There is no simple, magical answer for what brands should do with their social media followers, but New York-based SocialRank thinks it can help companies better understand who the audience is—and then take action.
On Monday, the company introduced SocialRank for Teams, which lets groups use the SocialRank and Market Intelligence software collaboratively for their marketing efforts. From a bigger picture perspective, co-founder Alex Taub says the new service lays the groundwork to take SocialRank from being social media analytics software to an audience management platform.
SocialRank lets brands see who among their social media followers has the most reach with others, as well as discern some demographic information. Its Market Intelligence software lets brands compare their Twitter and Instagram accounts with their peers, to see how they stack up with the competition in social media—and if they share any followers.
Taub (pictured) says while there are plenty of social analytics software tools out there, he believes they have been a bit lacking for understanding the audience. “Most people don’t know who their followers are,” Taub says.
Brands can use SocialRank essentially as a private communications platform for their fans, he says, which is becoming increasingly vital for marketing. “We think over the next two to three years, followers are going to be just as important as content,” he says.
SocialRank’s software can mine and filter information about the social media audience so brands can find people who live in particular cities they want to target, for example. Until now, Taub says, it was difficult to collaborate as a team on such information to formulate marketing campaigns.
The clientele SocialRank serves are brands, agencies, and individuals who are public figures (ostensibly with large social media audiences). For marketing campaigns, SocialRank can be used to find influential followers who can spread the word about an event, for instance. Putting SocialRank’s services together, marketers can also compare their social media followers against their customers who have shared their e-mail addresses. “I want to be able to tell Nike, out of their customers on Twitter, how many are in their database,” Taub says.
At the moment, the service is geared for sifting through followers on Twitter and Instagram. SocialRank is looking at what might be possible through Facebook and Pinterest, Taub says.
Prior to co-founding SocialRank, Taub headed up business development at payment service Dwolla. Since its start, SocialRank has raised $2 million, and currently has a team of five.
For now the company plans to keep its staff about that size, Taub says. However, the company continues to work on its technology and will introduce more filters for its software—for example, to find words that illustrate the context of discussions being had on social networks about brands. SocialRank also wants to add more ways for marketers to take action after the audience is identified. “Doing things with your followers is the next step we are working on,” Taub says.
