SocialTalk from Syncapse

What is it: An enterprise level social media management tool that includes reporting around your social media efforts.

What Sites Does It Manage: Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Movable Type (YouTube shortly)

What I Like About the Product: The real selling point of this product is the workflow it creates within an organization. For example let’s say that you need to have managerial or legal approval for every piece of content you generate. (Think highly regulated industries.) After the post is crafted it can be submitted for approval, after the posts gets approved it can then be submitted for publishing, throughout the entire process there is commenting and communication about the post.

In the past working with different industries such as wine and spirits, this would have been a lifesaver instead of 100 e-mails to a legal department.

Additionally you can categorize your posts into different campaigns which I think helps with the management and reporting angle to this product. Especially with companies that have multiple products or locations.

From an agency standpoint you can brand the tool around your agency or around the client’s company. (This feature is included at no additional cost.) Also they include a branded URL shortener that you can use in your content.

What I Don’t Like About the Product: The biggest issue I have with the product  (and really this isn’t about the product as much as it is about the industry) is that so many enterprise companies don’t use the two blogging (WordPress and Movable Type) tools that are included in the product. (Even more so when they have communities built in.) Currently I am doing an evaluation of four specific tech companies for a client project and out of the 90 blogs that these companies have (employee and company branded) only a handful run on either platform.

(Don’t get me wrong I LOVE WordPress beyond belief and wish more of these companies were using it.)

This is the problem with a lot of enterprise software, which isn’t the fault of Syncapse. A lot of the white label community software doesn’t play nice with tools that make lives easier for people in the social media world. (Yet another selling point for WordPress.)

Related Articles:

• Creating a Social Media Command Center Using WordPress
• It’s All About Location, Location, Location?
• What is the ROI of Social Media? Part II
• What is the ROI of Social Media? Part I
• You Need to Protect the Content You Create
• How to evaluate and rank blogs in a niche
• On Google Buzz and the move towards better aggregation
• My Favorite WordCamp Boston Presentations
• My WordCamp Ignite Session
• Is Twitter about to crackdown hard on spammers?

So step one was to compile the list, step two is going to be review these tools. This is a rough first version, I am going to add the trial periods for the paid apps and a notation on what apps are free. (Additionally how they are grouped will probably change as well.) This is a solid start though.

Blog
blogpulse
blogsearch.google
customscoop
ewatch.prnewswire
technorati
trendpedia
yacktrack
Buzz
ekstreme
google trends
omgili
Commenting
backtype
General
addictomatic
alterian-social-media
amplifiedanalytics
analytics.postrank
attensity
attentio
biz360
brandchats
brandseye
brandtology
brandwatch
buzzgain
buzzient
buzzlogic
buzznumbershq
buzzstream
chartbeat
collecta
collectiveintellect
converseon
crimsonhexagon
customscoop
cyveillance
dialogix
digimind
dna13
dj insight
ecairn
echometrix
expertsystem
filtrbox
google alerts
herdthenoise
howsociable
icerocket
impactwatch
socialradar
integrasco
jamiq
jdpowerwebintelligence
jitterjam
kaleidico
listenlogic
looxii
marketsentinel
mediabadger
mediamiser
meteorsolutions
networkedinsights
nms
onalytica
oneriot
overtone
ovrdrv
radian6
raven-seo-tools
repumetrix
reputationhq
rightnow
samepoint
scoutlabs
socialsee
sentimentmetrics
socialmetrix
socialscape
socialtalk
spiral16
startpr
statsit
statsmix
swixhq
synthesio
sysomos
tealium
thesearchmonitor
thoughtbuzz
tracebuzz
trackur
trendrr
tribemonitor
ubervu
cision
linkfluence
viralheat
visibletechnologies
moreover
whitevector
whostalkin
cymfony
Message Boards
boardreader
omgili
boardtracker
Microblogging
twingly
Reputation
steprep
reputationdefender
Sentiment
generalsentiment
socialmention
Television
livedash
truveo
Tools with reporting
cotweet
spreadfast
bantamlive
Twitter
backtweets	Free
feeltiptop
insttant
klout
search.twitter	Free
topsy
tweetbeep
tweetmeme	Free
tweetreach	Free
tweetscan	Free
tweetstats	Free
twitrratr	Free
twitteranalyzer	Free
twittercounter	Free
twitturly	Free
wthashtag
monitter	Free
twazzup
tweetfeel	Free
tweetlytics	5 campaigns for $199
twilert
twitscoop
Twitter and Facebook
tinker
Video
visiblemeasures

