Spreed is Building Stronger Products through Social Media

Spreed is a Toronto based technology company that helps publishers and media companies build, monetize and analyze their mobile applications. They are best known for their work with leading national publishers like the Globe and Mail, Metro Newspapers and the EW Scripps company. Their pioneering work with mobile advertising has allowed their partners to harness an exciting and valuable new revenue stream.

Dave Coleman, Director of Marketing, explains how Spreed (@Spreed) uses social media for its clients like Globe and Mail. In Dave’s perspective, social media helps accomplish four major objectives: sales, marketing, strategy and customer service.

Strategy. These are just the social media strategies to help Spreed’s direct clientele. However, Spreed also has a strong social media plan in place to help grow their company exponentially. From a sales perspective the team uses both Twitter and Linkedin to build relationships with leading thought leaders and executives at media and publishing companies. These relationships provide valuable leads to the company’s sales team that result in future business deals.

The company also publishes a blog specifically targeted at media and publishing executives, informing them on the power of mobile applications and advertising; this has set Spreed up as a thought leader in the space. Potential customers come to Spreed’s blog for information on the space, but once they are ready to make a strategic decision, the first group they contact is Spreed.

Sales. Spreed’s sales team also monitors hash tags on Twitter that are relevant to the company such as, mobile publishing, newspaper industry, iphone market, etc. If they see someone who could potential be a client of Spreed’s they engage them in a conversation and provide them with any information they may need.

Marketing. Dave realizes the potential word of mouth marketing by connecting with high level bloggers in the market of his clients. By offering a new app to the high level blogger, the foundation of a relationship is built. Once the blogger plays around with the app, he is likely to reciprocate and write about their thoughts on the app. This is powerful when one blogger does it but 20 bloggers in an industry explode the amount of content around the app. The content is then shared through social mediums which increases the reach exponentially .

Customer Service. With the release of a new product, it used to be hard to get constructive feedback from end users. Apple iTunes allows for some feedback, but it is not a complete feedback loop that allows Spreed to respond to potential problems. With social media networks like Twitter, the feedback loop is much faster. For the launch of Globe and Mail’s Globe App, users can use hashtags like #globeapp to report any issues they’re experiencing. To learn what users would be interested in for new features, Spreed is now knowledgeable of user suggestions through services like Uservoice and Get Satisfaction. Users visit Globeapp.Uservoice.com, see what others are already suggesting, they can vote if they agree or suggest new features.

From Dave’s perspective, the purpose of social media isn’t just getting eye balls to a page or getting @mentions on Twitter but instead to use social media as a tool to meet objectives and achieve goals.