Simply Zesty » Business – Simply Zesty

9 handy social media tools to help monitor the financial markets

Quinton O'Reilly — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:21:37 +0000

With the stock markets becoming of greater interest not only to investors but the general populous, monitoring existing and new trends in this area has become a hot topic. Therefore it’s vital that the information obtained is up to date and relevant towards any decisions that have to be made.

With there being over 200 different tools and programs to help monitor social media and the web, we decided to compile a list of the more useful tools and programs, some free others for a price, to help monitor any changes and keep you up to date with whatever developments occur over the coming weeks.

Stocktweets

Effectively a live stream of news relating to the stock market, the site also allows traders and investors to share their views and ideas as well as the option to add charts and links to help illustrate your point.

Google Alerts

Overlooked because Google have so many other features, you can get Alerts to send you updates on a chosen topic straight to your email account. It can filter through news stories, web pages, blogs and videos to bring you all examples or the most relevant. It’s limited as it only brings results from Google’s own search engine but if you’re in need of a free tool to keep up to date, you could do a lot worse.

Meltwater Buzz

One of the paid tools on this list, Meltwater Buzz allows you to uncover conversations across 200 million sources for info to help your business.

It also gives you insight into emerging themes, subjects and influences allowing you to react to whatever changes occur. Collaboration tools are also available to help you manage and create new strategies for campaigns.

Appinions

The site focuses on opinions from social media, articles focusing on those who create content and attract the most attention. It filters through and aggregates these sources into data to be used.

Radian6

The second paid tool on this list, Radian6 allows you to view conversations concerning your products and brand in real time but also combines it with other factors such as demographics, geolocation, and influence to give you a more comprehensive picture.

Tweetdeck

Limited to twitter but using its search feature will allow you to create a column dedicated to giving you live updates about whatever topic you choose.

Zecco

Integrated into Facebook, Zecco allows you to buy shares that are available on the Dow Jones in just a couple of clicks. Not only can you monitor and see the performance in other stocks but you can see what your friends are investing in as well if they are also using the app.

Alterian SM2

The third paid tool on this list, Alterian SM2 tracks mentions on blogs, forums and social networks among many others to give you an idea of the type of conversations occurring online. The program monitors demographic, location and the emotion and tone of conversations of a chosen topic and aggregates results into positive and negative categories allowing quick results and data.

Sentiment Metrics

This tool allows users to listen to consumer conversations across more than 20 million blogs, five million forum posts and 30,000 online news sources, social networks and microblogs. The site allows you to have an unlimited free trial of their services with an option to upgrade to a paid version.

As we weren’t able to fit in at least 191 other social media tools, what else would be worth including in this list?

Create, share and develop company ideas with Brainstorm…but for a price

Quinton O'Reilly — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 11:20:39 +0000

Every company has employees brimming with great ideas but sometimes it can be difficult to get them out there and develop them into something real. Intuit aim to solve this with their new product, Brainstorm, but for a price.

Brainstorm is a web based collaboration tool designed to source and develop ideas within organisations by encouraging employees to submit and develop ideas.

While the most sites designed with the same function focus on posting updates in the hope that colleagues will respond to them, Brainstorm focuses more on networking and connecting ideas to the right people and developing them further. Ideas posted on the site can be rated and commented on by colleagues and shared across the board.

Users can create Challenges specifically for their organisation and a Pipeline which helps organise and rank active ideas and develop them. Ideas can be shared to anyone within an organisation as well to specific groups within companies in case you wish to keep the number of people contributing more focused.

The site was originally created as an internal tool created during the company’s unstructured time, (the time they use to work on pet projects). Intuit claim that after they created Brainstorm, participation within their company increased by 500 per cent and ideas created also jumped by 1,000 per cent.

Similar to its competitors Kindling and Brightidea, the service comes at a price which will put smaller groups off it although users have the opportunity to try a 30-day free trial before being required to pay. Currently, the rates start at $5 a month per user with the minimum cost being $500 per month. Yet with the number of complaints online being aimed towards this may convince Intuit to lower this minimum cost or scrap it altogether so that smaller organizations can afford it.

Is collaboration the future business model for web startups?

Lauren Fisher — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 18:18:48 +0000

Foursquare and Groupon have just announced a partnership that will see daily deals appear in the Foursquare app. It represents a huge opportunity for both brands and a real chance to take on Facebook as they suffered a blow when Facebook launched both location and deals services. Foursquare certainly stands to gain more from this partnership, as they have remained a niche offering up until now, with a minimal following outside the U.S. As a service on its own, this is a valuable offering for consumers. And in the huge rush of web startups that we have today, it shows that perhaps collaboration is the road to success – combining knowledge, users and services to offer something completely different and ultimately more valuable to the end user.

Strength in numbers

The fact is that so many web and mobile companies are springing up, and all this fragmentation often leads to failed startups. Launching a product is one thing, launching a successful business is quite another. By partnering up, whether this is an actual merger or joining services in an experimental campaign, smaller startups can strengthen their positioning and successfully consolidate their services. The rate of new businesses in the social/mobile/location space is staggering, but it is only sustainable for so long. With so many services competing against each other, maybe it’s time to admit that you can’t necessarily do it better on your own and that there could be the perfect partner out there that can gain you important traffic and users away from the bigger players.

