Brands are flocking to social media to extend and strengthen their relationships with consumers. But while many are happy to work with the flood of analytics information coming from their activity on social networks, some want more than just data and web monitoring tools. They want guidance and recommendations.
That’s the bet of Crowdbooster, a Y Combinator start-up, which is publicly launching a new social media optimization platform today that pairs analytics with tailored recommendations about how to employ social media. The company, which counts the Los Angeles Times, JetBlue and Ben and Jerry’s as customers, is looking to stand out by telling customers what to do and when. And it just raised an undisclosed seed round from some respectable names to expand its business.
Crowdbooster, which has been in private beta since November, will now surface the most popular links and find the best content for cross-posting based on content and fit for a certain audience. And it will tell customers when the best times to tweet and post are. It will notify customers when influential users according to Klout follow them and will allow customers to respond to missed tweets and thank engaged users all from one dashboard. Ricky Yean, co-founder and CEO of Crowdbooster, said the recommendations get smarter over time as customers use it more.
“Social media managers frequently suffer from information overload, preventing them from effectively engaging with priority customers. Analytics provide significant insight, but they are simply not enough,” says Yean. “Our customized recommendations surface the best content to share and suggests when to publish for maximum exposure.”
The new recommendation features work alongside Crowdbooster’s other analytics tools, which tracks the effectiveness of outreach on Facebook and Twitter. Crowdbooster graduated from Y Combinator in the summer of 2010 and has just secured a seed round from investors including Steven Chen, co-founder of YouTube, Esther Dyson, Charles River Ventures, Quest Venture Partners, StartupAngel and others.
Crowdbooster is just one of many companies like Hootsuite and Socialflow trying to capitalize on the opportunity in social media marketing. Some like Socialflow are also are putting more intelligence into social media marketing tools, helping explain when they most effective times are to target users with the right message. This is where social media monitoring is going, from analytics to a lot smarter decision-making for customers.