Related Articles:

• The Outdoor Industry and Social Media
• On Moving To The Cloud
• Creating a Social Media Command Center Using WordPress
• How I Would Promote a Small Band Using Social Media
• You Need to Protect the Content You Create
• Hodge Podge of Tools
• Reputation Management and Monitoring Outline
• Don’t Dilute Your Brand
• It’s All About Location, Location, Location?
• You are open 24/7 how come your social media isn’t?

This week I finally sat down and did something about my inefficiencies. I combined, reorganized, and found myself moving a lot of my content to the cloud. (I know, I know, “the cloud” is marketing lingo.) Here is what I did:

E-Mail- I had five e-mail accounts going to three different sources. Two to different web mail accounts and three to my desktop e-mail client. While I had alerts coming into my browser from the online clients I recognized that having these three different sources for email was a complete waste. I decided to move all my e-mail into my Gmail account because I was starting to use Google Buzz a little more, I have a Palm Pre which links with Google products fairly well, and I wanted to get my stored e-mails off of my computer.

Concerns:

Backing my content up- Of course I am afraid that I could run into data loss or have my account arbitrarily deleted. Not having my data on my computer and on my backup drive does scare me a bit. I have been a customer of Backupify since they launched and felt okay with moving all my e-mail to the cloud because of it.

Signatures- One of the features I like about my desktop client is the ability to assign signatures to my various e-mail accounts. Gmail only allows for one signature, but there is a great browser extension in Wisestamp that allows for me to create multiple e-mail signatures for Gmail.

Bookmarks- I have used Xmarks for a long time and have always had a Delicious account. I realized that most of the time when I was bookmarking items they became a mess if I was putting them to Xmarks (I often didn’t organize these into folders). I decided that I should just move everything to Delicious and use that as my main bookmarking source. Besides making me organize my bookmarks better I can share this as content through various social media outlets.

Documents- I haven’t made the transition to Google Docs or anything like that. I am a slave to Microsoft Office products and it will be that way for the foreseeable future. One change I did make though is how I store these items. I have begun to use Dropbox (this is the only referral link I have ever used, when you sign up for free I get more storage for free) more and more as a data backup solution and as a replacement for my flash drive, as well as a way to share large files with my clients. Instead of using three different services: backup, file sharing device, and portable file storage I now have one tool to manage.

What tools are you using to make yourself more efficient?

Related Articles:

• You Need to Protect the Content You Create
• A List of Social Media Monitoring Tools
• Hodge Podge of Tools
• Don’t Dilute Your Brand
• It’s All About Location, Location, Location?
• The Outdoor Industry and Social Media
• You are open 24/7 how come your social media isn’t?
• Topic du jour: Chris Brogan and Scaling Your Personal Brand
• My Review of Crush It
• When should you start social media engagement?

JQuery in WP Presented by Jim Doran

His Blog- His Twitter- His Presentation Slides (.pdf download)

Session description: Using jQuery in your WordPress Theme. jQuery is a lightweight JavaScript framework that’s extremely popular with Web designers and developers. This session presents an overview of jQuery and how to start using it. I’ll walk through a case study that uses jQuery with a new, homemade WP theme and demonstrate layout techniques, animation effects, DOM manipulation and AJAX/JSON. This session will show beginners how to start using jQuery and how to begin making WordPress themes.

What I learned: I have taken and use some jQuery bits and pieces in the past but didn’t have a full understand of what it can do or the community behind it. This presentation broke down some jQuery, explained how it worked, and gave examples of how the presenter has deployed it.

The Future is Now: WP Themes With HTML 5 by Rob Larsen

His Blog- His Twitter- His Presentation Slides (.ppt download)

Session Description: Excited about HTML5? Wish you could start using the new semantic elements right now? You can. In this presentation Rob Larsen will show you how to create cross-browser, HTML5 enhanced WordPress themes using nothing more than a little extra JavaScript, basic WordPress knowledge and some knowledge of the new elements.

