A Buyers Guide: VS. Exploring the Differences Between Social Media Management & Interactive Content Platforms

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1 A Buyers Guide: VS. Exploring the Differences Between Social Media Management & Interactive Content Platforms

2 Deciding Can Be Tough Let Us Help Finally! You ve convinced enough people at your company that it s time to invest in a social media platform. But the hard work s not over yet. For every new channel or tactic popping up, it seems like there s twice as many solutions or tools to evaluate. Knowing the answer to these 3 seemingly simple questions will be critical to your evaluation and decision making process: 1 What problems are you looking to solve? Are you looking to monitor and make sense of online conversations, schedule social posts, and/or create and share interactive promotions to drive immediate marketing results? 2 3 What goals do you want to meet? How will you measure success: Number of mentions, sentiment, community growth and/or leads, sign-ups, or sales, etc.? What is your budget? Like functionality, prices vary greatly so know what you can afford. 1

3 The truth is, there are several solutions which will address one or many of your needs, and some will be better at helping you reach your goals than others. Since you are reading this, we ll assume you know the answers to these questions and will use this guide to: Demonstrate why monitoring online conversations and scheduling matter. Demonstrate why content and promotions are critical to achieving social buzz, community growth & conversions. Compare and contrast two different but best in class solutions; Wildfire and SnapApp. In the end, we expect you ll agree that for brands looking to create the most effective interactive content that drives marketing results, SnapApp is specifically built to be the perfect fit. Likewise companies focused primarily on managing and controlling social media communications should consider Wildfire. Nevertheless, because the two services are so different, choosing one doesn t necessarily entail rejecting the other. In fact, the two solutions can be highly complimentary and have their own distinct advantages. We hope that by putting ourselves side-by-side with Wildfire undoubtedly one of the most well-known companies in the industry it will help to clear the air on what we do, what they do, and even what we both can do to help your business harness the power of social media. 2

4 Quick Compare: The Solution Spectrum Direct Marketing Results Ad Revenue App Customization App Creation Likes, Leads, Follows Multitude of Apps Social Campaign Management Management Suite Competitive Benchmarking Ease of Use Mobile Optimized Closed Data Direct Marketing Results Multi-Channel Distribution App Performance Analytics YouTube Intergration Broad Analytics Facebook Ads Open Data Social Management

5 CREATIVE TEMPLATE INTERACTIVE CONTENT What SnapApp Does SOCIAL MEDIA What Wildfire Does Specifically, the job that SnaApp is meant to do is one of interactive promotions that drive marketing results. Although there are similarities between Wildfire and SnapApp, the two platforms actually serve two distinctly different functions Wildfire s focus on communications makes it an ideal tool to cut through social media chaos, while SnapApp s ease of use and depth of customization make it a tool tailor-made for building creative and engaging content aimed at acquisition. The SnapApp Marketing Platform makes it easy to create and support promotions across multiple channels driving marketing results. Applications can easily be created without the need of a developer, and other features like Facebook integration, social sharing buttons, hyperlinked images, mobile optimization, custom branding can literally be snapped on with ease. SnapApp s value comes directly from this ease of use allowing users to build elegant solutions to meet their content, social promotion and acquisition goals. At its core, SnapApp is all about involvement built on creativity, and we believe that s what makes the platform so powerful. Primarily, Wildfire is a tool for social media management. Although some of their offerings do scale down to one-off promotions, Wildfire s real strength is in its social marketing suite. Much like SnapApp, Wildfire does have social promotions such as quizzes and contests, but these features are best used within the context of managing and measuring your social media strategy as opposed to driving results from promotions and campaigns. Specifically, the design, branding and customization of these opps is quite limited. With Wildfire s marketing suite there are internal team communications, templated promotions, content scheduling features, and reporting which can all happen within the same interface. All this comes together to show the real power of Wildfire as a means to a consistent brand voice and social media presence. 3