Partner up before it’s too late

Another strong indication that collaboration is the key to success, for young social startups, is perhaps the uncertainty of the social market. As the Facebook investor and rock musician Roger McNamee recently proclaimed – social is done. More specifically, he warns people not to go to a social startup. Now this might be a fairly dramatic and premature speculation, but it points to the fact of why we have so many failed social startups. It is a fresh and uncertain market, and rather than thousands of companies diversifying and trying to carve their own niche and develop their own products, by combining knowledge between companies, the market itself will strengthen, along with the individual business value. Do I necessarily agree with Roger here? Not really. I don’t believe that social is done but I do believe that it’s a risky area for startups and why your time may be better spent in partnerships. Throw the ego out the window and look for opportunities to join up and offer something better than you could on your own.

Foodspotting – proving the case

An excellent example of a young hot startup partnering up strategically is Foodspotting. They are a good success story in the app market, standing out amongst hundreds of competitors, thanks in part to the collaborations they’ve explored. They started in 2010 by partnering up with the restaurant rating app Zagat. The move saw Foodspotting’s data brought into Zagat, via the Foodspotting API. This shows an open approach by Foodspotting, as they recognised the strength in making their data openly available to others and building out their following through similar services, as opposed to a closed approach. They furthered this success when they recently partnered with Single Platform. The service offers users information about hotels and restaurants based on information gathered directly from the establishments themselves and distributed through publishing partners. The collaboration works both ways, as it brings Foodspotting’s user generated content into Single Platform, while Single Platform feeds (ahem) the foodspotting app with information such as restaurant opening hours, that can’t necessarily be generated by users. While these partnerships are not the only reason for the success of Foodspotting, it shows the good business practice being exercised by the company, significantly strengthening what is still a new app business.

Ford utilises social media in deciding new EV sound

Quinton O'Reilly — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 09:24:04 +0000

Ford have been well known for their focus and use of social media to drive the company forward, being one of a few number of companies being allowed to set up a company profile on Google+. In another example of the company interacting with their audience, last month Ford posed the question on Facebook, what engine sound their new Focus Electric should have?

The reasoning for this is because in January this year, the US mandated that all vehicles on the road must make artificial noise to alert pedestrians and cyclists of their presence when being driven. What noise the cars make is currently being discussed but that hasn’t stopped Ford from conducting its own tests and research

Ford have stated that they are considering more than 10 different sounds for the new car but gave Facebook followers the choice between four different sounds (Sound A, Sound B, Sound C and Sound D). Followers were asked to rate the sounds in order of preference with the first being their favourite and the last being least favourite. At time of writing, over 415 followers have commented on the post with more comments and opinions rolling in every day.

The Focus Electric will come with an instrument panel that allows you to monitor the car’s energy consumption when driving. The car will also come with an app that will allow you to see the status of the car while it’s charging; allowing you to plan around the time it takes the car to fully charge. Ford hope that the model will be released sometime near the end of this year.

But which sounds do you think suit the car, do any of the sounds suit or should Ford go back to the drawing board (or in this case, the recording studios)?

Netswipe introduces online payment system by utilizing webcams

Quinton O'Reilly — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:30:47 +0000

Ever since Amazon launched in 1995, online shopping has experience a massive boon over the past number of years; Alongside the many issues that had emerged from this, online payments have quickly become a hot topic among consumers and retailers. With online fraud becoming a major problem for all, newer and more secure ways of online payment are required to combat this.

Jumbo, an online payment company, have created Netswipe which allows businesses and online vendors to process payments easier and faster. When purchasing a product, all a consumer needs is a webcam and their credit card to work it.

Once you’ve scanned your credit card with your camera, you are required to enter your three or four digit Card Verification Value (CVV) security code, normally located at the back of a credit card, to complete the transaction.

Your webcam turns on during the payment process to scan the card and verify its authenticity. No details are stored when the transaction is completed and your webcam switches off automatically. If there isn’t a webcam to use, then transactions will be handled like a regular payment with consumers completing a payment form manually.

Companies who wish to use the new technology must embed a HTML code onto their site. The technology is free for both retailers and consumers to use and supports over 150 different currencies.

The company has developed the technology in cooperation with multiple universities and Computer Vision institutes and claim to have tested 1,000,000 different samples to ensure the technology is completely accurate in recognising legitimate cards.

The basis behind the payment and scanning features is the Jumio’s Payment Platform (“JUMP”); the company says that it incorporates the latest technology and security standards to ensure transactions are secure and that billions can be carried out simultaneously if required.

Act and react to consumer questions with FAQme

Quinton O'Reilly — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:10:58 +0000

When navigating a company or service site, inevitably there will be cases where site viewers will have a question or inquire for more information. Even if the answer is already provided on the site, they may not always be obvious for people to find, which is why many sites include an FAQ section to answer the most common queries.

