The ever-growing world of social media management systems continues to blur the lines of categories of platforms. We’ve discussed before the consumer desire for all these tools to get their feature sets together and provide us with an all-in-one digital marketing place. But in the race to make big brands happy on Facebook, we’re left having to piece meal software together to do what we want.

Shoutlet took a nice step forward recently with the addition of something they call the “Switchboard” that integrates a bit of marketing automation with social media management. Instead of setting Tweets or Facebook posts and the like to fire at certain times or days, using Shoutlet you can now set them to send based on events or triggers.

Reach 10,000 fans on Facebook? System fires a celebratory coupon to the fans or can even fire off an email to your newsletter list (if integrated with your email marketing provider).

This pairs nicely with Shoutlet’s above-average content management system, which includes iTunes, video and other platforms beyond Facebook and Twitter. Integrating conditions and triggers into your messaging helps automate some (we wouldn’t recommend all) communications and lighten the labor load here. Of course, the people who need the automation most can’t afford tools that perform the function, but for those that can, it makes life easier.

Another of Shoutlet’s new features is a beautifully done content creation place called “Canvas.” It makes a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor look like a bike next to a Harley. It makes creating a Facebook tab or landing page for a coupon uber easy. You have to upload your base creative, of course, but the tool makes it easier for a non-designer/developer to churn out good looking stuff.

Shoutlet’s customer relationship management functionally is a bit more robust than others in the space, too. You can develop a series of communications and target those messages to only reach 25-year-old men in Wyoming that have two or more kids and the messages will segment on the social networks provided the network identifies those data sets.

Like a few of its SMMS brethren, Shoutlet can help a company manage hundreds of accounts under the brand umbrella and make customized content to them reasonable. They’re a very attractive tool for agencies and firms providing marketing services to companies because of the multiple account management feature.

Honestly, I’ve always found Shoutlet to be far more intuitive and well designed, from a user-experience standpoint, than most other SMMS platforms. This makes it a favorite among community manager types who tend to be the actual end user.

Shoutlet will run you about $20K per year to use (roughly $1,700 per month) but there are some small business partnerships the company has with resellers that can reduce that amount. The best bet is to do a product demo and have them route you that way if you’re interested. The lower price does come with a few features removed, but the core SMMS functionality is there.

If you’re looking for a social media management system, Shoutlet is certainly deserving of a look-see. It’s reasonably priced, easy to use and pretty powerful.

Disclosure: Shoutlet is a regular advertiser on Social Media Explorer. This post was not, however, inspired by their advertising on SME, but rather the new features they’ve launched.

February 29th might be known as Leap Day every 4 years, but today it takes on another meaning with the launch of Leap for the iPhone.  As a graduate of The Brandery in 2011, Leap is a pretty remarkable company.  They entered the program as Wellthy, but ended up pivoting midway through.  Today that pivot comes to life and I couldn’t be more excited for what the team has accomplished.

So what is Leap exactly?

Leap lets you create challenges with your friends and compete by snapping photos and earning points.  Whatever your interests are, there is a challenge that you can create on Leap to help you reach your goals, motivate your friends to try new things, eat healthier meals, or get the most out of your Friday night.  Leap comes with filled with fun challenges from Hipster Hunt, where you compete by snapping photos of hipsters in your city, to Breakfast Champion, a simple challenge to make sure you eat the most important meal of the day.

Congrats to James Dickerson, Ryan Tinker and Nick Cramer, the three co-founders of Leap.  Be sure to head over to the App Store to download Leap and wish them a happy #leapday on Twitter.

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My partner Aaron Marshall and I joked one day about doing some research for our upcoming industry reports product (first one launches very soon) around what women are talking about online in terms of purchasing items and calling the report, “That’s What She Said.” It got a good laugh, even though both of us then thought seriously about the project. Then I hopped on a call with Visible Technologies to chat about doing a webinar with them and I rolled out that topic as the idea.

They loved it.

Last week, Jennifer Rodriguez and Carly Wilcox from Visible Technologies and I presented “What She Said: How Women’s Social Conversations Impact Buying Intent and Purchasing Behavior” — a webinar that looked into what the fairer sex talks about when mentioning products and services online. We looked into the last quarter of 2011, shaped greatly by holiday shopping, and were able to pull out some interesting insights about what industries, verticals and topics arise when women are chatting online with purchase intent in mind.

