ContentAide Helps Tongue-Tied Brands on Facebook

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I suspect most companies know by now they need to engage their customers on Facebook — but what are they actually supposed to say? A new startup called ContentAide promises to help, by showing brands what content is catching on across Facebook.

The Fairfield, Conn. company was founded by Cody Barbierri, a social and digital media strategist who writes frequently for VentureBeat. Customers sign up by providing information about their company, their competitors, and their industry. Then they get a daily email showing the posts that are getting the best response — from their own Facebook Page, from their competitors, from all the companies in their industry, and from all the companies on Facebook — which they can use as a guide when crafting their own updates.

You can see a sample email here. ContentAide is using publicly available data, but it isn't just counting up "likes" and comments, Barbierri said. It's actually measuring a status update's success relative to a company's overall popularity:

A brand page that has 10 million fans isn't going to have troubles getting comments and likes on updates, and that doesn't mean what they are posting is good content. But a page that has only 500 fans and is getting 25 percent of their community to like and comment is creating good content. That's what our algorithm figured out.

The goal here is pretty different from most social media analytic tools, which usually help companies see where their brand and other topics are mentioned and measure the sentiment around those comments. In other words, they're more about seeing where to comment, whereas ContentAide helps companies figure out what to say.

ContentAide is self-funded. After a free 15-day trial, pricing starts at $20 per month for one report per day. Barbierri said he plans to expand to Twitter, which has its own set of social dynamics.

"Twitter and Facebook are two very different social platforms," he said. "Twitter is more real-time and short (conversations), whereas Facebook is more personal. So I wouldn't say content on one is best for the other."

Tags: social media analytics

Companies: ContentAide, Facebook

People: Cody Barbierri

By AMY WALLACE 19 Apr, 2011

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a33d5edd8b3ffbfe53dbff940e761a71
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