The latest in updates, communities, language, agendas, tracking, data, targeting, social media, joining and more from the Golden State, Helvetia, the Crossroads of the Revolution, the Five Boroughs, City of the Violet Crown, Raincouver and Down Under.
Hootsuite and Simple
Hootsuite released Hootsuite Ads – a new tool to provide “a simple way to extend social impact.” Officials claim it will “easily turn high performing Facebook content into promoted posts.”
The company boasts the product can help users to:
- Grow their business: Based on a user's specific business objectives, Hootsuite matches organic content with a targeted Facebook audience in a measureable way
- Create high performing ads: Automatically scans Facebook pages to find the best organic posts to amplify
- Find the right audience: Automated targeting and bidding algorithms allow anyone to create highly targeted ads
- Simplify ad management: Users can view clear results and manage all social posts and social ads, from one easy dashboard
- Control ad spend: Intuitive reporting clarifies an ad’s results. Success is made visible and easily understandable with simple metrics that tie to an ad’s business goals
Ryan Holmes, CEO of Vancouver, British Columbia-based, Hootsuite, said, “Our vision is to make advertising so simple that anyone at an organization can create high-performing ads without training.”
Salesforce Updates Community Cloud
Salesforce this week announced the launch of the next generation of the Community Cloud. New features include Targeted Recommendations, Lightning Community Builder and Templates, and Salesforce Files Connect for Google Drive.
Community Cloud lets companies combine their business data and processes with Salesforce "to quickly create trusted destinations that are personalized, intelligent and mobile,” said Nasi Jazayeri, executive vice president and general manager of San Francisco-based Salesforce Community Cloud.
Built on the Salesforce1 Platform, Community Cloud is connected directly to Salesforce CRM as well as third-party systems and data sources through the Connect API. The updates include:
- Targeted Recommendations, which use algorithms to analyze structured and unstructured data to deliver content including posts, resources, files and groups to each member. The new feature identifies experts, then surfaces her as a subject-matter expert and recommends her to other community members
- Lightning Community Builder and Templates, which enable users to deploy a customized, branded and mobile-optimized community
- Salesforce Files Connect for Google Drive, which lets community members collaborate and share any file created or stored in Google Drive
Here's What Magnolia Plans
Magnolia announced the agenda for its sixth European conference in Basel. The conference, which will run June 9 to 11, includes:
- A case study on e-commerce
- Information on country-specific product portfolios and content
- A presentation about the journey from proprietary software to open source
- Hands-on workshops
According to officials, the traditional “unconference” will also be featured, “where participants share experiences and learnings in a dynamic setting.”
Boris Kraft, co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer (CVO) of Basel, Switzerland-based Magnolia, said there would also be two talks that look at things outside the Magnolia universe:
- Mark Halvorson from Atlassian will be giving a presentation on developing a coding culture that makes developers happy and productive and create better code
- Josh Valman from RPD International will present insights on product development
Some of the companies presenting will be Virgin Holidays, Atlassian, Visana, Lemonize and RPD International.
¿Como se dice Code?
If you know of a student looking for a new language to study, Google and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HHF), headquartered in Washington, DC, have just completed the first “Code as a Second Language” (CSL) curriculum for middle and high schools in cities around the country.
The free program, called CS-First, targets Latino students in fourth through eighth grades and is intended to promote student exposure to computer science education via clubs run by teacher and/or community volunteers.
Cities and schools included:
- New York City — The Young Women's Leadership School of Astoria
- Chicago — Joyce Kilmer Elementary School
- Los Angeles — Sacred Heart High School
- San Jose — Silver Creek High School
- Austin — Burnet Middle School
- Atlanta — Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy
- Washington, DC — Cesar Chavez Prep Middle School
- Miami — SLAM Sports Leadership and Management Academy
Jose Antonio Tijerino, president and CEO of the HHF, believes in the importance of STEM education and predicts, “The next great innovator will be a Latino or Latina."
Axero Updates Enterprise Collaboration Platform
San Diego-based Axero Solutions updated its enterprise collaboration platform with the release of Version 5.0 of Communifire.
