Yesterday, we introduced "Grilling the Gurus," with our inaugural post centering on Tagboard and its CEO Josh Decker. Today, we kick off "Rapid Fire Reviews", in which we'll break down social media tools in a fast, fun and filling manner.
In crafting this series I chose to believe that you, dear reader, are like me in two crucial ways. First, a blog post typically captures your attention for exactly 2.5 minutes before a shiny little listicle, or a crazy cat video ushers you even further down the path of the World Wide Rabbit Hole. Second, you like food; food keeps your attention.
While I can't physically feed you all, I can write posts that get to the heart of the matter quickly, and keep you satisfied with talk of nachos. That's right, nachos.
Let me show you how it works. Each Monday, Rapid Fire Reviews will feature a tl;dr analysis of a different social media tool, with the ultimate judgment being a score based on Social Media Today's proprietary nacho scale.
A cynic might note that the nacho scale is really just a 1-5 scale dressed up with chips and cheese. However, what you might not know is that "cynic" roughly translates to "s/he who doesn't like nachos" in the parlance of our times. So I think you know exactly how much stock you should put in the cynic's snide commentary.
Now that we have that established, let's dive into the first rapid fire review and evaluate how Tagboard fares on the nacho scale.
The Tagboard Review
By reputation alone, you probably already know that Tagboard is delicious. Your friends, sports franchises and the Fortune 500 alike have already dabbled in Tagboard, finding the results tasty and satisfying. The praise is well-deserved.
The tool itself is elegantly simple, designed around the premise that hashtags should be searchable across social media networks. While there are plenty of hashtag tools that show hashtag uses on Twitter, Tagboard gives a much richer look at conversations by providing cross-network results (including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Vine and Flickr).
It's easy to use: simply head to tagboard.com, enter a hashtag of your choosing and off you go--while also being visually appealing. This latter attribute is where so many social media tools trip up. Coming up with a good idea for a tool is the first step, but best-in-class tools like Tagboard take the giant leap from helpful tool, to intuitive interface. Tagboard gets both form and function right.
So it looks good and it works well, but how can it work for you?
When I'm not being a misfit on SMToolbox Island, I'm a PR pro who has the occasion to do both proactive and reactive work. Tagboard is useful in both cases. In a proactive sense, you can buy a Tagboard to showcase at a particular event. You know those big screens at football games and concerts that highlight tweets from fans? Chances are those function with a tagboard. You see the same thing at industry conferences and gatherings. It works because tagboards both create and showcase buzz (nothing motivates people to tweet more than the possibility of showing up on the big screen).
Reactively, Tagboard can be used as a monitoring tool that allows users to track conversations cross-platform. This is useful for PR pros, journalists, brand managers or basically anyone who cares about how a topic or brand is being portrayed on social media. Not only can you see individual uses of a particular hashtag, Tagboard also provides trending and sentiment data as well.
A tool can be useful, intuitive and visually appealing, but still fall short because the problem it solves is too narrow; its use too niche. This isn't the case with Tagboard, which provides a novel solution to a real problem (the anarchy of hashtags). In days ahead, I expect Tagboard's value to grow as it becomes increasingly ubiquitous in our social media work and play.
Final verdict:
There's no sense in being bashful right out of the gate: I'm scoring Tagboard "Nachos AND a drink"- the highest possible score for a social media tool.
Well done, Josh and the Tagboard team.
Who's next? Contact me @rossrichendrfer with ideas.