Accessibility and information are two main components for any site to have. Visitors want to be able to navigate sites with minimum hassle and find the information they’re looking for and if not they’ll become frustrated and look elsewhere. The FAQ page is to solve this problem yet for some sites, their FAQ pages are either poorly thought out, badly designed, display out of date information or in the worst cases, don’t even exist.

This is where FAQme.com comes into play. The site, created by ADHD Labs, seeks to remedy these problems by allowing users to build sleeker and more useful FAQ and contact pages. The style of the FAQ pages created are designed to be simplistic, allowing the user to put one together quickly while users can navigate it easily. Admins can customise their pages, add edit or delete entries as well as re-order them through dragging and dropping entries

A second feature is the use of a specialised FAQ inbox, where users have the option of either replying privately or publicly by including the query in the actual FAQ. This allows every inquiry and query to be used if deemed helpful for others so that an FAQ can be regularly updated.

Users are provided with their own analytics pages which tracks unique visits, time spent on the page and what browsers are being used to view the page. The site also allows you to create multiple FAQ pages if you so wish, letting you manage each of them on the same page.

The site is designed by ADHD Labs, a company experimenting in sites and apps creation, whose sites include TinyLetter, a site which allows you to create email newsletters.

5 steps to improve your b2b social media marketing

Lauren Fisher — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 08:21:47 +0000

Following on from our ebook on the top 50 b2b social media case studies, I wanted to lay out 5 tips that can help you improve your b2b marketing efforts in social media. This is still one of the most unknown areas in social media and many marketers are unsure of how to utilise social platforms for b2b efforts. Sure, you might open up a profile on LinkedIn and answer some Q+As, but the results of this will be negligible unless there is a full strategy behind this. It can often seem like a LinkedIn profile is your only tool for b2b marketing online, but the truth is far from it. The fact is the people you’re trying to target are all out there using social tools, just maybe not under the guise you expect to find them in. So here’s a few of our tips that you can implement to supercharge your b2b marketing.

Advanced targeting on Facebook

With Facebook’s new advertising tool – broad category targeting – you can target different types of business categories that weren’t previously available in the self service ad center before. This is an option available to all advertisers on Facebook, and you should take advantage of this targeting option to use Facebook in a different way to reach out to a business audience. You can use this option by setting up your ad, then selecting ‘business/technology’ in the broad category options. Here you can target your ads by small business owners, science/technology, real estate, personal finance and science programming :

This really is an excellent new tool for b2b marketers to use, as it means that Facebook is using the information contained within a user’s profile to determine which category they fit into. You still have the option as well to target specifically by a workplace with your ads, but this doesn’t guarantee the type of person your ad will be shown to within that organisation. Here you have an ideal way to get in front of small business owners and you should think carefully also about where your ad is clicking through to. It might be the case that taking them through to your general company Page isn’t applicable to convert them, so think about setting up a specific landing tab purely for b2b that is designed to encourage a conversion.

Hire a b2b community manager

Within your organisation you could have a social media team, and a business development team, but the two might not necessarily be talking to each other. While it might fall to your social media rep to be the consumer face of your brand, or deal with customer service, the same principles that they’re applying to talk to customers, should also be rolled out to your business development team. Online relationships work the same as offline, you need to have someone there that is dedicated to creating and maintaining the relationship, and while you can hope to create a b2b social strategy, this will only really work if you have a community manager behind it. The most successful uses of b2b for social media often come from small business owners, because they’re the ones that are active in LinkedIn groups or forums, genuinely sharing their expertise. Your community manager on your biz dev team should become a recognised face of the company and a go-to resource when potential business leads want to find out more information, or just want a bit of help or advice. You will have to give a certain amount of this away for free, just like you would if you were on the phone to an important lead. Take the skills you already have, and adapt them to fit on social media.

Smart Twitter search

If you’re really dedicated to using social media to source business leads and relationships, then you should develop a smart Twitter strategy to find those people in real-time and discover potential new contacts you probably would have missed. You should train your biz dev team in using Tweetdeck to run searches that can provide you with relevant information that can be utilised for business purposes, provided it’s done correctly. Think about everything an effective sales person needs, to do their job correctly. They need to identify the right people to talk to, establish a relationship with them, know the competition, know the lead’s industry inside and out, and provide them with something early on in the relationship that shows them what they can expect by investing in you. By using your Tweetdeck effectively you can do all of these and more, much quicker than you can do through traditional tools. Firstly, check out this video below that shows you how to use Tweetdeck to effectively follow thousands of people (it’s fairly long but I really recommend taking 8 minutes out of your day to watch it) :

If you’re running the right searches on Twitter, you can find out in real time the people that are tweeting for help with general questions that you can assist with, direct service requests as well as identifying and following the right people in organisations that you want to reach. But you should also use this to keep yourself informed of the latest industry-specific news that you should keep an eye on and be reactive to. Make sure you follow news accounts as well as individuals so you can be the first to know when something happens that you should be aware of, and most importantly you’re the first one tweeting about it.

