Engage121 - Bringing Order to the Social Media World
Jinfo Blog

By Chris Porter

Abstract

The world of social media throws up many challenges, especially for large consumer-facing organisations. Engage121 is a social media management tool with some fascinating features to help users respond to comments and proactively engage in conversations, including at a very local level, in an efficient and consistent manner.

Item

The ever-increasing volume of social media content creates some interesting challenges for large, consumer-facing organisations, especially those which are very widely spread, with many local points of customer contact.

• They may need to respond to a tidal wave of negative comment - or even praise! - for their business performance
• They may want to route a potential sales lead quickly and efficiently to the appropriate person for follow-up, rather than leaving it floating in the ether
• They may want to launch a marketing promotion via social media in a clear and consistent manner, but also customise it to suit local market conditions.

A host of vendors have popped up in recent years with tools to tackle some or all of these challenges. One that has caught FreePint's attention is Engage121.

Reactive Workflow

Engage121 offers a service which not only monitors a host of different social media channels through a single user interface, but also provides tools to make a quick in-and-out response to a social media post.

Users can assign it to an individual or team for more formalised case handling and automatically generate reporting dashboards with key management information such as response times and closure rates.

Proactive Possibilities

In addition to its reactive workflow features, Engage121 has a strong proactive element.

It has a whole publication management area, helping users with the process of posting to social media sites.

This streamlines the creation and approvals workflow, handles ad hoc or scheduled communications, and can even let a user interact with an external agency directly from within the Engage121 application. This eliminates the need to send endless drafts backwards and forwards by email.

Local Level Management

The service also an interesting add-on module for managing social media contacts on a localised level.

Picture a company with a distributed sales and distribution network, with multiple outlets, franchises or dealerships - maybe a fashion retailer, hotel chain or automobile brand.

An experienced social media manager at a central headquarters could use the Engage121 tool to create standardised social media posts. The system would then let these either run directly at a scheduled time, or be further customised by staff at the local level before transmission.

For instance, a standard post about a marketing promotion could be centrally created, then further tweaked pre-transmission by a local manager to specify a particular day of the week and time of the day when a cocktail hour will run, or when a cut-price offer will be available in a particular store.

Post-campaign success metrics will then be automatically generated, all within a standard workflow.

Structure and Order

Engage121 brings a lot to the table for organisations wanting to put order and structure around their social media monitoring and management process.

Full Review

Engage121 has a host of interesting features. The full FreePint Report: Product Review of Engage121 is now available to those with a FreePint Subscription.

Editor's Note

Read Chris Porter's introduction to FreePint's focus on social media monitoring tools, which runs during March and April 2014, in Social Media Monitoring: the Options.

Articles in series:

• Engage121: Introduction, Value and FreePint's View
• Engage121: Sources, Content and Coverage; Search
• Engage121: Outputs & Alerts; User Interface
• Engage121: Special Software Functionality, Pricing, Help & Contact Details
• Engage121: Executive Summary

Full report (PDF) contains all of the above content, in a convenient package for reference and sharing:

• Product Review of Engage121

Editor's Note: Beyond Aggregation

FreePint readers may be interested to read more about news products in our FreePint Topic Series: Beyond Aggregation, which ran from October to November 2013. You can still register your interest to receive a free copy of the FreePint Report: Buyer's Guide on News Content published in early December.

« Blog