Social Media Management for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Generally Available

Webfortis, LLC announced today the general availability of Parrot, a Microsoft Dynamics CRM product extension for managing social networks. Parrot is a powerful cloud-based computing application designed to search and participate in multiple social media conversations simultaneously in one easy to use consol. Fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Parrot enables users to track and publish conversations across Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Because Parrot is integrated with Dynamics CRM, users can track social media discussions, participate in conversations, and convert these interactions into leads, opportunities, contacts, or cases with the click of a bottom. The application also aggregates these interactions into a single viewer that allows companies to quickly track conversations across the most popular social media sites in one easy to manage interface. It eliminates the need to manage social media one site at a time.

“With social media strongly in play with today’s leading marketing firms, political communication strategists, and popular culture, most companies now require easy to use applications to capture and participate in a variety of social media interactions,” said Marc Wolenik, CEO of Webfortis. “Parrot is the first fully functional platform for Microsoft Dynamics to both participate in conversations about a company’s products, customers, and competitors and to drive new top-line revenue opportunities for our customers.”

Parrot is now generally available as a fully hosted, cloud computing application from Webfortis. The application is compatible on both CRM 4.0 and CMR 2011. Built on Microsoft’s Azure cloud development platform, it is completely supported for both Microsoft Dynamics CRM On-line and On-Premise product offerings. Offered to Webfortis customers at no additional charge, the firm supports Parrot deployments with a variety of Quick Start service packages that assist companies with training and deployment along with strategic consulting services on social media best practices.

About Webfortis:

Webfortis, The CRM Experts, headquartered in the San Francisco bay area with offices in Santa Rosa, Pleasant Hill, Sacramento, and Los Angeles, is regarded as a leader in developing and deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions for companies of all sizes. Having authored two top selling books available on Amazon.com for both the deployment and integration of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Webfortis has established itself as a thought leader in system integration and an expert in deploying software applications across the entire Microsoft product line. Webfortis has also founded the Webfortis Partner Network, (WPN) which is established to coordinate and collaborate with other technology partners and consultants in deploying enterprise systems and applications. Webfortis customers include companies such as Jelly Belly Candy Company, Peet’s Coffee, The Packard Foundation, Opus One Winery, and Ruiz Foods.

For more information contact Webfortis at http://www.webfortis.com/parrot/parrot.htm

Press Contact:
Scott Mangelson, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, 707-337-3304 or scott (at) webfortis (dot) com

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Soovox Launches Pioneering Integrated Influence Platform, Social IQ...

Soovox, (http://www.soovox.com), an award-winning influence marketing company announced today the open beta launch of Social IQ (Social Influence Quotient), an online social influence metric application that measures and rewards a user’s ability to sway others’ opinions and actions. In conjunction with its beta launch, Soovox is launching its “Search for the Star Influencer” contest and will reward the most influential user with a free MacBook Air on December 20, 2010.

Social IQ is a new consumer experience that combines fun social gaming elements with real rewards for a user’s social networking behavior. A patent-pending algorithm measures the user’s social web influence by tracking 3 main criteria to score their social influence: Reputation (authenticity, behavioral), Connections (passive, active), and Knowledge Authority (consumer, professional). Social IQ draws upon key social networks and bookmarking sites already in use –Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace – and calculates the user’s influence based on more than 50 variables that bubble up into their Social IQ.

That score then allows users to earn rewards and climb the seven levels of influence from “Newbie” to “Mogul”. Users can claim favorite brands, earn “Brand Ambassador” badges, and evangelize or rant about products and services inside or outside of the Soovox platform. Users receive corresponding privileges, rewards (payment, promotions, freebies and offers from their favorite brands) and access to Soovox challenges and contests as they influence others and see their Social IQ grow. One does not need to be signed into Soovox to grow their Social IQ; once registered, Soovox automatically tracks one’s influence on an ongoing basis. To learn more, check out the new Soovox video in this release.

“Social IQ has the potential to become the standard measure of influence for the social media industry,” said Akram Benmbarek, CEO and founder of Soovox. “Influential people have tremendous impact on their peers -- one Tweet or Status Update by a trend-setter can make or break a product in the mind of those who follow them. Online influence marketing is a $29 billion industry, yet until now nobody has built an efficient way for brands to easily identify, reward and interact with opinion makers online. Long-term, our mission is to amplify the voice of the consumer, and help brands understand how to harness the social web to create better products and services.”