What I learned: You can start programming for HTML5 now and some of the major changes to it. Really interesting and a lot of great examples, specifically a recoded default WordPress theme done in HTML5 with the code in the slide show.

Get Thee Behind Me: Making BuddyPress Do Thy Bidding by Boone Gorges

His Blog- His Twitter-

Session Description: With BuddyPress, you can build your own social network on top of WordPress in just a few minutes. But every community is unique (freakish?) in its own ways, and BuddyPress’s default setup won’t work for everyone. Sometimes you want more than the standard BuddyPress, sometimes you want less, and sometimes you want something that doesn’t look social networkish at all. In this session I’ll talk about the structure of BuddyPress and how the parts work together. Then I’ll demonstrate a few examples of how you can use plugins, config files, and child themes to make BuddyPress work for your unique and freakish purposes.

What I learned: First of all Boone was just a fun speaker to watch: good-natured, good-humored, and really knowledgeable. I am really pumped about deploying BuddyPress to a single WordPress install and this made me feel a lot more comfortable with deployment as well as answering some questions I had about theming. I was so inspired I started an install and cloning a site for a friend the day after WordCamp.

Here are my favorite two Ignite Sessions:

Brad Williams – Top WordPress Plugins You’ve Never Heard Of

His Blog- His Twitter-

Session Description: Learn about the most amazing unheard of plugins that exist! Presentation will include 20 of the best plugins you’ve never heard of.

Michael Susz – Short Codes: Pain Free Magic

His Blog- His Twitter-

Session Description: Many people i meet are unaware that they can mix output from php functions into editable content in WordPress; from simple things like displaying the current date, to retrieving & formatting data and flowing it into a page. my talk will introduce people to short codes, explain how powerful they are, and how they can be customized with attributes.

Related Articles:

• My WordCamp Ignite Session
• Video of My WordCamp Chicago Presentation
• WordCamp Chicago Recap
• Creating a Social Media Command Center Using WordPress
• Matt Cutts: Google and What You Need To Know
• After the Deadline is pretty suite… I mean sweet
• SEO For WordPress Step Four: Implementing Your Strategy
• SEO For WordPress Step Three: Create Your Strategy
• SEO For WordPress Step Two: Do Your Research
• SEO For WordPress Step One: Determine Your Goals

Larger companies that can afford having a social media dashboard created for them tend to examine engagement, stats, mentions, and conceivably this examination leads to them  interacting more. I think the reason that people embrace this setup is related to the statements listed above. Basically users that don’t have to log into multiple different sites potentially will be more on top of their social media campaigns.

When working with clients that don’t have the ability to pay for a dashboard beyond the tools they are already using I like to leverage a pretty powerful tool they already have. WordPress through the use of plugins, can allow users to monitor and manage a portion of their social media presence all from one dashboard. While it isn’t as robust as a custom solution it is more than enough to help the average small business owner, active blogger, and marketing person in charge of social media along with other responsibilities.

Check Stats- Google Analytics Plugin

I have had a few clients that are completely interested in the general statistics of their website but feel overwhelmed by Google Analytics.  Even with some training they still would prefer to have their stats broken down in a much more digestible fashion. This plugin allows for a good overview of their analytics information including displaying goals that are set up within analytics. While it doesn’t offer everything that Google Analytics brings to the table it is more than enough for clients to see the overall health of their website and monitor where their traffic is coming from, what posts are popular, and how people are finding their website. Besides the dashboard stats overview this plugin gives a breakdown of traffic to each post which is a nice added bonus.

Engagement- Post Rank Plugin

I’ve only been using this plugin for a short time but have enjoyed the experience so far. The Post Rank Plugin allows you to add a handful of features to your WordPress website the most interesting being a dashboard that monitors engagement around your site. Like the analytics plugin this plugin gives you a breakdown per individual posts. This plugin really is a tease for their full analytics package but still gives a client interested in monitoring the pulse of their brand enough information.

