Posts Tagged Media

We’d Like To See You at SXSWi, But…

Aug 26

Posted by spredfast in Uncategorized | No Comments

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.

Social Media Initiative managed by Spredfast

Tags: Media, ROI, Social, Spredfast, sxswi

Facebook Places, Revisited

Aug 24

Posted by spredfast in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

You would probably have to be living under a rock for the last week not to have heard about Facebook Places (or you’re one of the million and millions of Americans who couldn’t care less about location based services and don’t even know what Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl and Facebook Places are). As an avid user of both Foursquare and Gowalla, I was pretty excited to see what Facebook Places was like and if it would change the way I “check-in” to the places that I go.

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?

Social Media Initiative managed by Spredfast

Tags: brightkite, check-in, Facebook, foursquare, gowalla, location, loopt, Media, places, platform, Social, whrrl

Check-In Overload

Aug 19

Posted by spredfast in Social Media Applications, Uncategorized | No Comments

Does this situation sound familiar to you? You’re walking along and your phone beeps at you to let you know a friend has just checked-in at the burger place you like using Foursquare. A minute later, you get the Gowalla notification.

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.

Social Media Initiative managed by Spredfast

Tags: brightkite, check-in, Facebook, foursquare, gowalla, location, loopt, Media, places, Social, whrrl

Austin’s Hyper-growth Social Media Company Spredfast is hiring Sales Directors

Jul 14

Posted by spredfast in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Location: Austin, TX
Job Type: Full-Time, Salaried with Benefits and Incentive Compensation and Stock Options
Total Compensation: Based on experience & market conditions
Reports to: Sales Director

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.

Social Media Initiative managed by Spredfast

Tags: hiring, human resources, job, Media, sales, Social, Spredfast, start-up

Announcing Spredfast 1.5 – Like Spain, one of the best in the world

Jul 9

Posted by spredfast in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

It has been a busy few weeks for us here at Social Agency, building another crop of powerful new features designed to make you more effective at managing the social media presence of your company or organization. Once again, for those of you who don’t want to read all of the details, here are the highlights. Detailed descriptions follow.

Highlighted Features

Social profiles of people interacting with your communications
Ability to mark influential people
Integration with Gowalla
Categorize all of your communications with Content Labels
Set your personal Default Home Page
Audit trail extends beyond Inbox to Social Streams
Crimson Hexagon Integration

Improvements to Listening and Communicating

Broader ability to respond to people from the Social Streams and Inbox
Translate items in the Social Streams
See which responses you made were public and which were private
Create custom footers for blog posts

Improvements to Managing & Streamlining

Schedule and Assign responses from the Inbox and Social Streams

Improvements to Measuring & Reporting

Increased frequency of Conversation History updates
Add Facebook Page views to metrics

Social Profiles

Admit it. You want to know more about that person who retweeted your tweet and left a comment on your Facbook Page wall post. You want to know how many followers they have and how many friends. You want to know where they’re from and how they describe themselves. You want to know how engaged they are with your brand.

Now you can. Simply hover over or click the username of the person in the Inbox or in the Social Streams, and we’ll show you what is available to know about that person. We’ll show you their network size, their biography, location and count of engagement with your communications.

Mark Influencers

Along with social profile information, you can decide for yourself if the person interacting with your communications is an influencer. When you decide yes, you can mark that username and all engagement by that influential person will be easily identifiable. You can also export a data file on all of your influencers for inclusion in other systems like Salesforce.

Of course, you probably already have some influential people identified. You can import a list of usernames and we’ll automatically mark those people as influencers.

Like they say, it is about who you know. With Spredfast, it’s a lot easier to know who you should get to know.

Gowalla Integration

Location, location, location, right? You probably have locations that you would like to know more about. With our integration, you can see who is checking in and how often.

Content Labels

Would you like to be able to categorize your communications? Perhaps you want to separate your responses from your scheduled outbound communications. Or you want to group up all of your contest related content. Now you can with Content Labels. Each and every communication you create in Spredfast can be labeled, with as many labels as you like.

Soon, you’ll be able to filter all of the great metrics Spredfast captures by these Content Labels as well.