6 CREATE SOCIAL MEDIA INTERACT AQUIRE PROMOTE MANAGE MONITER BENCHMARK MESSAGE CONTENT Who It s For Who It s For For companies with highly complicated social media models, departments or initiatives, clarity, consistency and uniformity are very real and daunting challenges. However, when it comes to problems like content, engagement, and even revenue generation, Wildfire s highly specified and uniform framework doesn t translate well. As Wildfire began solely as a Facebook tool, it is still relatively limited to the constraints of Facebook and doesn t lend itself well to comprehensive customization. With their recent acquisition by Google, Wildfire has also expanded to have an unmatched integration with YouTube, but within the capabilities of the platform, the value comes from its connectivity as opposed to its room for creativity. The ideal user of Wildfire is a sophisticated enterprise-level brand with an already active social media audience who is looking to focus high volumes of online conversation into specific, measurable business objectives. Both Wildfire s pricing and its offerings do not scale down well for mid-size to small businesses or for companies looking to build or boost online involvement. For publishers looking to engage their readers, brands looking to enhance online presence, agencies looking to excite clients with new possibilities and for marketers looking to improve efforts with engaging applications. As a building tool, of sorts, SnapApp s strength comes from its ability to bridge gaps, connect seemingly unrelated initiatives, and construct unique interactions between a brand and its audience. Whether it s a landing page, media gallery, coupon or special offer, poll, survey, quiz, personality test, sweepstakes or social media contest, the SnapApp platform enables users to construct applications that fit perfectly into a diverse range of marketing programs and strategies. While Wildfire focuses on managing social media communications and sacrifices the depth of customization and specialization within its content and promotion offerings, SnapApp specializes in the depth of creative possibility within each app and optimizes feature choices for a range of acquisition types like leads, Follows, Likes, opt-ins, referral links, sponsorships and more. 4

7 PERSONALITY TESTS SWEEPSTAKES CONTESTS & COMPETITION PAGES & GALLERIES COUPONS & OFFERS FORMS & SIGN UPS POLLS & SURVEYS TRIVIA QUIZZES How SnapApp is Best Used How Wildfire is Best Used SnapApp s focus is on allowing its users to create custom apps optimized for particular business and marketing goals. The primary technology allows for each app to be completely created and managed by one person without the need for technical support and with enough adaptability to be published or distributed across virtually any marketing channel even print via QR codes. This technology also allows apps to be connected to other marketing or online collateral. By embedding a hyperlinked image or a link to a site paying for referral traffic, for example, a snapapp can actually generate revenue from the impressions it yields. For media sites, a snapapp on your page can even refresh other advertisements around it once the app has been engaged, scaling impression revenue. In other instances, snapapps can be used to recommend products or services based on personality types, generate and qualify leads through surveys, illicit user generated content through contests, build social media followings through sweepstakes and promotions, and much more. What Wildfire does do extremely well is to create fast, consistent communications that can easily be controlled by a social media management team. Because of their precise focus, Wildfire is also able to provide a wealth of social channel specific analytics and benchmarks to keep the social media experts on your marketing team well informed of exactly what s happening. It may, however, require social media experts to understand and explain which metrics are truly relevant to your business goals. Because of Wildfire s sophistication, it may also be challenging for new users to make the most of the platform. Wildfire does, however, provide comprehensive customer service and offers a dedicated account specialist for their Pro and Enterprise plans. 5

8 SnapApp in Action Wildfire in Action One of the best examples of SnapApp in action comes from one of our best users, an online publishing company called Figment. Figment came to SnapApp hoping to increase their following on Facebook, create original and appealing content for their audience with ease, stimulate conversations and engagement on their blog, and expand their audience all while funneling people to ecommerce and branded sites. Clearly, Figment had a lot of programs they wanted to build out with an explicit need for an easy experience and a lot of room for customization and creativity. Remarkably, using SnapApp, Figment was able to build out over sixty quizzes which generated more than 100,000 new Facebook likes, 366,000+ impressions, 21,000 quiz-specific shares, and an overall 90% app completion rate. Despite having very unique objectives, Figment was able to construct their own success with SnapApp. A great use-case of Wildfire comes from collaboration between Polaroid and Lady Gaga. Polaroid s goal was to create buzz around the launch of their Grey Label GL10 Instant Mobile printer. Using Wildfire, Polaroid created a photo display page of Lady Gaga at various parties around the U.S. that was shared between Polaroid s Facebook page, as well as Lady Gaga s. By connecting the two pages and managing which photos would be displayed via Wildfire, Polaroid was able to grow its fan base by over 50%. Although the app itself was pretty basic, the ability to manage the content and connections across multiple Facebook accounts is perfect example of where Wildfire performs best. 6