Mentions- Configure Dashboard RSS Feeds

This requires a little bit of elbow grease and mapping out what you want to monitor but for clients that are completely adverse to checking a RSS reader and aren’t paying for monitoring software this is a great way to put the monitoring right in front of them. You can configure the news feeds coming into the WordPress dashboard around different monitoring feeds you have set up for clients. Personally I try and tend to keep the most important feeds front and center here instead of pushing everything through the dashboard.

Status updates- Twitter Tools

I am pretty picky when it comes to tools to use for Twitter. None of the WordPress plugins available really give the user the power of a stand-alone client or Hootsuite. However in the interest of giving a client the ability to do as many things in one place as possible you could install Twitter Tools which allows the user to Tweet directly from the dashboard, automatically posts new posts to Twitter, and a few other solid features. Through API configuration it is conceivable that you can use this to update Pingfm.

Facebook Updates- Facebook Dashboard Widget

Really all this is grabbing your Facebook feed information via RSS like I listed above.

The dashboard of your WordPress install is often overlooked when people talk about the power and customization potential WordPress brings to the table. Through plugins and customizing what is already available to you the dashboard can act as a pretty solid social media command center.

Related Articles:

• What is the ROI of Social Media? Part II
• What is the ROI of Social Media? Part I
• Product Review: Social Talk by Syncapse
• It’s All About Location, Location, Location?
• Thinking about creating a Facebook fan page? Don’t just jump in.
• SEO For WordPress Step Four: Implementing Your Strategy
• SEO For WordPress Step Three: Create Your Strategy
• SEO For WordPress Step Two: Do Your Research
• Is ESPN doing the right thing by cracking down on Twitter?
• SEO For WordPress Step One: Determine Your Goals

To be honest I had a lot of mixed emotions when I saw these two items here. I totally understand the need for these developers to monetize plugins on some level. Go look at the plugin pages and see the massive amount of comments on the plugin blog post/page or the forum. Development, support, and the overall maintenance of a plugin in someone’s spare time isn’t necessarily time well spent, especially on a volunteer basis. (Multiply the effort by 100 the more popular the plugin is.) I think a lot of people realize this after creating a plugin and that is why you see so many abandoned or taken over by another person. This is why when I have a plugin that I use often I make a donation to the developer, I can’t even wrap my head around the messages and comments they continually get.

Designers have been monetizing their themes for a while, Thesis, StudioPress, and many others have had a licensing model which people are happily paying for. (I have used StudioPress themes for a number of clients.) Additionally there have been some higher end plugins for WordPress like shopping cart programs that charge, which I understand because of their complexity. (Like some themes I have purchased some of these plugins for clients as well.)

What irked me a little bit was that these two plugins; All in One SEO Pack and XML sitemaps are pretty much “must haves” in any WordPress install. When I saw that they now had regular and pro versions I was a little put off. The idea that the public could potentially be losing a lot of the functionality they have come to expect for free was not a pleasant idea. When thinking about this change I had two major questions:

1) What are the main differences between the two?

Is the basic version going to lose any functionality that will become exclusive to the pro version? Will there be specific updates for just the pro version that you won’t see in the basic version? I don’t think the basic plugin site or the WP Plugin site are clear in addressing this at all. When I look at the product description on the WP Plugin website it looks like it just removes donation information and they will offer support for the product. The differences between the two versions really needs to be explained in a better fashion.

2) Licensing info… What are we getting for the money and is it worth it?

There isn’t information on the product pages about the licensing and there FAQ on their website. I did notice a blurb on their about page that explains it.

Here is what they say about the licensing:

Simply browse the site to find the plugins you want to use and then choose to either download them as one-offs (you get access to download the plugin for 7 days after you have bought it) or subscribe to them to get ongoing support, upgrades and more (for as long as your subscription lasts).

It’s that easy!

If you choose to download the plugin as a ‘one off’ you have unlimited downloads of that plugin for the following week.

If you choose to subscribe to the plugin you have ongoing access to the plugin, all updates to it and personalised help and support from the plugin author!

The way I understand it I can pay the download price and install this plugin as many times as a want for a week. But when updated pro versions (which we still don’t understand the feature set difference between the basic and the pro versions) come out past that week I can’t get updates because I am not subscribed to the plugin. Additionally I can’t get any support past that first week, which really isn’t my concern as much as the loss of functionality and the loss of being able to get critical upgrades.