Default Home Page

Do you have a page in Spredfast that you always start with each and every time you log in? Would you like to land there upon log in automatically? Done. Just click the Default Home Page box on your favorite page and we’ll bring you there every time you log in.

Don’t worry, you can change it whenever you like. We’re flexible like that.

Expanded Audit Trail

We’ve always thought the audit trail in the Inbox was a great feature. You know, the one that lets you know when someone on your team has responded to an item, so you don’t mistakenly respond twice? Well, we’ve made it better. Now, the audit trail not only lets you know when someone has responded, but also when someone has been assigned to respond, or a response has been scheduled.

Oh, and we’ve extended the audit trail to the Social Streams as well, so now you can see which items are covered no matter where you come across them.

Crimson Hexagon Integration

Understanding the sentiment of the conversation about your company, organization, brand or mission is important. To that end, we’ve integrated Crimson Hexagon, one of the leading sentiment analysis systems, into Spredfast. Simply enter your Crimson Hexagon account credentials and you’ll be able to set up Crimson Hexagon Social Streams.

Like the Spanish National Soccer team, Spredfast 1.5has even more magic to offer. We’ve added more great improvements to the 3 main functions of our platform: Listening & Communicating, Measuring & Reporting, and Managing & Streamlining.

First up in the Listening & Engagement arena, we’ve made it easier to respond to engagement from your friends, followers, and fans by making sure the right response actions are available everywhere you want them to be. We’ve also added a nifty translate feature so you can read those tweets from your rabid fan from China. In the Inbox and Conversation History, you can now see which communications were made publicly and which were made privately. Finally, you can now create your own custom footers for your blog posts. We know, you really love including branding for Spredfast at the bottom of each blog post, but we can’t ask you to do that every time. We appreciate what you’ve done so far.

In Managing & Streamlining, we’ve given you the ability to schedule and assign responses directly from the Social Stream. No more clicking 2 times to get there.

In Measuring & Reporting, we’ve reduced the time it takes for Spredfast to update the Conversation History. Now, you can respond to a mention you’ve come across in your Inbox, click the username of the person who mentioned you and see your entire conversation history with that person in just a matter of a few minutes. We’ve also added Facebook Page views to the Detailed Metrics table. As Facebook exposes more and more data from Page Insights, we’ll continue to pull it into Spredfast.

We hope you like what you’ve read about here and you jump in and try out the new features. We’re working hard on the next release, dreaming up cool ways for you the be a social media hero at your office.

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 use. 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 or @socialagency

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Austin-TX/Social-Agency-Inc

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

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

Web: http://www.spredfast.com

Social Media Initiative managed by Spredfast

Tags: 1.5, Engaging, Listening, Measuring, Media, Release, Reporting, Social, Social_Agency, Spredfast

Announcing Spredfast 1.4 – Not Your Mom’s Social Media Management System

May 25

Posted by James Young in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Here at Social Agency, we’ve been hard at work building out great new Spredfast functionality that will not only help you engage your customers, supporters, members and advocates in the social sites they frequent, but will also empower you to prove to your boss and your boss’ boss that social media pays off. For those of you who don’t like to read, here is a bulleted list of the new features and improvements we’ve made in Spredfast 1.4. To read witty descriptions of these items, please keep scrolling.

Highlighted Features

Integrated Sentiment Analysis with Social Mention
White Label Option
Slideshare Integration
Chart and Report Builder

Improvements to Listening and Engagement

Twitter Direct Message Support
Email notification to users if event sending fails

Improvements to Managing & Streamlining

Initiative Tabs
Importing link tag templates between Initiatives
Improved invitations handling
Prevented duplicate streams

Improvements to Measuring & Reporting

Decreased metrics processing time

Integrated Sentiment Analysis

We already had an awesome platform for listening to the social conversation about your brand, products, and services or your organization, programs, and campaigns. With Spredfast 1.4, you can now quickly get a bead on the sentiment of that conversation by using our sentiment streams. Simply create a sentiment stream, plug in your keywords, and let our Social Mention integration do the rest. Each item Social Mention finds will have a sentiment (positive, neutral, or negative) and a sentiment score (e.g. +3, O, or -1).

