After being in stealth mode for two years, SocialWhirled is coming out of its cocoon to introduce its social media promotional platform to a wider consumer base.
SocialWhirled is looking to streamline online social campaigns for companies’ products. This could include having SocialWhirled maintain a company’s social media pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more, but the customer could manage those pages himself, CEO Andy Lombard said. The key is easy installation.
“Think about one click and you’re launching a brand new campaign across all these platforms,” Lombard said, adding that it includes web and mobile platforms.
SocialWhirled can cater to companies of all sizes, he said, with prices ranging from $3,000 per month to more than $10,000 depending on the size of the company and campaign.
A company can launch an unlimited number of campaigns while they’re paying for SocialWhirled’s services. As an example, Lombard said an automobile company might launch 20 or 30 different campaigns, targeting different demographics across different platforms.
While some of the information used to target SocialWhirled campaigns will be gathered from sites like Facebook, where people openly share information, much of it will be collected by the company itself from questions asked in marketing campaigns and other methods, Lombard said.
SocialWhirled will also target people who are influential on social media, he said. This will increase the potential reach of a campaign if those people choose to participate.
“We use those people and reward those people to go out and grab more interested customers in our product,” Lombard said.
During the company’s two years of stealth mode, Lombard said SocialWhirled spent “millions of dollars” conducting research across the country and talking to “leading brand managers,” asking them what they would like to see. The long preparation may already be showing signs of success.
SocialWhirled recently unveiled international language support and Lombard said the company is targeting multinational companies. The company is currently “working very deeply” with IBM, though Lombard declined to elaborate on what that meant at this juncture.
While the company is looking to grow itself quickly on the national and international stage, Lombard said he has no intention of leaving Arizona.
“We love Arizona,” he said.
Lombard elaborated by email.
“Arizona was just ranked in the top 10 states for starting a business by Entrepreneur.com,” he wrote. “And, for the technology sector, Arizona is growing a wonderful community… We’re starting to see more progress in creating a really urban community that revolves around technology—the Roosevelt Corridor is a good example.”
When Lombard started his first company, he was convinced to moved to Dallas, but quickly regretted the decision. SocialWhirled is now housed in a 1920s building near Central Avenue and Roosevelt Street, he said.
“I think it’s one of the greatest areas in Phoenix,” he said.
SocialWhirled
On Friday, May 17, 2013, SocialWhirled donated their services to the SeedSpot Demo Day and a few lucky startups will benefit from their expertise – read who won those prizes here.