If I do subscribe I get access to the support from the plugin developers themselves, I get an unlimited amount of downloads of the plugin, and get access to any updates.

So if I wanted to have both XML Sitemaps and All in One SEO Pack for my clients I would have to pay:

Download price All in One SEO- $69
Monthly subscription- $89 x 12= $1068
Download price XML Sitemaps- $69
Monthly subscription- $129 x 12= $1548

Total for both for the first year= $2754

For open source software that is money I would prefer not to spend unless I clearly understood what I was getting, what functionality I would be gaining, and the real benefits to me. If support is the main cost (if there is no difference in functionality other than removing the donate links) in this I think that the pricing is ridiculous. With some of the themes that I have purchased it is a flat rate lifetime pricing, I get access to any themes they develop and I get lifetime support. I think I have asked four questions on the support forum over the year I have had access to them, are four questions worth over $2,500?

If these “pro versions” are designed for companies deploying large WordPress installs or firms that push out dozens of websites a year without their client knowing this is open source software  I think the pricing is fair. Like I said I don’t begrudge someone for trying to make money but if I don’t know what I am spending my money on and if there is no clear reason to make the purchase it leads to confusion and a little bit of frustration.

What do you think about popular WordPress plugins going the paid route?

Related Articles:

• Product Review: Social Talk by Syncapse
• My Favorite WordCamp Boston Presentations
• My WordCamp Ignite Session
• Creating a Social Media Command Center Using WordPress
• Matt Cutts: Google and What You Need To Know
• After the Deadline is pretty suite… I mean sweet
• SEO For WordPress Step Four: Implementing Your Strategy
• SEO For WordPress Step Three: Create Your Strategy
• SEO For WordPress Step Two: Do Your Research
• SEO For WordPress Step One: Determine Your Goals

After the Deadline is a contextual spell checking plugin that is available for WordPress and TinyMCE that not only handles spelling issues in addition it offers advanced grammar and style checking. It offers these powerful features right from your WordPress installation and it has made my life all that much easier. When I was using it yesterday it looked like the accuracy of the plugin surpassed MS Word on a number of levels.

You can even give it a try right on the site.

I’m not one to openly gush about a product or tool. Usually I approach new things with a healthy dose of skepticism but this really is something I am excited about and wanted to share it. After the Deadline makes the WordPress platform so much easier to use. Moving in and out of Word for most of the clients I deal with is a major pain and it usually leads to problems. Installing this plugin doesn’t only improve performance it increases convenience.

Okay I am done gushing.

Related Articles:

• SEO For WordPress Step Four: Implementing Your Strategy
• SEO For WordPress Step Three: Create Your Strategy
• SEO For WordPress Step Two: Do Your Research
• SEO For WordPress Step One: Determine Your Goals
• My Favorite WordCamp Boston Presentations
• My WordCamp Ignite Session
• What is the ROI of Social Media? Part II
• What is the ROI of Social Media? Part I
• Creating a Social Media Command Center Using WordPress
• My Blog World Expo Presentation

Now I know it sounds all doom and gloom to think like that. And you are probably thinking that my Flickr account is pretty safe. However speaking from experience I know that I am at the mercy of these services. When I started out blogging I built a massive following on MySpace and wrote a ton of blogs posts on there. (Which I kept in multiple Word files thankfully.)

At one point I ran into a problem with a blogger (he became my stalker… long story) who complained to MySpace about my content and created a story about me leading to my account getting deleted without their customer service department contacting me. Of course I knew how to get accounts deleted and got his deleted in return, twice. The lesson that I learned though was that the status of anyone’s account on a social media site hangs by a thin wire and I shouldn’t get too attached to my content.

Recently my friend Rob May started a company called Lifestream Backup. Personally I was excited when I heard about the concept of the site and asked if I could get in on the beta testing of it. After waiting for the development to be done I finally got to trial the product and use it for the last month and I have to say that I love it. From one central place I can back up multiple social media accounts on Twitter, WordPress Blogs, Flickr, Delicious, Basecamp, Zoho, Google Docs, Photobucket, and soon Youtube and Facebook.