Follow companies on LinkedIn

This is a feature that not many people actually take advantage of, but it can be incredibly useful not only for keeping up to date with the latest news at the organisations you want to connect with, but also for making those organisations aware that you’re there. Every company, no matter what industry they’re in, is interested in who’s following them online and believe me there will be someone pouring over the analytics across different social profiles to see who’s engaging with them. This is another chance to get on someone’s radar through a simple feature in LinkedIn. To follow a company, simply search for their profile, then click on the Follow button, as shown below :

When you follow a company on LinkedIn, anyone can click to see the list of followers, which means you have a direct link to someone at the organisation, who is just a click away from your LinkedIn profile. You can also keep up with the latest developments in the company as this information will show up in your notifications. When you follow a company for the first time, be sure to keep an eye on your new connections, as these could be from people within that organisation, so you want to stay reactive when there’s a possible interest from someone you’re trying to target.

Find who’s following you

In the same way that your sales team will be following certain individuals and companies online to build relationships, you could find that the people you want to reach out to are already doing that to you. If you’ve set up company profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora etc.. then someone from your biz dev team should be going through these in detail each day, to find if the people they’re trying to reach are already following them, or identifying new leads. if someone is following you online then there is already a level of interest there. You can begin to maximise this without being too intrusive, by sending them a tweet or message to get the relationship going. They’ll appreciate the fact that you’re active on your social profiles and you could end up saving yourself a lot of time by trying to reach out to a particular person in a company, by finding that they, or someone else from that company is already following you and done half the work in making the initial contact. This information is there for you to access and you should use it to your benefit, for free.

Social media is (slowly) making it’s way into the boardroom

Lauren Fisher — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:59:31 +0000

As social media use becomes more prolific amongst individuals and brands, there is an increasing need for social media to make its way into the boardroom. That’s to say, CEOs, CTOs, directors, upper management all need to have an awareness not only of how social media and technologies can work for them from a marketing point of view, but how it should be adopted throughout the entire business. This is starting to happen, albeit slowly and it marks an interesting new phase in the evolution of social media, as it moves away from being just a medium for disseminating messages and becomes a whole level on its own in the company infrastructure. Some companies are already doing this, while some have a long way to go.

Social media in the c-suite

An interesting study was released by Useful Social Media recently, that examined who the most senior person directly responsible for social media is within an organisation. The results are interesting, and show that social media is starting to spread outside of the marketing department alone. Encouragingly 12% of the companies surveyed claimed that social media was under the direct control of the CEO

While the chart doesn’t explain indepth what is classified as ‘working directly with social media’, the findings are still encouraging and show that social media is now under the radar of the right people in the organisation : the real decision makers. This is good news for brands and social media practitioners, as the higher up the chain social media gets, the more budgets will inevitably follow.

Why the CEO needs to be involved

When an organisation opens up through social media, they are opening up their entire brand, messaging and products for interpretation by the user. Unless your CEO is directly aware of your activity and also the ways in which it can be used, then you risk making some very big mistakes very publicly. You can bet when something goes wrong, the CEO (or similar) will sit up and take notice. Getting them active on social media themselves means they’re going to develop an innate understanding of how social media functions and could possibly prevent something going wrong. It all comes back to the idea of social media not acting within a silo. Opening up your brand to a public forum should not be underestimated and it’s imperative that social media is embraced openly at all levels of an organisation, if it’s to be implemented at all.

Social media also needs to make its way into the boardroom, as this is where the greatest potential lies for social technologies to change the entire business overall. Company structures in savvy organisations are becoming more flexible and permeable, as social can affect everything from marketing to product development, customer service and more. Upper management have the organisational knowledge and decision-making power needed to develop a whole new way of doing business, that fits with the way that people are communicating and connecting with each other every day. Business principles will of course always be the same, but will adapt as new processes & systems emerge. Right now the area of change is within social media.

Not quite there yet

The potential for social media adoption among the c-suite depends largely on the motivations for this. A survey in Australia among CEOs found that an overwhelming 49% were concerned about the use of social media for their organisation due to how it could negatively impact their reputation. This concern is understandable, but it shows that the use of social media in a company still has a way to go and that the fear that marketing departments are used to is also finding its way into the boardroom. This presents perhaps the biggest stumbling block for social media in the upper levels of an organisation. Without understanding how this can actually be turned into a positive opportunity, the temptation will remain to block social media altogether. Until of course, it’s too late and you find yourself having to bring out the CEO to appear in an apology video.

If social media is to make its way into the boardroom successfully, it needs to be adopted at every level of the business. That means the CEO needs to tweet (take a leaf out of Richard Branson’s book), employees need to be connected by internal social technologies and most importantly, social media needs to be used to open up communication at both the highest and lowest levels. When every employee in an organisation is an effective spokesperson through their own social media channels, it’s important that knowledge is spread as much as possible to ensure that people are sending out the right message, where they’re entering into conversations about the company they work for and often innocently offering customer service off their own back. When finding out that an employee blogs or tweets, far too often the upper management comes down heavy handed and strongly polices this or forces them to shut down their blog. I’ve heard far too many examples of this still happening and it seems to be a symptom of misunderstanding social media by the people that should understand it most : those that are responsible for how the organisation develops, remains relevant and puts themselves where their consumers are.

