Mediaboss Marketing

July 17, 2012

Consumer-to-consumer social marketing software provider Extole announced July 17 the launch of its next generation C2C platform, says Angela Bandlow, VP of marketing at Extole.

The revamped suite includes full support for Facebook Open Graph, new social expressions and more advanced social analytics, according to a company release.

The Facebook Open Graph enablement allows brands to utilize consumer stories that are then broadcasted across Facebook to the consumers and to their friends' timelines and newsfeeds.

The Facebook Open Graph system gives consumers the opportunity to tell their story, which brands can now do at scale, Bandlow says.

Extole's social expressions tool gives users the ability to move beyond the catchall of like to create their own custom verbs, such as want crave and need, Bandlow notes. The advanced social analytics tool provides ROI information to brands, according to Extole's release.

Our goal is to tie in website with social channels and customer communications, Bandlow says. Our new thing is social expression, but any customers can take advantage of our platform.

Extole has a customer base of over 250 brands. The company worked with companies such as T-Mobile, Vogue, and Folica during a roughly four month beta period, says Bandlow. During this time we were able to find what was working and what wasn't based on their feedback.

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Extole launches next generation C2C social marketing platform

Political actors can benefit from more from targeted social marketing than email blasts. Monitoring supporters and rewarding higher-clout followers can do well to spread a political groups message and educate voters.

While Internet users continue to use traditional digital communications like email, brands have much more valuable tools to succeed.Social media engagement tool Attentive.lygives non-profits, political campaigns and businesses the means to monitor their social buzz, identify potential brand evangelists and micro-target supporters. By learning more about their supporters, clients of this service from Fission Strategycan more effectively encourage posts and offer rewards. Such a product will be extremely topical in this presidential election year, when many types of organizations will be projecting a message and listening to the public.

Helping organizations transition from email lists to social media

Most organizations and political groups (or even businesses) still use emails as their main channel engage with supporters and citizens. Fission Strategy partner Rosalyn Lemieux tells lAtelier that organizations and administrations have resources invested in their email list and are hesitant to use it less in favor of social media. Attentive.ly serves to lower this barrier by making use of the hard earned email list to populate their new social monitoring campaign, she explains. Users of the service import email addresses, connect their social accounts and create groups for specific topics, such as activists and donors, and can then monitor and search supporter posts.

Lets them identify supporters and empower voters

Monitoring social networks can reveal not only who is posting about a client, but what their related interests are. As Lemieux explains to lAtelier, When youre focused as an organization, sometimes you miss what your supporters are focusing on. Instead of emailing a single message, Attentive.ly helps its clients connect with supporters by looking at individual profiles instead of aggregating data. This could do much for political groups that are hoping to encourage voter registration and participation. While technology has always been affecting democracy, social networks are particularly effective because people react to social pressure to register and go [vote] Lemieux argues. Attentive.ly wants to make scalable tools available that empower a market to bring about social change.

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Switching from emails to social marketing could benefit political actors

Oracle recently announced its plans to buy social marketing startup Involver soon after the acquisition of social marketing vendor Vitrue in May. This move, according to reports, is an add up to its growing collection of customer service software aimed at the social media.

Oracle is not the first company to jump on the social media bandwagon. Many of the major vendors worldwide are aspiring to take a lead in this relatively new market domain -- Social media. Today, analysis of social media traffic is an in-demand, niche area in the real-time analytics market. Research firm IDC states that demand for enterprise social software will grow strongly in the coming years, as more organizations implement the products to improve collaboration and communication primarily among employees, but also with customers.

Following the market scenario, major IT vendors have made big or small acquisition to boost up their social media arsenal around various technologies and verticals. Here are some of them --

Salesforce.com: Targets Social Enterprises

This cloud-computing giant said Monday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Canadian shared-browsing technology startup, GoInstant, that provides co-browsing and social experience for enterprise customers and consumers.

There is a tremendous potential for social enterprises to benefit from what the GoInstant has built, particularly when combined with salesforce.com's industry-leading social, mobile, and open apps and technology, Marcel LeBrun, senior vice president at Salesforce.com said in a blog post.

Microsoft: Securing Social Network

Microsoft announced its definitive agreement to acquire Yammer, a leading provider of enterprise social networks, for $1.2 billion in cash.

Launched in 2008, Yammer now reportedly has more than 5 million corporate users, including employees at 85 percent of the Fortune 500. Yammer's service will allow employees to join a secure, private social network for free and then makes it easy for companies to convert a grassroots movement into companywide strategic initiative.

IBM: Intelligence into Social Networks

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Major IT Vendors Aiming at Social Media Through New Acquisitions

Votigo's new social marketing suite includes a promotions manager from which marketers can launch photo and video contests, sweepstakes, and other promotional apps in multiple languages across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networks. It works in both the mobile environment and the Web.

Votigo has debuted a full-fledged social marketing suite that builds around its original core functionality of social promotions.

The 6-year-old company is offering a price point that is reasonable for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as functionality that can scale to enterprise level fairly easily, Mike La Rotonda, co-CEO and founder, told CRM Buyer.

"We have extended our engagement apps and added a full conversation manager that allows you to monitor the conversation from your customers across the social channel," he said. "You can post messages out to Twitter and Facebook and can see what people are responding to."

The company is also rolling out a social CRM feature set, which in its first iteration will focus on managing social contacts.

"Longer term," La Rotonda said, "we envision that platform plugging into other CRM products such as Salesforce.com or Sugar CRM."

The suite includes a number of features. Chief among them is a promotions manager from which marketers can launch photo and video contests, sweepstakes, and other promotional apps in multiple languages across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networks. It works in both the mobile environment and the Web.

The promotions manager touches on the full promotion cycle: from creating the apps, to sharing and publicizing them to social audiences, to moderating submissions and fan commentary.

Another feature is the conversation manager, which serves as an interface to manage two-way conversations with fans on social media.

Besides managing social contacts, the social CRM piece includes features that track engagement and influence, and target special offers and communications. There is also analytics functionality, allowing users to measure and assess campaigns across the various social media platforms -- and email as well.

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Votigo Ventures Into Full-Scale Social Marketing

Oracle Corp. has announced the acquisition of a social marketing firm. San Francisco-based Involver, founded in 2007, offers tools for developers to create advertising campaigns on social media networks such as Facebook. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"Companies are looking to harness the full potential of social media to increase brand loyalty, connect with potential customers and anticipate buyers' needs," Oracle noted.

Oracle, an enterprise software provider, has aggressively fleshed out its social media capabilities in recent months, beginning in May with a deal for Vitrue, a social media engagement service. The following month, Oracle acquired Collective Intellect, a social media analytics company.

Even though Facebook's troubled IPO in May cast some doubt over consumer social media, deals in the enterprise sector have continued at a scorching pace.

Salesforce.com snapped up social media advertising firm Buddy Media in a $689 million tie-up in June, while Microsoft acquired workplace collaboration software maker Yammer for $1.2 billion in July.

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Oracle buys social marketing firm