9 Differences between SnapApp and Wildfire: Pricing Because of Wildfire s size, SnapApp also has a distinct advantage when it comes to pricing. Although both SnapApp and Wildfire have multiple price offerings, Wildfire s expansive business efforts make custom pricing based on user needs much more challenging, and as a result, their pricing is much more rigid. With SnapApp, on the other hand, pricing is tailored to the specifics of a campaign or provide unlimited use so that customers only pay for what they intend to use. Differences between SnapApp and Wildfire: Content One of the most apparent differences, however, is where corporate culture and offerings most commonly meet in content. As empowering people to make the most compelling and engaging content possible is both what SnapApp does and what SnapApp believes, the content we produce ourselves is intended to serves as additional blocks with which our clients can build on their own initiatives and knowledge. A dedication to content means SnapApp is regularly creating and curating unique or original blog posts, apps, white papers, updates, etc. On the other hand, as Wildfire specializes in streamlined communications, the content they produce is much more measured, but with noticeably less flexibility and diversity. The advantage of SnapApp s content strategy to its customers is that there s always room and often a desire for clients to be a part of the stories being told. 7

10 Differences between SnapApp and Wildfire: Analytics Given the distinct differences in what SnapApp and Wildfire do as solutions, there s also a distinct difference in what both platforms report for analytics. As a broad management platform, Wildfire has expansive analytics that include Twitter and Facebook benchmarks, deep Facebook user data co-owned between Wildfire and the user, as well as generic data on app performance. The downside to co-owned data, however, is that not only can Wildfire have access to the performance analytics of your campaigns, but the Facebook apps deployed with Wildfire may require an app disclosure confirmation before being shared. SnapApp, on the other hand, with its fundamental focus being on building the most optimized apps, provides more than 30 unique interaction metrics completely owned by the user. This ensures data privacy for both SnapApp users and their end users which removes the need for data disclosure creating a much more seamless sharing process. All generated leads, responses, contacts, impressions, etc. are privately held by the user yet formatted to freely integrate with platforms, marketing automation, web analytics, Customer Relationship Management systems as well as other business tools. Differences between SnapApp and Wildfire: Companies As a company, SnapApp is also fundamentally different from Wildfire. With a smaller, more agile team, SnapApp is able to tailor campaigns and enterprise level services to specific client needs. With dedicated account managers for all custom campaigns and unlimited usuage customers, SnapApp also has a much more focused approach to customer support and success. As a division of Google, Wildfire does have vastly more resources, however, because of their size, not only do they have to scale their services; they have to scale their communications and resources as well. 8 9

11 The Decision Piecing everything together about both solutions, it becomes pretty clear why companies choose SnapApp over Wildfire when comparing the two. For brands looking to create the most effective interactive content, SnapApp is specifically built to be the perfect fit. Although a small portion of Wildfire s apps can be considered similar, the meat of their plate is messaging with templated content serving only as a garnish. Companies seeking to unify social management communications should also consider Wildfire over SnapApp. Nevertheless, because the two services are so different, choosing one doesn t necessarily entail rejecting the other. In fact, because of the differentiation, some companies actually use both Wildfire and SnapApp together for their marketing efforts. Case in point after a globally recognized animation studio evaluated both SnapApp and Wildfire the decision was made to leverage Wildfire s YouTube integration functionality and SnapApp s interactive content together to complement the company s marketing efforts. In this instance, Wildfire delivered value through connectivity while SnapApp won on content. In the end, SnapApp is a solution for content and creative promotions, while Wildfire is a tool for messaging and management. To make the most of that investment you ve worked so hard to secure in a social media platform, we hope this guide will help you make the right decision regardless of who you choose and if there s ever any way in which we can be more helpful to you, don t hesitate to contact us. info@snapapp.com SNAP-APP 9 Facebook.com/