Keep in mind that an hour-long webinar only allowed us to scratch the surface. The data we uncovered is but the first two or three layers of insights the research could uncover. But for those of you who market to women (and that’s most of you if we understand our statistics and buying power correctly) this event should be of great use for you.

Here’s the replay. The password for the Private Video is whatshesaid – one word, lower case:

What do you think about the information we found? Obviously, for your brand you would need to dive deeper into specific conversations, follow a few paths of thinking and the like. But it’s interesting to see where some of the topics overlap, how forums and blogs tend to dominate the conversation and more.

For more on Visible Technologies, a sponsor of SME’s Explore event series, hop over to VisibleTechnologies.com and sign up for a demo!

It isn’t difficult to put together a strategy to convert fans and followers into something you actually own — email subscribers. But too many are putting the effort on the backburner in favor of figuring out a new popular social network. Converting fans and followers to email subscribers is just smart. The benefits exceed those found with preserving your investment in social activity. The benefits are also found in what you do with the email database on an on-going basis.

Here are three reasons you should start taking email acquisition seriously and make it one of your top goals for 2012.

Your Social Network is Going to Be Replaced

Have you stopped to think about what would happen to your corporate investment in social media if Facebook disappeared tomorrow? What about Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+? As marketers we have spent countless hours growing our corporate following on these networks and many have even dedicated significant portions of their budget to the effort hoping to deliver a positive return on investment (ROI).

The reality is that web users are fickle and if these networks don’t stay on top of innovation they will be replaced. Think it seems unimaginable? Just look at how MySpace scoffed at Facebook in the beginning. Clearly, that was a bad move and the company suffered. They have laid off well over half of its workforce and got acquired by Specific Media for $35 million, a huge loss for NewsCorp who purchased MySpace for $580 million in 2005.

It’s kind of scary when you think about it. Can you imagine walking into your board meeting and saying, “Well who would’ve thought people would abandon Facebook? We don’t have any way to contact our fans now that they are over on ‘the new network.’ We’ll have to start over.”

I’m just imagining that the conversation wouldn’t go very well. You don’t own your fan’s and follower’s contact information and, therefore, you are at the mercy of the social network.Rather than waiting for the inevitable, it’s time to prepare and make sure you have adequately protected your social media investment.

You are More Likely to Deliver Positive ROI with an Integrated Email Strategy

If you want to convert more online leads from the social media channel it is absolutely critical to have a strong email follow-up strategy. Followers don’t convert into customers on Twitter because Twitter doesn’t sell your product or services. The path to conversion I’ve seen frequently is that the lead comes through a social media network, but tends to actually convert through another marketing channel like email or organic search, down the road. If you find a way to organically collect email addresses in exchange for social media content you can actually help drive the sales process with timely and relevant messaging.

When someone provides their email in exchange for content, just remember they have said they are interested in your CONTENT not your PRODUCT. Therefore, you’ll need the right email strategy to make sure you are taking care of social media leads because they are typically earlier in the buying process. Use these tips to avoid killing the social media sale.

Relationships Start on Social Media but are Fostered in the Inbox

Following a Twitter account or liking a page on Facebook doesn’t really say much about the level of relationship you have with the brand. I mean yeah, we like you because we’ve decided to pay attention to what you have to say, but we’ve done it on a network where we choose when we want to engage and you can’t really pester me. On a social network I control my engagement with the brand. However, think about the different level of intimacy that goes into providing a brand with your email address. Here’s what my process typically looks like. Do I want to receive on-going information from the company before I type my email address in the box.

As you can see, this is also about more than just getting the email address. It is about delivering tremendous value so you get the “right” email address and then sending messages that are relevant and high value to the audience. Matt Grant from MarketingProfs said it best:

“Ask yourself whether or not your audience would pay for your marketing content, if not, it’s not good enough.”

It’s time to start recognizing that the success of your social media effort is dependent on your success in generating email subscriptions. If you do this well you will be able to convert more social media leads, generate stronger relationships and keep your customers happier while finally showing a true ROI for your social media program.

“Your email marketing database is like gold. It has tremendous value and better yet, you own it. You don’t own Facebook or Twitter or Google+. If those social media sites change their permissions or disappear altogether, you’ll likely lose access to your list of friends/followers/fans you’ve grown over the years. But not email addresses. Those are yours to keep, yours to take with you from platform to platform.