You can choose when your content gets backed up and what type of notification you receive. The best feature though is the multiple account features; I have multiple blogs, twitter accounts, and accounts for my clients. From one place I can back them up and save them as well as download the results of the backup. This is a service that is needed as we create more content and share our digital lives online. For less than $27.00 a year you can have your valuable content backed up, it is worth every penny.

Related Articles:

• It’s All About Location, Location, Location?
• On Moving To The Cloud
• What is the ROI of Social Media? Part II
• What is the ROI of Social Media? Part I
• Creating a Social Media Command Center Using WordPress
• Hodge Podge of Tools
• Everything that is wrong with social media in one video
• How to evaluate and rank blogs in a niche
• Product Review: Social Talk by Syncapse
• A List of Social Media Monitoring Tools

You don’t have to do that. Using some strategy and available free tools you can leverage these networks without falling into a major time suck.

1)      I have said it before and I will say it again, protect your brand, your name, and whatever you hold dear. I’ve written blog posts about this, I mention it every time I talk about social media strategy and I will bring it up again here… If you want to control your brand make sure you register your name on just about every social media site you can find. The last thing you want is your name/brand hijacked.

2)      Use Ping.fm to leverage your content and distribute it. Ping.fm allows you to post to over 40 social media sites from one interface (you can use their web interface, your cell, and multiple other options)  including microblogging services, photo sharing services, social book marking sites, and soon video sites. Examine the social media sites that the service updates and import the accounts that you want to participate in.

3)      Fill out your profiles. I know this is such a simple request but you would be surprised how many people don’t take that step. According to a recent HubSpot report (hat tip to Chris Brogan for sharing this) about the usage of Twitter most users don’t even fill out their basic information.

• 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL
• 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
• 68.68% have not specified a location

Stand out from the crowd and actually do it. Humanize yourself, make yourself approachable, and allow the users of these services to find out more about you.

4)      Monitor responses and participate, otherwise you are purely broadcasting nobody wants to be friends with a broadcaster. With a number of these services you can subscribe to an RSS feed involving search terms or monitor replies. Also using the tools I talk about in this monitoring post you should be able pickup any conversations about your content, make sure you engage.

5)      Prioritize your networks and strategically grow your accounts. Obviously you can’t go through and spend time growing 20-40 accounts. It just isn’t possible. However picking a few and concentrating on growing them will allow you to build a targeted group of people to converse with. As you continue to create content and populate these networks with your information you may be surprised where followings or conversations take place. Don’t force growing accounts on one network if you see it happening organically on another, spend a little more time on those networks and develop what is growing.

Related Articles:

• Inactivity on Twitter
• An interview with the team that created the Little Gordon campaign
• Basic Social Media Plan: Convincing Your Boss Your Company Needs Social Media
• Examining My Former Employer’s Social Web Strategy: Part 4
• Don’t Dilute Your Brand
• It’s All About Location, Location, Location?
• The Outdoor Industry and Social Media
• A List of Social Media Monitoring Tools
• You are open 24/7 how come your social media isn’t?
• Topic du jour: Chris Brogan and Scaling Your Personal Brand

GetListed.org- This is a tool that aids you in submitting local businesses to a few of the major local search directories. From an organizational standpoint I find it helpful because it seems like I always forget a site or a step when doing this. A simple little site that is a good idea.

Society for New Communications Research Best Practices- I think these are pretty helpful to people that are starting out.

Quarkbase- Everything you wanted to know about a website…. Well not everything but enough.

Diggstatistics- If you are using Digg this is a great way to check how the people on your network are responding to your content.

Check User Names- I really liked the tool UserNameCheck that recently was taken down, this is a good replacement. I love using this for clients who want to keep the same user name on multiple networks for branding purposes.

Are there any tools that you enjoy using in regards to social media or just the web in general?

Related Articles:

• If You Aren’t Growing In Social Media Then You Are Slowly Dying
• Everything that is wrong with social media in one video
• You Need to Protect the Content You Create
• Kim Kardashian and her massive growth on FriendFeed: abusing the system or FriendFeed looking the other way?
• Know your niche before you pitch
• Make sure you have a strong base to work from
• Twitter Account Growth and the Impact It Has on Subscriber Count
• The Cult of Personality on the Social Web
• Why Getting In Early Is Important
• The ethics of using your e-mail list for social media