Soovox is holding a contest this month – “Search for the Star Influencers”, which is about finding the stellar social influencers and rewarding them for ranting and raving about their favorite brands. Whoever has the most votes at the end of the contest will win an Apple MacBook Air. People can also earn a prize if they are the first to refer the star influencer who wins. The contest starts on November 18, 2010 and runs until December 20, 2010. For more information, please visit: http://soovox.com/starInfluencer/

About Soovox

Soovox is a pioneering integrated influence platform that rewards people for their social media influence. Fun and engaging with real rewards for users, the platform delivers an experience that inspires consumers to connect and build symbiotic relationships with their favorite brands. Soovox is focused first on building a great experience for the consumer. With a simple and easy-to-use interface, users can measure and exercise their social influence while receiving rewards such as exclusive promotions, freebies, special offers and payment for evangelizing their favorite brands. http://www.soovox.com

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How Email and Social Media Changed Our Lives -- The Complete Survey...

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) November 11, 2010

A new survey report released today, The New New Inbox--How Email and Social Media Changed Our Lives, by Pierre Khawand, founder and CEO of People-OnTheGo reveals that the overwhelming majority of workers today are struggling to keep up with an overload of email while grappling with the enormous challenge of monitoring and using Social Media. The use of Social Media is largely for personal reasons. Businesses have not yet harnessed the use of Social Media and employees are still using rudimentary tools.

According to the survey of more than 1000 business professionals, workers are spending more than half of their working day (4.45 hours) on corporate and personal email while also monitoring a wide range of Social Media. The majority of respondents (67.6%) said they monitor multiple inboxes on a daily basis. Email and social media also take up a huge amount of time -- 65.8% of participants reported interrupting their work constantly or too often just to check their inboxes.

However, only 18.2% responded that they have a clear strategy for dealing with their inboxes while the remaining 81.8% have little or no strategy for dealing with email or social media monitoring.

"These forces bring incredible challenges...but also tremendous opportunities," says Khawand. "With all the excitement about these channels of communication we are now suffering from serious challenges that are leaving our workforce scattered and dis-oriented, and shrinking the bottom line. However, the next generation of professionals and managers will redefine the tools, channels, platforms that we use to communicate."

As Khawand explains, inboxes were once solely used for internal corporate email. With the advent of the Internet, the "New" inbox connected workers externally beyond their offices and made email the dominant communication tool. Today, the "New" New Inbox includes e-mail and social media feeds together. This inbox brings exciting new opportunities and some rather unique challenges as well.

Some of the key findings revealed by The New New Inbox Survey include:

Email Outweighs Social Media by 3 to 1 -- Business professionals spend an average of 3.27 hours per day on e-mail and 1.18 hours on social media. Personal and corporate email dominate, followed by Facebook and LinkedIn. Twitter has not gained as much traction among those surveyed, except for Generation Y users who use Twitter more so than others.

Social Media is on the Rise but is Widely Misused -- The majority of the survey participants (71.8%) use social media for both work and personal reasons. Social media seems to have significantly reduced the divide between what is work and what is personal, and enabled, or even encouraged, personal and business networks to merge during and after work hours. Use of social media in the workplace is developing rapidly with 58.5% of the survey participants checking Facebook regularly, 47.9% checking LinkedIn regularly, 22.6% checking Twitter, and 21.9% reading blogs. Younger generations lead the pack in their use of social media with Gen Y spending an average of 1.8 hours per day on it, compared to 1.21 hours for Gen X, 1 hour for Baby Boomers, and 0.59 hour for Seniors.

There are High Costs and Risks for HR and IT but also Opportunities -- The majority of participants (67.6%) monitor multiple inboxes. 40.6% of the participants believe that they could use significant improvement while 59.4% believe that they are managing and leveraging these inboxes reasonably well. There are tremendous consequences to this development on all fronts. For HR and IT departments, these platforms bring a myriad of risks that need to be managed while at the same time they bring unprecedented opportunities for reaching the workforce, educating and influencing their behavior. Pamela Evans, Director of Executive Programs at NetApp, suggested that companies need to "conduct training on the various communication platforms and educate the workplace on how to leverage those platforms effectively--both social media and email which can increase and expand communications pathways within a company."

The New New Inbox survey also includes information on what can be done to make better use of email and social media going forward including putting in place clear guidelines and educational programs relating to the use of e-mail and social media in the workplace, Declaring social media as an important initiative and formalizing the social media effort and seeking improved tools and technologies that can help streamline inboxes.

