Hundreds of social media sites are available with the click of a mouse. Despite the benefits of using social media, many companies lack the resources available to devote toward the management of their brands on social media accounts.
Steve Glynn, president of Milwaukee-based Spreenkler Creative, and developers Jonathan Yankovich, and Kevin Ciesielski are in the process of designing software to help companies that have a critical interest in social media conversation but do not have large amounts of time to invest in the process.
The product, SocialRuler, is almost ready to launch. SocialRuler is a product that will enable a user to stream search content from sites like Twitter, Flickr, Youtube and blog sites, to one central location.
“There were all of these companies coming to me who understand the emergence of social media, but don’t necessarily understand how to get involved and take the first step,” Glynn said. “The idea is to allow individuals to stream this content into one location, that would then allow them to generate graphs, charts, and reports related to the content.”
Spreenkler is a creative services firm.
According to Glynn, the first step for most companies is listening to what is being said and how other people are using it. SocialRuler will allow them to start listening by giving companies an intuitive view of what is being said on multiple sites in one convenient location.
“Companies will be able to feed individual words or phrases into the search mechanism, and the defined set of sites will then monitor and track all activity and conversations where those key words appear,” Glynn said.
Companies will be able to use the data gathered from SocialRuler to react to people’s perceptions of the product, educate consumers on the company or the product once they figure out what people are saying, and even use it to monitor what a competitor is doing or to decide where best to direct their marketing dollars based on where the conversation is taking place.
“There are endless possibilities for companies,” Glynn said. “They are able to measure feedback from their key words over a constant time period, or they can observe conversations after they issue a press release, or make a strategic decision to decide where they need to go from there.”
Glynn envisions elected officials using the product during elections to receive real-time feedback from their constituents. He envisions companies using the data they have gathered to identify brand ambassadors or learn how to prepare for certain events.
The product is still in its developmental stages, but Glynn hopes to roll out a beta form locally in the near future.
“We have a couple agencies already interested in using the product for some of their clients,” Glynn said. “We are definitely marketing it towards the enterprise level group or company.”
Spreenkler lead designer Dawn Zimmerman is in charge of designing the user interface for the product.
According to Glynn, the product will be released as a Web-based service and will most likely be available at the elementary level for free. A higher “pro” version will then be available for a monthly subscription price that will give companies the ability to have more services, including the potential for mobile updates, customizable layouts and additional report services.