7 Essential business social media tools

Lauren Fisher — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:22:20 +0000

There are some great social media tools out there that can used by business professionals, for corporate social networking and for use at corporate events. We understand that time is at a premium when it comes to social media within an organisation, so we’ve put together a list of the top tools out there that can help you to become more effective at corporate social networking. Smart companies are finding ways to introduce social technologies into the way they do business and encourage collaboration within the organisation. These tools help you to integrate social media with your day to day business, to make the most out of your activities. There are many that could make the list such as Radian 6, Hootsuite & Google Docs, but we want to look at those tools that you might not know about yet!

Share meeting content via an iPad

Linkedin has just announced a new iPad application developed by Conde Nast, designed to facilitate easy sharing of content between meeting/conference attendees, easily integrating the virtual with the real world. Called ‘Idea Flight’, the app allows you to control meetings through iPads by synching many iPads under one ‘pilot’ device. Lots of people like to bring out iPads in meetings now, but it doesn’t lend itself to a great experience by your audience, as you have to crowd around one screen. With the Idea Flight app, all the iPads are synched, allowing attendees to stay engaged with your presentation on their own device. Anyone who sits through meetings regularly would welcome something like this that can add a bit of excitement to the process and this is a great, free tool that people should be utilising. Aside from the meeting process itself, there are some great additional features for post-meeting, such as the ability to send invitation requests on LinkedIn and the option to send attendees the meeting material to download.

Dropbox on your iPhone

Dropbox is a fantastic application for businesses, allowing you to easily store files ‘in the cloud’, within the Dropbox site. Users can create their own folders within Dropbox, synching with your own computer so that every time you save a document, it’s also saved in Dropbox, allowing you to access the document anywhere. Features also include the ability to share entire folders with collaborators, eliminating the need to send zip files or use services such as Yousendit, which can sometimes take too long or cause problems for the recipient. If you’re using Dropbox, you should also be using Dropbox for iPhone, which allows you to access your files wherever you are. You can also upload content via the iPhone app, including photos and videos which will then be accessible online or wherever your Dropbox account is synched to.

Screenr

Often when you’re communicating something to your internal stakeholders, clients, prospects or colleagues, a screencast is the best option for this, as it presents the content in an easy to follow format and keeps users engaged. Imagine writing out a PDF for example of how to access your company’s new intranet, or instead sharing this with employees via a quick screencast? There are quite a few screen capture services out there, but Screenr is certainly one of the best. You can create screencasts easily, within one click and simply share these with other people via a link. The ease of use is the best thing about this site and there’s also no need to create an account to set up a screencast.

Storify

While many companies are creating great content, how you choose to present this to users is just as important. Storify is a great app that allows you to do this easily and is essentially a new form of content management system that can be used by organisations to great effect either internally or externally. Storify allows you to create online storyboards of the content you find, with a simple click and drag system allowing you to add the links and content that’s of interest to you, which can be embedded into pretty much any website. Storify has just come out of private beta and has already raised $2m in funding in February of this year. While this is designed for use by anyone, I think there’s a great opportunity for businesses here, who want to share important content between employees in a way that will keep them engaged and interested. Check out a demo of Storify below :

‘Apply with LinkedIn’ button

This is an excellent new widget available from LinkedIn. They’ve created a new button for sites, that allows you to add an ‘apply with LinkedIn‘ button to job listings. This is good news both for employers and job-seekers as removes a lot of the hassle out of the process of applying for a job, when a lot of the information the prospective employer needs is already on LinkedIn. the button will be called ‘Apply with LinkedIn’ and though it’s yet to roll out, we feel it deserves its place on the list as it presents such a good opportunity for organisations. The button allows people to submit their LinkedIn profile as the CV, with the option to edit it before it’s sent. And let’s be honest, looking up a candidate on LinkedIn is usually the next step upon receiving a submission anyway, so this just makes it that little bit easier. There are also planned features such as data sorting to ease the process of organising data by the employer. The button is free to use for now, but you could see this becoming a paid feature by LinkedIn, particularly with their pressure to monetise fast after their recent IPO.

Yammer for mobile

Yammer is an excellent tool for encouraging communication between employees, that we’ve covered previously on the blog. But with the nature of remote working and the increase in work done via the mobile, organisations need solutions that can be flexible. Yammer is now available as an app across a range of services, including iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. The app allows you to synch your desktop application with your mobile application, retaining key features such as polls, events, questions and ideas. Introducing Yammer into the workplace is no small undertaking, particularly for larger organisations, but with the right education for employees it can radically change the way colleagues collaborate and share information. While some businesses might see this as just another distraction in the workplace, if you put effort into making this really work for you and encouraging the right kind of connections between employees, it can help you become more efficient and importantly, connected.

