Wildfire Spreads Into Facebook Page ManagementWildfire Spreads Into Facebook Page Management

14 Leading Social CRM Applications

Wildfire Interactive has expanded its social media promotion product into a suite of tools for managing Facebook pages and profiles and analyzing audience response.

The company claims its Wildfire Promotions Builder already powers more than 100,000 social marketing platform campaigns like sweepstakes, contests, and coupons. Wildfire competes with companies like North Social and Involver to provide businesses with customizable interactive components for their Facebook pages. The Wildfire Social Marketing Suite allows marketers to build and manage engaging Facebook pages, which can include components like video and photo galleries, manage communication with social network members, and monitor feedback and engagement through an analytic dashboard.

Wildfire owes some of its bragging rights to its relationship with Facebook. "Our first customer was Facebook, and our first investor was Facebook. We're the only social media marketing company to get investment from Facebook," said Amy Millard, chief marketing officer at Wildfire.

Wildfire is listed as one of the firms blessed by FBFund, a fund for startups run by Facebook, Founders Fund, and Accel Partners that provides investments of up to $100,000 in promising social software companies.

Facebook itself uses the Wildfire suite to manage tabs on its Nonprofits on Facebook and Marketing on Facebook pages. Other prominent customers include Lady Gaga (through the agency William Morris Endeavor), PacSun, and Electronic Arts.

"We're providing the ability for our customers, in minutes, to publish easy, interactive fan pages," Millard said. The suite includes templates for publishing professional-looking pages quickly but also provides the design freedom to "treat the Facebook page as a blank canvas" and avoid a generic look, she said.

The analytics include the ability to compare the performance of your page with others, based on benchmark data Wildfire has gathered on 27 million fan pages, Millard said.

Wildfire provides some support for Twitter and other social networks, but it's biggest emphasis is on Facebook. Wildfire quotes prices on an individual basis, but Millard said advertising agencies and small to midsize businesses "can get going for as little as 99 cents a day."

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