'Net Features : Weekend Warrior 32

Raising Awareness with Social Media Scoring

Pete Prestipino — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 01:30:00 GMT

Social media marketing software provider Awareness Networks has released a new version of its Social Marketing Automation suite which allows brand marketers to identify, store and… here it comes… rank prospects across social networks based on scoring criteria that they define.

Three specific components are at the core of the updated solution – social prospecting (for identifying those outside of a brand’s established audience), an automated social profile database (which populates in real-time and offers a rich profile of social media prospects), and social scoring.

The latter is really the most noteworthy addition, and makes Awareness one of the few (if not the only) providers of SMM solutions to offer the ability for its users to analyze and apply weighted scores to social profiles.

The “scorecards” that are ultimately developed prove useful for identifying prospects and sending targeted messaging – either through Awareness’ Hub or by integrating the information into a CRM, marketing automation or email management system.

“Mining through millions of data points across all social networks is next to impossible for existing marketing automation and CRM providers,” adds Dave Carter, CTO and founder of Awareness, Inc. “Our new Social Marketing Automation suite bridges the gap for these marketing applications by empowering marketers to grow the effectiveness of their systems while avoiding all the social noise.”

Awareness currently works with leading brands and marketing agencies including MLB, Comcast, Likeable Media, Raidious, American Cancer Society, Tiger Woods Foundation, The Carlsberg Group, Mindjumpers, Nuance, DemandWare, and Trend Micro.

Responsive Web Design Bookmarklet

Pete Prestipino — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 22:30:00 GMT

Responsive Web design (RWD) is on the mind of every ‘net worker – from designers and developers, to Internet advertisers and search marketers too.

The benefits of RWD are well documented, but whenever there is a new technology to explore, or even just a new way to do digital work, the tools and resources that make it truly useful (and even fun) are often slow to emerge. But emerge they do.

Case in point is Victor Coulon’s new (and free) RWD Bookmarklet.

With the bookmarklet installed (just drag the link to your browser’s bookmarks bar), visit any website and click the RWD bookmarklet link. A toolbar will then load where designers/developers can select a typical tablet and mobile resolutions and see if the site is responsive or test out new designs to see how well they render on different devices.

Browsers: Chrome Rules, IE Steady, Firefox Falls

Pete Prestipino — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 19:30:00 GMT

According to recently released data from traffic measurement service provider StatCounter, the Chrome browser now accounts for more than one-third of the browser market worldwide.

Statcounter is reporting Chrome's global market share to be 33.8 percent, up from 32.8 percent fin June and from 22.1 percent July 2011.

Despite Chrome's continued rise, IE remains strong with a 32 percent share of the browser market. Firefox however didn't fare so well in July. The browser is losing ground and now accounts for 23.7 percent. Apple's Safari browser came in fourth with 7.1 percent global market share.

What purpose does this information serve? Designers and developers in particular pay close attention to these types of reports as it enables them to understand global browser usage so design changes can be prioritized. For example, reading this data, a designer might opt to fix bugs in Chrome first, then IE and Firefox.

The Most Popular Social Media Management Systems

Allison Howen — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 16:30:00 GMT

Although we all know the large audience that businesses can potentially reach through a strong social media campaign, one of the biggest complaints from professionals is that this marketing channel is too time consuming to manage and monitor.

And while social media may be time consuming, there are many tools available that can help ease the commitment of posting content to multiple networks on a regular basis. In fact, many brands leverage some type of social media management dashboard to help with their social media campaigns.

Until now, we weren’t sure which social dashboards are the most popular among the Web’s top brands. However, a new survey from Pingdom reveals which social media management systems (SMMS) are the most used among 96 of the world’s top brands, including Coca-Cola, Google, IBM and McDonalds.

The study took a look at the last 20 tweets from each brand, and then examined which tools were used to post each status update. And the most popular social media management system is...

HootSuite!

The survey reveals that 20 percent of the examined brands use HootSuite, including H&M, eBay, UPS and IBM. The second most popular SMMS with 16 percent of the examined brands leveraging its services is TweetDeck, followed by 9 percent who use SocialEngage. However, one of the study's most interesting finds reveals that 28 out of the 96 examined accounts didn't use any SMMS for posting tweets.

Other survey findings show that the examined brands used a total of 42 different apps to post tweets, including Instagram which is becoming an increasingly popular posting alternative. Additionally, it is important to note that some accounts actually use more than one SMMS to post updates from. For example, @ciscosystems tweets from Crowdbooster, Tweetdeck, StockTwits, Sprinklr and Twitter’s website.

Which social media management system do you use? Let us know in the comments section below.

FreshDesk Launches HTML5 App for Mobile Customer Support

Administrator — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 13:30:00 GMT

Social customer service platform Freshdesk is bringing its help desk solution to mobile devices. The company’s new FreshMobile HTML5 mobile app enables supports teams to manage their help desk from both iOS and Android devices.

The FreshMobile app from Freshdesk allows support agents to create, save and reuse templates for replying to tickets - really useful as typing on a mobile device can be excruciatingly painful. Perhaps most unique in the FreshMobile app is the Solution Suggest feature, which suggests likely solutions from a client’s knowledge base.

“With customer support increasingly being viewed as an integral business function, help desks need to be able to resolve issues as they happen, no matter what time of the day,” says Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshdesk. “With FreshMobile, support teams can be connected and solve customer issues in real-time, without being tied down to their desks.”