Namechecklist

This is an essential tool both for established businesses as well as startups who might be deciding on their new company name. Namechecklist allows you to search for available domains as well as social media sites to see if your desired brand or username is available. This is a hugely important consideration for businesses in two respects. Firstly, if you’re setting up profiles on social media sites, it’s important to keep the same names for consistency. You should be using this site even if you’re not active in all the networks, to safeguard for the future. Secondly, it’s a good way of spotting where your brand name isn’t available, meaning that someone got there before you. In this way you could possibly discover spoof accounts, or accounts that are in breach of your business name. The site is free to use, with links displayed next to each social network when you search, allowing you to create your account easily.

Groupon on the attack – launch three new features & a rumoured IPO

Lauren Fisher — Wed, 11 May 2011 07:58:32 +0000

With the rollout of Facebook’s mobile deals offering across Europe, and the U.S. launch of their pure deals product, the obvious question is ‘what are Groupon going to do about it?’. The answer, clearly, is a lot. They’ve been making some big moves this week that remind us they’re not going anywhere soon and are adapting fast to meet consumer demands and find new incentives to keep users on their site.

Getting in on realtime deals

Perhaps the most significant move by Groupon recently, was their announcement yesterday that they are introducing realtime location deals with Groupon Now. They’ve massively expanded their deals by switching from just one great deal offered per day, to offering multiple deals to users of their mobile application based on their current location. So you can walk down the street, access the app and find out all the businesses near you that are offering deals through the site. You then redeem these deals by presenting a scannable barcode in the store or business :

The great thing about this for advertisers is that you can set a specific timeframe for your deal, so you can avoid the risk of giving away a great price at a normally popular time, such as a bar on a Friday evening when hopefully you won’t have to struggle too much to bring business in. Currently Groupon Now is only available in Chicago, but should be rolled out soon. This is a great move from Groupon as it’s offering something completely new within the system that is a direct benefit both to consumers and businesses. While many smaller businesses have found themselves stung by Groupon in the past, introducing factors such as a time limit on deals goes a long way to remedy this.

Paying users to access Groupon mobile

A rather more unusual move here from Groupon, that perhaps shows they might be a little more scared of Facebook Deals than they let on. They’re offering a cash incentive for people that download their mobile app and purchase a deal. If you do this before 25th May, Groupon will reimburse you with $10 credit to spend on deals through the site. It’s clear to see why Groupon are doing this : they are at a crucial time in their mobile side of the business, as Facebook Places steadily increases its penetration with more and more businesses ofering their own deals in the self-serve areas in the U.S. Groupon need to move fast to build up a loyal mobile offering before Facebook Deals comes out of beta across the U.S. and Europe. In essence, they need to make themselves indispensable before it’s too late. This might be a tall order given the 200 million+ mobile users that Facebook has at its disposal. But in the same way that Twitter staked their claim as Facebook gradually imitated their features on the site, Groupon can do the same. Twitter did this by adapting its offering to add new features, but without distracting from the core service itself. This is exactly the approach Groupon need to take.

Their aggressive move into the mobile space was also accompanied by their recent purchase of Pelago, who make the mobile location-based service Whrrl. With the purchase complete, Whrrl is no longer available to users, as it moves firmly into the Groupon family. The purchase also brings with it a talented team of mobile people that are going to be integral to Groupon’s development in the mobile arena. Andre Mason, CEO of Groupon announced the launch in a blog post, hinting at one of the most powerful assets they have at their disposal : “Jeff [Holden] intimately gets consumer buying behavior and the importance of a great user experience, and his team is this awesome combination of data-driven creatives…the people who create smart products that are really fun to use.” The data that Groupon can access both about customers and merchants is where they can play Facebook at their own game. We’ve seen Facebook rocket its way to monetisation through their ad product that lives and dies on the data they have on their users. Groupon can hope to mimic this, by partnering with smart people such as the Whrrl team, to build the data they have and use it in new ways.

New partnership brings live event offers

Groupon announced their partnership with events site Live Nation just yesterday, bringing offers for events near you. The new product : Groupon Live, is another much needed addition that fits perfectly with the viral and social nature of their site. Just as Facebook adapted by offering checkins to events, Groupon have moved into this area with an excellent new product. GrouponLive is due to launch in North America in the Summer, with no announcement yet of a planned rollout across Europe, though this will likely be imminent. Through GrouponLive they’re also ensuring they stay very much ahead of their smaller competitors, expanding from just one deal, to becoming the complete online and mobile home for realtime and socialised deals. Structuring the site in this way of course, positions them perfectly to seamless acquire competitors that might operate in more niche spaces. It’s not too hard to imagine their new b2b section of the site for example, that could see an acquisition of someone like Huddlebuy to bring their customers and service with them.

Groupon filing for an IPO?

Though it is strictly rumour at this stage, it looks like Groupon might be rushing to file for it’s IPO, which according to AllThingsD, values the company at upwards of $15 billion. This being the week of IPOs of course, with LinkedIn preparing theirs, valuing them at around $3.3 billion, this is an interesting move from Groupon. In the same way that Facebook go into the infamous ‘lockdown’ mode when preparing a raft of new features and developments on the site, Groupon are doing the same and they’re not afraid of moving quickly. The rumoured IPO alone shows what a staggering rate Groupon has grown at, having been started in just 2008 – a phenomenal rate to build up such a high valuation. With Sky’s acquisition as well, this is the time for tech companies to move fast, and this could be an ideal time for Groupon to float.