You’ll be able to see charts showing the sentiment your overall positive to negative sentiment ratio, and the positive, neutral and negative trend for each sentiment stream you’ve created on the new Sentiment tab in the Metrics section. You’ll also be able to see granular sentiment data and trends on the Detailed Metrics tab (formerly known as the Activity Trend tab), with counts of positive, neutral and negative items as well as an overall sentiment score for each day for each sentiment stream. Finally, you’ll be able to click on an individual data point and see which content pieces drove the sentiment data for that day.

White Label Option

Want the items you publish into Twitter or Facebook to say “via {Your Company Name Here}” and the experience for your clients or staff to be branded to your company? Now you can, with the White Label option available with Spredfast 1.4. This new functionality is perfect for agencies that provide social media strategy and campaign management services. It also works pretty darn well for anybody else who just wants their brand to be front and center on their social media outreach as well. With the white label option, the sign in/sign up page and the entire administrative interface is branded to your specifications. The email sent from the system comes from your accounts. Best of all, the content published in the social sites comes from your company. Contact Spredfast to learn more about the white label option, pricing and how you can upgrade.

Slideshare Integration

Got content? Presentation content, that is. Do you use Slideshare to post and share your presentations, hoping to impress prospective customers, supporters and members with your brilliance? With Spredfast 1.4 you can easily publish presentations into Slideshare and measure the engagement with that content, without ever leaving your Spredfast dashboard. We track views and downloads, comments and favorites and bring the data to you in our wonder wall Detailed Metrics table.

Chart and Report Builder

Admit it, you like working with the numbers but you love making pretty charts and putting them into reports. With Spredfast 1.4, you can take the rich engagement, reach and activity data we capture, calculate the ROI on your social media efforts, and create exciting charts and reports that make it easy for everyone else to see how your social media efforts are paying off handsomely. Easy to use and powerful, with built in date range, voice, social media channel and account filters and the ability export to PDF, you’ll be able to showing the engagement trends by social media channel and highlighting strategic decision points before you know it.

We’re not finished yet, though. Spredfast 1.4 also has some added more great improvements to the 3 main functions of our platform: Listening & Engaging, Measuring & Reporting, and Managing & Streamlining.

First up in the Listening & Engagement arena, we’ve improved our Twitter capabilities with direct message (DM) support. Now, you can send a respond to a tweet with a DM. Next, we’ve added email notifications to assigned content creators if their content piece failed to publish for any reason.

In Measuring & Reporting, we’ve reduced the time it takes for Spredfast to acquire new data from the social sites, process the data and expose it the metrics section.

In Managing & Streamlining, we’ve done a lot to make Spredfast easier to use. First, for those clients managing a lot of social media initiatives, either within one or across several companies or organizations, we’ve added the capability to organize Initiatives onto tabs. For example, an agency might want to keep all Initiatives for one client on one tab, and another client’s initiatives on a second tab. Next, we’ve improved our invitation system so that people who are invited to join an Initiative, but lose the invitation email, will find their way to the right place every time. Third, clients who use our powerful link tagging and have integrated it to an external analytics package to measure activity all the way from clicking a link in a tweet to completing a purchase will find the new capability to import the link tag templates from one Initiative to another very useful and efficient. Finally, we’ve built a nifty feature that will automatically recognize a new Social Stream being created as a duplicate of an existing stream and prevent the duplication.

That’s it for now. We’re already working hard on the next release, adding some great new social sites to the mix and integrating some powerful enterprise systems that a lot of marketing departments are already using.

Twitter: @spredfast or @socialagency

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Austin-TX/Social-Agency-Inc

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

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

Web: http://www.spredfast.com

Phone: 512-542-9900

Social Media Initiative managed by Spredfast

Tags: 1.4, Engaging, Listening, Measuring, Media, Release, Reporting, Social, Spredfast

Posts Tagged Media

Archives

Meta

Posts Tagged Media

We’d Like To See You at SXSWi, But…

Facebook Places, Revisited

Check-In Overload

Introducing the Social Inbox

Austin’s Hyper-growth Social Media Company Spredfast is hiring Sales Directors

Announcing Spredfast 1.5 – Like Spain, one of the best in the world

Announcing Spredfast 1.4 – Not Your Mom’s Social Media Management System

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