Email addresses are the currency of the web. Use can use your email list to nurture prospects through the sales funnel as well as keep your current customers, clients, and fans informed on what’s happening in your business. Most importantly, an email marketing list can easily be segmented to best target specific groups. While it’s certainly possible to segment your social media followers, it’s a lot more difficult.” DJ Waldow of Waldo Social

What do you think? How do you use email marketing to support your social media efforts? Do you have a great example to share? Please leave comment and join the conversation.

Related articles

• 9 Ways to Integrate Email and Social Media Marketing (socialmediaexaminer.com)
• 3 Social Media Strategies For the Email Marketer (aweber.com)
• Five Steps for Building Your Email and SMS Lists via Social Media (marketingprofs.com)
• Is Email More Important than Social Media? (kylelacy.com)
• The Importance of a Timely Email (waldosocial.com)

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Approximately 99.6 percent of the pitches I get from public relations folks are about social media campaigns their firm or client is launching. For whatever reason, they think we care. It’s not that we categorically do not, but that launching a campaign is not news. Finishing one and providing the metrics as a case study is normally pretty interesting, though.

Unfortunately, for competitive reasons, paranoia or simple ignorance, brands never want to share the back-end metrics on much. And alas, we’re left with few case studies that really help.

But every now and then, a launch comes along that is a case study in and of itself. And while I have some personal ties to this one (just that I’ve contributed voluntarily to the campaign and a friend is largely responsible for the content), I have to tell you what H&R Block is up to this spring. It is, quite frankly, a milestone in content marketing. A big, successful corporation is breaking the mold of its own, traditional voice and showing a ton of personality.

It’s a WOW moment that is seldom seen.

The accounting company has thrown its support behind the Million Stache March — a farcical political movement to bring a $250 tax credit to mustached Americans instigated by the American Mustache Institute. AMI is the brainchild of my friend Aaron Perlut who routinely dons a lab coat to appear on live, national television to advocate for the “plight” of the mustached American. Some media members take him seriously, even calling him “Dr. Perlut” despite the closest he’s ever come to being one is when his says, “Turn and cough.”

On April 1, the American Mustache Institute plans to march on Washington in an effort they admit will drive hundreds or thousands, “not likely millions,” toward Capital Hill to petition for the ‘Stache Act and the tax credit for what the organization calls more “sexually dynamic” Americans.

Every step of the way in this campaign, you just to laugh. It’s just fun and silly.

But H&R Block, not known (at least in my estimation) to be a fun or silly brand, is supporting the campaign. Not only because the tax credit thing plays right into what they do for people, but AMI’s content hits a critical target for H&R Block – men age 21-36 who need to be reminded of their tax deadline. All this happens on April 1 — just two weeks away from the big tax day.

Topping it all off is the fact H&R Bock will donate money for each ‘stache represented in the petition/march to Millions for One, a charitable organization that brings fresh drinking water to those around the world that don’t have access.

So there’s warm an fuzzy beyond the flavor saver!

The campaign features a Facebook application where you can ‘Stache yourself in support, which is also how you sign the petition. I’ve done it. Hell, it helps people get drinking water. Why wouldn’t you?

It’s all quite brilliant. So much so that I’ve invited Scott Gulbransen, H&R Block’s director of social media, to be my fireside chat guest at Explore Nashville. (Tickets go on sale soon. But rest assured, we’re going to talk about this campaign and how his brand donned a bit of personality this tax season.)

And, because both Scott and Aaron are friends and I think this campaign is uber cool — not to mention, I am a member of the segment of America that, according to AMI, is 38 percent better looking — I offered this to support the campaign and encourage folks to sign up!

When people like me talk about content marketing, about creating something outstanding that makes people jump back and say, “Holy Smokes!” this is what we’re talking about. H&R Block is doing something completely out of character by supporting the AMI effort to make some noise in jest about mustached Americans getting a tax credit. But it’s done with direct topical ties to the brand and direct connections to a key target audience for them. It makes perfect sense, but it’s also outstanding and unique.

Kudos to H&R Block for crossing that comfort zone and doing something outstanding. Now if the rest of us could learn from this, we could make our social media and content marketing much more attractive to our audiences.

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