I’d expect much more to come from Groupon over the next couple of months. Launching so many new products so quickly means they now need to bed down and really make these work by bringing them into the core experience of Groupon for users. They can’t afford (yet) to take their eye of the very thing that made them grow so quickly in the first place : one simple deal a day, with social sharing at the centre. This is social media though, so Groupon are right to adapt and change quickly, ensuring they stay reactive to consumer demand.

Facebook about to buy big?

Kenfitz — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:54:45 +0000

Facebook has hired another senior Google executive to drive their Mergers and Acquisitions efforts fuelling speculation that Facebook will step up their deal activity. Amin Zoufonoun, a director of corporate development at Google, will join Facebook next week.
Facebook to date has mainly completed acquisitions (they completed 10 in 2010) for engineering talent instead of for products. But with a recent round of fundraising boosting their coffers, they may be about to get more active.

It’s not the first time they have snagged talent from Google. The COO Sheryl Sandberg came from Google as did David Fischer who is Vice President of Advertising and Global Operations. They have secured the services of a number of other senior people also. They certainly seem to be winning the recruitment talent battle against Google at the moment.

This new hire is the latest sign of Facebook’s ambitious expansion plans and adds more fuel to the rivalry between themselves and Google – indeed they could be competing more and more for the same deals.

It will be interesting to see whether Facebook starts looking at bigger deals.

Social on the Move

Kenfitz — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 19:26:23 +0000

AMAS in partnership with the Marketing Insitute of Ireland have recently published an extensive study of how online marketing is used in Ireland. Over 400 Irish marketeers participated and the results show that social media is on the move up in terms of the preferred methods of online marketing used. Social media marketing is not around that long but yet it is already positioned as the second most preferred format of online marketing. Email marketing remains the most popular. However, Social Media marketing comes in second ahead of search engine marketing, search engine optimisation and banner advertising.

Marketeers did have concerns about the amount of extra time that social media marketing will increase their workload, how they can manage their reputation online and how they can keep up with all the latest trends in social media marketing. But they also saw huge opportunities in social media marketing especially due to it’s cost effectiveness and it’s ability to help them understand their customers. They indicated they used it for a variety of reasons.

There is no doubt the importance of social media marketing now in the marketing mix. No wonder that spend on social media marketing in the US is expected to nearly double this year as a percentage of total marketing spend (from 5.6% to 9.8% of total marketing spend)

#Iquit

Kenfitz — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:14:45 +0000

The CEO of Sun Microsystems, Jonathan Schwartz has become the first CEO of a large company to resign via tweet.

Last week he wrote “Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more,” after the company had been purchased by Oracle.He has been a big public user of the internet. At Sun, he became the first chief executive of a major company to put up his own blog.

Once Oracle had bought Sun, the resignation was likely. Especially when, in an interview last week, the head of Oracle (Larry Ellison) said he fully expected Mr. Schwartz to resign rather than play a role in the combined company.

So what’s next for annoucements via twitter? is there any type of annoucement that people won’t publish?

Essential social media tools for customer service staff

Lauren Fisher — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 09:52:17 +0000

More companies now have dedicated customer service teams for social media. There are some great tools out there that can help to make your job easier and more effective, and we’ve reviewed some of the best below. There are a range of options available both paid and free depending on the size of your business and what you want to get out of the solution. Companies that don’t look at applications like these risk wasting time and effort particularly where more than one person is contributing to your social media accounts. These tools help to ensure that customer reps communicate with other staff and don’t double up on work.

Cotweet

Cotweet is a brilliant, free tool that’s great for businesses that use Twitter, particularly if you have more than one person contributing to the account. Cotweet allows different users to create profiles with which to manage the account and also keep track of messages. Every business on Twitter should be using this as a way to keep track of messages, send notifications to other admins and ensure that your followers are being communicated with efficiently. Many companies that run Twitter accounts run into problems of knowing who has answered to whom, and the bigger you get the more difficult this becomes. Cotweet offers a simple dashboard where you can view all the latest information on your account, and reply within the site :

There are lots of functions within Cotweet that will make your life easier, but the ability to message other admins is particularly handy. If for example you are running the Twitter account and aren’t able to answer a particular query but know a co-worker that can, you can flag the message for them to answer. This can be done for public messages and DMs, through a simple message box that will alert the other person when they sign in :

I really recommend creating an account on Cotweet. You might find that it takes a little while to get used to, but it will ultimately make you more productive and importantly will help to create a better customer service experience for your followers. The fact that you can send updates and run searches within the site means you don’t even need to leave there to run your account. A definite must!