“Yes, this is a crowded space in a huge market,” said Tim Eisenhauer, co-founder and president of Axero Solutions. But he said Communifire stands out through its flexibility and customization options. "Each of our customers has their own unique way of working or doing business.” The updates include:
- Communifire Chat: A real time chat capability that replaces the private messaging feature. Chats can be opened in their own dedicated windows, like many consumer chat applications, and are mobile ready
- New native mobile apps for iOS and Android
- Required Reading functionality: Allows an author to flag content as mandatory reading. It also tracks the users who have indicated that they have read the content and those who have not. Users can bookmark their favorite content
- Communifire FileSync for Windows Desktop app: Enables users to sync files from their local computer to their Communifire web application and vice versa
“Many of the other products out there in the space focus on the lowest common denominator,” Eisenhauer claimed. “They build features and functionalities that they think everyone will use, which forces companies to work or collaborate in a certain way, as dictated by the product. We found that just doesn’t work.”
Plan of Actionspace
Actionspace, an enterprise task management and simple project management solution, claims it can now help business users plan their work more effectively.
Its latest release includes enhanced time tracking and recurring task scheduling capabilities for Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint Online. Officials claim that new release will allow managers to “get a more realistic idea of actual labor costs of daily tasks or projects.”
“Recurring task automation is a great asset for office workers who want to save time and not to miss out on routine yet vital tasks,” noted Vale Smirnov, business development director of Boston-based Actionspace.
The Cloud Dun Right
Short Hills, N.J.-based Dun & Bradstreet is giving B2B digital marketers the chance to access commercial data within the Oracle Data Cloud and the BlueKai Marketplace. Company officials claim the data sets “can be leveraged to help B2B digital marketers identify trends and data patterns to uncover actionable insights that fuel smarter, more impactful targeting decisions.”
Michael Bird, general manager of Dun & Bradstreet NetProspex, said the company is "helping businesses better understand and score existing and potential targets to effectively engage the right people with the right content.”
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Future-proofing Your Marketing Through Better Customer Understanding
Understanding your customers and how to reach them in real-time across all channels
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Pieter De Temmerman, Vice President of Oracle Data Cloud, said the integration brings together insights that intersect business, purchase and interest attributes "to form a more comprehensive view of the audience and to drive meaningful engagement with every digital interaction."
Determining Your Intent
New York City-based Madison Logic released its new Activate Account-Based Marketing (ABM) suite, which company officials said would give marketers the ability to identify which companies and decision makers "have explicitly or implicitly indicated intent toward their offerings."
The company anticipates “more than 60 percent of companies” will invest in this suite in the next twelve months.
Madison Logic CEO Tom O'Regan said the product helps companies determine the return on their total marketing investments "from brand to demand."
Is Anybody Listening?
If a tweet is retweeted, but no one reads it, does it make a sound? According to a new report conducted by Pollara and released this week by the BMO Bank of Montreal, 45 percent of Canadian small business owners use social media to promote themselves, but only 11 percent listen to customer feedback.
The report also revealed:
- Over one third (35 per cent) use social media to promote products or services
- Almost one quarter (22 per cent) said it allows them to communicate with customers
- One fifth said it helps find prospective customers
- Almost one fifth (17 per cent) said it helps build a corporate reputation
And while about three-quarters of those polled believe they understand social media, millennial business owners topped the list.
Steve Murphy, head of Canadian Commercial Banking at the BMO Bank of Montreal, said, “Business owners need to take advantage of the benefits of social media as a means to communicate both to and with their customers in order to learn new business strategies.”
Planview Hooks a Troux
Portfolio management and project collaboration company Planview just acquired software vendor Troux. Both companies are based in Austin.
Gregory S. Gilmore, CEO of Planview boasted that the acquisition will: “take portfolio management to the next level by giving IT leaders a way to manage one integrated portfolio that optimizes their resources for maximum business impact.”
David Hood, CEO of Troux, called his company's solutions "perfect complements" to Planview that will help IT departments integrate planning, execution and architecture.
A Connector To Bank On?
Melbourne, Australia based IntelligenceBank Digital Asset Management announced the launch of a connector for Sitecore CMS. Company officials claim the connector will make website managers’ lives easier through features including:
- Single sign on
- Advanced search
- Resizing and reformatting on the fly
- Reporting
Tessa Court, CEO of IntelligenceBank, said the product gives clients access "to two best of breed solutions" – a DAM which is completely integrated into their CMS – within a single interface. "Not only does this new connector save people time, but it ensures creative consistency across channels,” she said.
