 time per day.
5. Allow fans to post video and photos to the Page. Reach out to those that do and thank them.
6. Use Facebook Events to promote your real events, even if they require registration. Simply provide a link in the Facebook Event description to the event registration page and ask people to both register and “attend” in Facebook.
7. If you have events where you can get Facebook fans to attend in person, get photos and videos, post them to Facebook and tag those Fans in the content.
8. Find other, relevant Pages and add them to your Favorites. Usually, that Page will return the favor and hopefully drive more people to your Page.
9. Advertise your Page on your other web properties and content streams, including the ability to become a fan and subscribe to updates via Text.
10. Be sure to adopt o personal tone with your communications on the Page, even going so far as to identify the author in posts. Couple this with photos of the authors, so people can put a face with a name.
11. Target Page Updates and Posts using the built in targeting functionality.
12. Ask your Fans to suggest the Page to other people periodically.
13. Frequently make the content about the Fans themselves by asking questions, posting Fan stories, and commenting on their activities.
14. Find existing Pages centered on your brand and engage with them. Support them with content and information.
15. Offer insider information that only Fans have access to.

On Profiles

1. Be sure employees who are engaging in Facebook activities on behalf of the company have good, consistent company information, and that your social media policy is well understood by these folks.
2. Prominently promote the company Page.
3. Add contest and promotional applications to these profile for greater spread across Facebook. Be sure to include an invitation component to the app, but never require invitations to be sent in order to progress in the app.
4. Offer insider information that only Friends have access to.

The Do Not’s:

1. Don’t make the content on your Page or Profiles all about the company. Fans don’t want just another version of the website.
2. Don’t disappear on your community. Engage daily.
3. Don’t overpost so that your Page becomes a nuisance. 2 or 3 times per day maximum.
4. Don’t overdo it with contest application. Be selective, and make the app a high quality experience.
5. Don’t try to own all of your brand presence. Collaborate with those people who have started Pages and Groups around your brand.
6. Don’t take it for granted. Monitor what is happening on your Pages and Profiles by using the data provided by Facebook or other sources (like Spredfast).

You can check out Jeremiah’s report here:

Or read the Atimeter Group report in Slideshare. It is very good.

About this Position
Social Agency is looking for an extraordinarily talented individual(s) to join our sales team. You have to be the type of person that craves a challenge and is passionate about Social Media.  Social Agency is still a venture-backed startup so as a Sales Director you’ll play an incredibly important role in the growth of our company, with an opportunity to determine our future. The best people in early-stage companies usually end up serving in multiple roles over a brief period of time.

To be successful you’ll need to be passionate about our business, thrive in a flexible environment, and be very self-driven. This doesn’t mean we won’t be helping you sell – we will- but we believe strongly in hiring quality and talent, someone with confidence and the intelligence to execute like a business owner.

Skills and Qualifications
1. Build strong relationships with senior executives, including e-commerce and marketing executives
2. Demonstrate the value propositions of our product and services in onsite meetings, web demos and through written and oral communications
3. Manage a sales cycle from the initial meeting all the way through contracts, legal review and driving the signature process.
4. Be confident in selling a high value service of $60,000 plus

Job Requirements

• Bachelors degree or Equivalent
• 2+ years work experience minimum, preferably within Internet/e-commerce/Saas industries
• Proficient in selling an early-stage product in a new industry (with a proven need) is a plus
• 2+ years experience in business development and/or sales as a top-10% performer
• Excellent communications and problem solving skills. Ability to make decisions in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
• Expert user of current web/online communication technologies, including browsers, search, email, instant messaging, and forums/message boards
• Strong analytical and negotiation skills regarding technical and contractual aspects of partner relationships
• Highly organized and detail oriented
• Desire to constantly learn and process new information about our industry, solution, partners, and competitors
• Extremely proactive with a strong bias for action.
• A strong work ethic and desire to work in a fast-paced, fun, demanding environment.
• Proficient with Salesforce and MS Office, MAC, PowerPoint and Excel
• Open to 20% travel, fluctuating based on need Selling eCommerce-focused solutions

Company Overview

Social Agency’s Spredfast is a social media campaign management platform that allows organizations to manage, monitor, and measure their messages across multiple social media channels. Social media engagement offers opportunity to shape conversation, increase traffic, create relationships, and ultimately build sales.

To apply, submit your cover letter and resume to careers@socialagency.com.