4.4.11

The New ‘Must-Have’ Accessory for Social Media Strategists

Every day more and more companies are joining the brave new world of social media. As this trend continues (to the point where it can’t be called a trend any longer) it’s becoming more and more challenging to stand out from the clutter. Concentrating on our own social networks, as well as those of our clients, BSL has uncovered some interesting challenges.

A good social media strategy is about more than just joining a network. It takes a careful combination of strategy, creativity, content and timing to effectively reach readers wth your message, and encourage them to engage with it. While we can control the first three, the gamble lies in timing. For many, the world of social media is a mysterious mix, and begs the question: Is there an optimal time of day to send an update, when people are more likely to respond? Is 11am better than 2pm?

Enter Arkli, a new social media management system. BSL recently sat down with Mike Potter, owner of the Ottawa-based start-up.

Arkli is a Social Engagement Platform where companies can schedule multiple posts on their social networks, to coordinate a message on several different channels at the same time. Say you want to post a blog that features a video you plan to upload to YouTube. You may then decide you want to push this content out on your Facebook and Twitter. All of these updates can be done on Arkli. What makes Arkli unique? You can share these posts with key influencers before they go live.

We love this concept and so BSL has recently become an Arkli beta-tester. We will be providing feedback on new tools and features, and posting any updates on our blog as they happen – maybe even before they go live.

How Arkli Works


This is your profile page. First, you link all of your social accounts to the Arkli network. For now, it supports Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wordpress, and Blogger. Once you have linked all of your accounts, you create a new campaign.


On this page, all of your social accounts will be listed along the right-hand side. When you click on “add to posts” beside your desired social network, a box similar to the social platform will appear. You can update and schedule content on this page.


“Share Campaign” is my favourite feature on Arkli. The coordination of posts on multiple networks is beneficial, but Arkli does something special that I have yet to see on any other social management website. It lets you share the campaign with key influencers before your content goes live. Once you have scheduled your campaign, you can invite people via email and Twitter to log on to Arkli, view your latest video, blog, Facebook and Twitter updates.


From this page, the people you invite to view your campaign can comment, like, and retweet your updates. When your post goes live, all of their interactions go live as well. Your message is blasted into the social space, hitting more audiences than you would have by posting directly on your social networks. This method helps to address that pesky variable of timing, by increasing your reach and maximizing your message anytime you update your social networks.

4 comments:

  1. A very interesting idea.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm really looking forward to the potential of this tool!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I like the invite to the influencers. Helps create pre-buzz and big impact push. Sounds promising!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the blog post and the great comments everyone.

    We've also built a Wordpress plugin that allows you to create a campaign right from a Wordpress blog post. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/arkli/

    We're working on integration with HootSuite - so all your comments from your campaigns will show up in HootSuite, and allow you to respond to everything from there.

    Finally, we're integrating with a number of email marketing companies - like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor and CakeMail (and working on others right now) so that you can easily create a social campaign that is synced with an email campaign.

    Thanks,

    Mike Potter

    ReplyDelete