Companies are clamoring to attract and strengthen relationships with new and existing customers through social media, and the companies that can help them do that more effectively are hot commodities. While Jungle Torch in Portsmouth, which provides social media analysis, is beginning to build buzz, JitterJam in Bedford, which combines social media monitoring, an intelligent contact database and multi-channel digital marketing platform into a single integrated system, recently inked a multi-million dollar deal to be acquired.
JitterJam was acquired at the end of March by The Meltwater Group, a social media and news monitoring company, based in San Francisco, which generates $100 million in annual revenues.
Meltwater purchased JitterJam for $6 million, and JitterJam's seven employees joined that company. Initially, Meltwater and JitterJam will be sold as stand-alone solutions, and eventually integrated.
This comes a year after JitterJam reinvented itself with a solution that not only helps companies monitor who is talking about them online, but identify in real time places where they can add a comment, post or tweet. CEO Ric Pratte originally started the company as JitterGram to market directly to consumers through their mobile devices, such as sending alerts about specials at restaurants. However, Pratte found that market too limited to be profitable.
Instead, customers wanted someone who could manage their e-mail, social media and mobile marketing needs, says Margaret Donnelly, vice president of marketing and business development for JitterJam. The company relaunched as JitterJam in March 2010.
What does JitterJam offer that attracted the attention of The Meltwater Group? It monitors various forms of social media across the Web in real time for conversations about a company or industry, analyzes those conversations and then allows the company to engage consumers in those conversations as they are happening.
JitterJam not only allows companies to gain people's permission to engage with them, but also develops social profiles about those consumers and manages and tracks the most important influencers in a company's social community.
JitterJam also allows companies to then connect with consumers across all consumer preferred channels and measure the response rates to marketing campaigns. Donnelly says the reports JitterJam produces allows companies to see how they are doing in each social channel and which is the most effective for them, whether it's Facebook, Twitter or another social platform.
Jungle Torch takes search engine optimization (SEO) data to a new level. The firm provides complete social media analysis through online monthly reports detailing and analyzing all Web activity related to an organization.
That includes comments made online both good, bad and neutral; rankings of the company's (and its competitors') Web sites using hundreds of keywords and different search engines; identifying who is linking to the organization; and whether it is beneficial.
Hyperlinks within the reports allow users to connect directly to blogs containing key words.
Jungle Torch launched in July after 18 months of development, and had 40 customers as of mid-February, says Nate Tenant, chief marketing officer for Jungle Torch, which has three others partners. Tenant is also founder of Kirk Communications, a public relations firm in Portsmouth.
Tenant says Jungle Torch is intended to help companies improve their SEO. "The better they do on SEO, the better their business will do on inbound leads," he says.
The cost for the service ranges from $300 to $2,000 a month, depending on the size of the company and the number of links involved.
For more information about JitterJam and The Meltwater Group, visit www.jitterjam.com and www.meltwater.com. To learn more about Jungle Torch, visit www.jungletorch.com.
Current Issue - May 2024