More than 1000 business professionals participated in the survey. The largest segment (49.7% of the participants) from organizations with 1000 or more employees, followed by participants from organizations with less than 1000 employees (28% of the participants), and then independent consultants and contractors (22.3% of the participants). The participants represented a broad range of industries. In terms of their functional areas within the organization, professional services, administrative, and marketing were the largest segments, followed by top management, product development, and sales. In terms of the generations, Gen X and Baby Boomers were the largest segments. See more about the survey and Pierre Khawand here http://www.people-onthego.com/

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oogled and Durham College Announces Social Media Seminars!

Whitby, Ontario (PRWEB) November 12, 2010

oogled, in partnership with Durham College Corporate Training Services (CTS) is pleased to announce a certificate seminar series for business owners trying to get a handle on social media and its uses.

“We are pleased that we have been able work with Durham College’s Corporate Training Services on putting together an extensive program to help businesses look at social media from a strategic sense,” said Robert Fraser, President of oogled. “Most social media seminars are focused on the ‘cool’ factor and not how to make it a strategic part of your business.”

oogled, and their sister company ClubIT have been involved with social media since the beginning, first as users and then offering training and advice to clients as they struggled to make business sense of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

“This is a perfect next step for us to take all this knowledge and provide it for other businesses struggling to make this phenomenon practical for their business,” said Robert Rock, lead trainer from oogled. “To be able to do this in conjunction with a respected partner like Durham College is a huge bonus.”

The training sessions will consist of an eight-part series over 16 weeks and will cover such topics as introduction to social media marketing, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and search engine optimization. The focus of these sessions will be to build a business strategy and game plan for using these various sites in generating business.

“Social media should be an integral part of marketing for business and therefore these seminars are an extension of the training we’ve been providing to the industry for many years,” said Melody Moran, director, CTS, Durham College.

The series will be designed so that all eight seminars complement and build on each other. In addition, attendees will get practical experience as the sessions will include hands-on components and homework between sessions. Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop. Extensive use of Facebook and Twitter will allow for interactive and relevant follow-up questions.

Through its consultative process Corporate Training Services of Durham College has been providing proven, client-driven training solutions to the business community for more than thirty years.

For more information:                    

Contact for oogled:                            
Robert Fraser                
President/CEO                
oogled                    
905.655.9862                
http://www.oogled.ca

Contact for Durham College:

Melody Moran
Director, Corporate Training Services
Durham College
905.721.2000 ext. 3331
http://www.corporatetraining.durhamcollege.ca

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“Social Center” Launched to Simplify Social Media Management

Indianapolis (PRWEB) November 11, 2010

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare…the choices that businesses face in establishing and managing an online presence for their brand can be confusing and paralyzing. Social Center makes it easy to get the software and services businesses need in one place.

Social Center, a partnership between Indianapolis-based Raidious, a content development company and Austin-based social media software developer Spredfast, makes it easier for brands to find the tools and resources they need to manage their social media initiatives.

“Based on our experience managing social for multiple national and regional brands, it is clear that there is a huge need for brands to simplify their social media efforts,” Taulbee Jackson, President of Raidious, said. “Many companies are still trying to find their way on the technology front, and realizing that they really need help with creating, managing and deploying the content that drives all of this technology, and measuring its success. Social Center provides a solution to both the technology and the resource problem.”

“Social Center combines the power of Spredfast, our leading social media management system (SMMS) with a suite of service offerings from Raidious to help companies leverage social media to achieve their business objectives,” said Ken Cho, Co-Founder of Spredfast. “We are very pleased to be partnering with Raidious. We believe this combined solution will help companies embrace social media faster and establish a repeatable operating model for social initiatives.”

Companies currently using Social Center include Marsh Supermarkets, Comcast, CyberDefender, and many other regional and national brands. Free 30 day software demos and pricing for software and services are available at http://getsocialcenter.com.

About Raidious
Raidious (http://www.raidious.com) is an interactive marketing and communications company purpose-built to create content and manage dialog for brands. Raidious makes, manages, monitors, moderates and measures content and dialog for social media, email, blogs and other forms of owned media. Raidious helps activate traditional paid media (advertising) and earned media (public relations) efforts online, using a unique and fully integrated planning process built specifically to leverage the real-time, two-way nature of today's socialized media environment. Digital marketing doesn't work without content. Learn more at raidious.com.

About Spredfast:
Based in Austin, Texas, Spredfast is an enterprise-class social media management system (SMMS) that allows organizations to manage, monitor, and measure their social media messages, and the effectiveness of each piece of content, across multiple social media channels. Spredfast allows its clients to extend their branded content and engage with its audience from a single administration interface to the blogosphere and the major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Flickr. Some of the enterprise adopters on board with Spredfast include AOL, Nokia, IBM, Raidious, HomeAway, Porter Novelli and Sierra Club. For more information, visit http://spredfast.com/.

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