Buzzstream

This is a slightly more advanced site but can really help you to manage your community and build up a profile of the people you’re interacting with. This is a paid tool but I still wanted to include it on the list as I think it’s so handy for many businesses, and with prices starting at €49 per month it’s not too expensive. Essentially Buzzstream helps to address a common problem for anyone communicating with customers through social media – that you can often be talking to one person across Twitter, Facebook or a blog and it can be hard to keep track of a history of your communication. Plus others in your team could be talking to the same person and neither of you know it. What Buzzstream does is allow you to build up profiles of the people you talk to online (ignore the term influencers that they use) and quickly see a history of your interaction with them :

Buzzstream also offers the option to monitor different social media channels to find those people that you might need to be talking to, but I think the real beauty of their product for customer service staff is how you can effectively manage your relationships. This is becoming increasingly important for organisations, especially as the social media reps or community managers expand beyond one person. This presents new problems in managing relationships that products like Buzzstream can address.

Hootsuite

As much as managing customer relationships, many businesses are interested in making their social media activity more effective. It functions in a similar way to Cotweet, but I do think that for Twitter alone Cotweet is a better product. What you get from Hootsuite though, is the ability to effectively manage a range of accounts between team members, not just Twitter. Their free product supports 5 social media accounts, and you get the option to upgrade this if necessary. For individuals or small businesses though, the free product is perfect. Hootsuite allows you to easily add different social network accounts including Twitter, Facebook, Facebook pages, LinkedIn and Foursquare which can be updated within one simple dashboard :

Hootsuite also offers an analytics dashboard (also on free accounts) that gives insight into latest activity and can also integrate with site analytics. Features of their stats package include url shorteners using ow.ly and the ability to tag updates with a Google analytics code so you can get even more details insights into how people react to your updates and content.

Rapportive

Rapportive is a nice plugin for Gmail that can be useful for customer service reps. Rapportive is a simple tool that pulls in social profiles for your Gmail contacts. Information shown includes Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Skype, showing the links to the individual’s profile and a summary of their latest updates. It is a very neat social CRM plugin that provides a snapshot of pretty much everything you would need to know about your contact’s online profile.

Rapportive also has some really nice additional information, such as showing their proximity towards you and the option to add notes onto a person’s profile. Though it is not positioned as a tool for social CRM reps, I think it’s an essential tool for those that run a company’s social media accounts as often contact can pass from a social channel to email, especially if processing a query and this helps to keep everything in one place.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a much more advanced social CRM tool that is developed specifically to address the needs of companies that offer customer service through social networks. It is still a very affordable option, with individual accounts from $9 per month and company accounts from $49 per month. Sprout Social offers a solution both for monitoring social media to find potential customers, and tools to manage existing communications. These include a simple dashboard which shows you a stream of updates mentioning your brand term.

But as well as solutions in managing your connections, Sprout Social offers some nice functionality that introduces you to potential new connections and customers, through a sophisticated search tool that searches through people’s public information such as interests and profile descriptions. This feature is particularly nice for those customer service teams that don’t just want to react to messages sent to them, but to have more of a handle on the wider social media conversation and how they can find new people to talk to.

How Linkedin Is Starting To Weave Itself In To Fabric Of Web

Niall Harbison — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 22:15:16 +0000

We all know the success that Facebook has had by introducing the like button and Facebook connect to extend it’s reach beyond it’s own site and now Linkedin seems to be trying to replicate that move with it’s own new initiatives. I’ve been impressed with the strides Linkedin have been making in recent months especially around improved design of their site and new features that benefit businesses. As Linkedin ramps up it revenues and heads towards an IPO within the next year or so it needs to continue it’s growth beyond it’s own site and become part of the fabric of the web and that looks like what it is starting to do…

Using Linkedin To Sign In To Sites

Facebook connect has been hugely successful because it leverages the information you already have on Facebook and again Linkedin have started to offer the same functionality to developers who want to add the ability to log in to their sites using your Linkedin account. Read more about the early days of it here.

Linkedin Widgets

Linkedin has just partnered up with CNN money to start rolling out widgets like the one below matched up against company profiles (You can see an example profile here). It’s handy to find people in your network who work at those companies and crucially a new follow button allows you to follow those companies in the same way that you would on Twitter.

Sharing Buttons On Business Sites

Nothing new or innovative about the sharing button that Linkedin have launched that pretty much copies the Twitter version but it is starting to appear on more and more business related sites around the web. I’m not going to share very much content back in to Linkedin but having the button on very business focused sites does make a lot of sense. IT’s all part of making Linkedin more real time and that can be seen on the site itself where the stream of information and links that you see whn you first log in seems to be literally coming alive and becoming a useful stream of business related information.

Perfect Strategy

It’s early enough days in this strategy for Linkedin but there are the things that worked to such great success for Facebook over the last 18 months. Linkedin is never going to have the same reach as Facebook but integrating trusted information from your network in to 3rd party sites could be massively useful. Being able to log in to business sites using Linkedin is even more powerful and then pushing content back from those sites to my business contacts on Linkedin itself makes it the perfect virtual circle. Once developers start hacking stuff together and users get used to these new features it will certainly help Linkedin weave in to the fabric of the web.