As the still nascent world of social media emerges as an incredibly efficient business tool, Engage121 in Norwalk is turning the entire category into a finely tuned business management service.
“Right now in the social media market is a primordial soup of opportunity that”™s bubbling and stewing away,” said Jon Victor, CEO of Engage 121 Inc.
The social media management company was founded in 1998 as eNR Services Inc., a company that developed communication services for national companies with many locations such as franchises, hotel chains and car dealerships. Today its client demographic is the same, but its services have evolved to coincide with the dawn of social media.
The company currently has 137 social media clients including Annex Brands, Dressbarn, Century 21 Real Estate, Curves International, Edward Jones, Geico, Goddard Systems, Kiddie Academy, Learning Express, Maaco Franchising and The Vitamin Shoppe.
“Every company is in a unique situation with their communications and what they see is possible for them through the social media,” Victor said. “In 2008, a few things happened; one was that companies really started paying attention to social media. We had no connection to social media, but were asked the question by one too many clients.”
Victor began booking flights, visiting his hundreds of clients and interviewing them, asking, “What do you really mean when you say you want to be in social media.” Victor still carries the 6-inch thick folder of replies.
“I stopped traveling when I started to hear the same things over and over again. The number one problem that was expressed was that they knew their outlets were on social media, they just had no way to track what they were saying, and even more worrisome for a corporation, they didn”™t know if it was appropriate.”
Victor said it”™s not that business leaders want to be on social media, but that they would like to solve real business problems through social media. The company set to work on setting up an application that could rope in the ever changing chatter of social media.
Engage 121 was founded in August 2010 and Victor and his staff began compiling lists of client locations and then aggregating their many social media accounts. The company then developed an application that allows its clients to listen to everything that is being said to and from its locations. It developed ways to help clients manage the disparate conversations and tagging them positive, negative or indifferent, and showed detailed and specific metrics defined by the client. The application also allows permissions to be set and allows a branch to approve a message from corporate before it is distributed to its followers.
Upon the product”™s release in 2010, Meghan Peters of the social media technology authority Mashable.com, listed Enagage 121 as one of the top five “Superior Social Media Management Tools.”
“The product simplifies with customized filters, giving managers total control over what types of messages they see,” Peters said. “Managers can also easily respond to followers”™ messages or start conversations with social media influencers.”
Stamford-based digital media consultant Kieran Hawe said the development of social-media manager platforms is completely appropriate and significant when talking about what a business fears when it comes to social media.
“For businesses that have large borders putting a rein on the beast has been difficult,” Hawe said. “Companies need to be engaged, but it”™s such an uncontrolled platform to have the process automated when you have a big brand is vital. The Engage business concept is brilliant because it is corralling invaluable information. The data you”™re getting is pure honesty. When you put that data together you really get a true sense of your brand.”
Hawe said more and more data from social media are being used to establish business strategies.
“It was very obvious, very quickly that this social media management product would eclipse everything we were doing in terms of importance to our company,” Victor said.
The Enagage 121 business application also provides its clients with the ability to respond to its locations and identify emerging trends. Victor said five years ago knowing what a group of consumers thought of a product meant calling together a costly focus group.
“Today I can go onto my Facebook and ask for thoughts and it comes in instantaneous, free, reliable, honest,” Victor said. “You’ve just eliminated an inefficient expensive way to provide a service and replaced it with a very efficient, zero-cost way to provide a service.”
The Engage 121 product costs an average of $2,000 monthly at the corporate level and individual stores generally pay a fee of $25 per month. It has also developed a strong client services offering with offices in New York City, Chicago and London and 32 full-time employees. Engage travels to its clients once a quarter for training and teaches clients how use the application.
“We need to be there as partners for our clients so that we know it”™s living up to everything we know it can do for them; and that requires client services,” Victor said. “How many billions did American Airlines spend on developing AAdvantage miles? That sophisticated software is all of a sudden free and approachable; the efficiencies in business services that are being created through social media are enormous.”
