Shoutlet, an enterprise social management software company that recently released a new trigger-based version of its social media marketing software, and was recently dubbed the perfect Valentine's Gift for Social Media Marketing Mavens by Anthony Wing Kosner, unveiled another tool in its growing arsenal at SXSW.
It's called Smart Content Publishing and I asked Shoutlet CEO Jason Weaver to explain just what it means to marketers, where he sees the future of Shoutlet and why he chose SXSW as the platform to announce the latest news.
What is Shoutlet announcing today at SXSW and why is it important?
We're very happy to be announcing new mobile optimization and social segmentation enhancements called "Smart Content Publishing." Marketers have long been frustrated by a mobile experience that wasn't as powerful as what consumers encountered on their desktop. We've added functionality that allows brands to create custom content that will automatically be served based on the end user's device.
And secondly, we've taken that delivery one step further by allowing brands to segment the delivery of that content based on a variety of geographic, demographic, and psychographic factors stored in Social Profiles. Different versions of web pages, Facebook tabs, and web apps can be served to users on Facebook and websites seamlessly. This level of personalization and hyper-relevancy in social media marketing is unheard of.
Do you have to be a designer or know HTML to use Shoutlet?
Absolutely not. That's the beauty of Shoutlet - it's designed to be used by anyone within the marketing department. The new powerful Social Canvas tool is a WYSIWYG editor to easily create content like Facebook Tabs, web pages, and HTML5 web apps. It's been called "Photoshop for the Web" because of its creative power and simplicity.
Give us an example of something marketers could not do but now can thanks to Shoutlet 5.0. and the new features being unveiled today.
Imagine if a marketer could sit down and build totally interactive designs using dozens of building blocks, ranging from video players to polls to contests. Then, s/he can schedule that content (plus many other types of posts) to publish when pre-defined actions- and/or time-based triggers are met. Those designs are published to Facebook tabs, HTML5 web pages, or their own site, while different versions of that content display to different segments of their audience. Being able to execute this in one tool, plus track everything and manage hundreds of accounts across the globe, is just not available anywhere else. I'm proud to say we're the only way brands can achieve all this today.
Shoutlet seems to be gaining a lot of momentum, and doing things that others in the space aren't. What are your long-term plans for growth?
Our business is exploding. We had high hopes for the company when we started it in 2010, but have been amazed by just how successful we've been. Triple-digit growth in customers and our own staff all point to that momentum continuing - which is incredibly exciting. The quality and sheer number of brands that have adopted our technology tells us that we're focusing on the right things.
As always, we'll continue to pour everything we have into keeping the product innovative and current, while moving beyond what's hot now and developing what we predict marketers will be demanding in 6-12-18 months from now.
Lastly, what is it about SXSW that makes for the perfect combination of social technology and early adopters?
It really is interesting, isn't it? I guess when the world's most influential, digitally savvy people all gather in one place at one time to battle-test a deluge of new products, technology, and ideas - the most clever, well-executed ones rise to the top. It's fascinating to participate every year and we're very pleased to be a part of it all again this year.
If you're at SXSW and want to learn more about Smart Content Publishing be sure to track down Jason while he's there or reach him via Twitter at @shoutlet.
Named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review, Steve Olenski is a freelance writer/blogger currently looking for full-time work. He has worked on some of the biggest brands in the world and has over 20 years experience in advertising and marketing. He lives in Philly and can be reached via email,Twitter, LinkedIn or his website.