The Social Media Landscape

Last year, ExactTarget made a bold move into the social media space by acquiring CoTweet. At the time, we announced plans for an expanded presence in the Bay Area, placing us right in the center of the social media universe.

I am proud to announce that that day has finally arrived. Today we officially opened the beautiful ExactTarget Social Media Lab, right in the heart of San Francisco's SOMA neighborhood!

The ExactTarget Social Media Lab, will serve as our social media center of excellence, where we drive innovation in social products and services. We'll work closely with our customers to...

Businesses are reporting real results after integrating CoTweet 3.0 Enterprise Edition into their social marketing strategy. moneysupermarket.com, Britain’s number one comparison site specializing in financial services, announced today it has increased Twitter followers 70 percent in one month using CoTweet. This is just one more example of how businesses can grow their following and increase sales by participating in social media.

moneysupermarket.com (@moneysupermkt) attributed this success to CoTweet's enterprise-class workflow capabilities enabling 14 employees across six business units to...

We all know Twitter and Facebook are powerful channels, but have you ever stopped to think about how powerful? After all, where else can 660 MILLION people (160M on Twitter, 500M on Facebook) engage with one another?

One thing’s for sure, amid the millions of fans and followers, your brand is being talked about. From banks and airlines to retailers and food service providers, companies of all shapes and sizes are embracing the trend to provide better customer service, product support and brand visibility through social media. Doing that well means empowering your team with the right tools...

Big corporations have been quick to harness the power of Twitter in an effort to speak directly to their clients. Jesse Engle, founder & CEO of CoTweet, spoke to CNBC about the growing trend.

Jesse Engle discusses the power of Twitter for business with CNBC Squawk Box Europe

Jesse is blogging on behalf of the Social Media Marketing Team at ExactTarget

The art of conversation meets the science of conversion.

Today, just fourteen months after we demo'd CoTweet publicly for the first time, I'm thrilled to announce that CoTweet has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by ExactTarget, the leading provider of on-demand email and one-to-one marketing solutions. The combined companies will offer the first complete solution for businesses to manage all aspects of their online communication with customers and prospects, including email, mobile, and social media.

CoTweet will continue to operate in San Francisco and establish a new Social Media...

Many people have asked us about Twitter’s planned commercial account offering and what it means for CoTweet. Twitter has been planning for commercial accounts for a long time.  Today Anamitra Banerji from Twitter’s Product Team posted to their blog that Twitter is testing one of its new features, ‘Contributors’.  We figure now would be a good time to shed a little light on how CoTweet will be working with Twitter to extend the functionality of commercial accounts as they’re rolled out.

CoTweet’s Multi-Author Functionality is Strengthened

CoTweet was the first company to recognize that...

The Wall Street Journal has just broken the news of our first paid service, the Enterprise Innovators Program.

The world's leading brands have embraced the power of the real-time web, and CoTweet is playing a key role in their success. Today we’re announcing that companies including Coca-Cola, Ford, McDonald's, Microsoft, SunTrust, Whole Foods and others have enrolled in the CoTweet Enterprise Innovators Program, a new program that includes exclusive Enterprise Edition product features and services that help companies manage their brands on Twitter. The full press release is here.

For more information and to request an invitation to join, see the Enterprise Innovators Program page. The CoTweet public beta remains free for consumers and enterprises.

Here is what some of our customers and partners are saying:

"In social media, the experience you give people on their first effort to reach you had better be the way you want them to remember you. CoTweet helps us engage customers in authentic two-way conversations that ensure we’re consistent and coordinated as a team and that we leave a positive impression."

Scott Monty, Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager at Ford

“McDonald’s is mentioned on Twitter every 10-20 seconds. We are embracing this tremendous opportunity to engage in conversations with our customers and others through @McDonalds each and every day. CoTweet enables us to have those real-time conversations across multiple business units, including our marketing, customer satisfaction, public relations and media relations teams."

Bill Whitman, vice president of communications, McDonald’s USA

“We’ve got dozens of Microsoft-branded Twitter accounts, each with a unique focus and set of followers. All together, that represents a significant volume of tweets. We love CoTweet. It's been the key way for our teams to tweet as individuals and still retain our brand identity.”

Marty Collins, Group Marketing Manager at Microsoft for Windows 7

"Social Media based service is being woven into the fabric of our daily lives. Over the next several years it will be as ubiquitous as the telephone. At SunTrust, we strive to help our clients Live Solid and Bank Solid, which includes leveraging Social Media to connect with our clients, wherever they are, communicating with them on their terms, rather than ours. Co-Tweet helps us hear the voice of client from within the Twitterverse and respond to their questions, concerns, compliments, and complaints."

Robert W. Ross - Relationship & Planning Manager, Enterprise Client at SunTrust

"Successful social business design requires focus on people, process and technology. At a time when so many social technology companies are struggling to prove an effective business model, the CoTweet team has shown they know what it takes to help a growing number of companies derive measurable value from their social media initiatives."

Peter Kim, Managing Director, North America at Dachis Group

European airline easyJet (@easyJetCare) use CoTweet to manage customer service interactions through Twitter. This interesting BBC News video covering the impact social media is having on the travel industry features Paul and his teams efforts (the easyJet piece starts at 3:45). → Watch the video

Yes we make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes. It’s what we do about that feedback…and we resolve problems.

Paul Hopkins, Head of Customer Experience, easyJet

I’m excited to share the news that CoTweet has formed a partnership with Dachis Group to deliver social business solutions to enterprises.

Dachis Group is a new type of technology solutions firm. It was created in 2008 by Jeffrey Dachis to help large corporate enterprises unlock the value of social technologies to do business better. The firm takes a holistic approach to its client engagements, combining advisory services along with technology implementation across three practice areas: customer participation, workforce collaboration and business partner optimization. Today, Dachis Group...

Winnie Hsia (@misswinnie) from Whole Foods talks about using CoTweet on the @wholefoods Twitter account for managing conversations, scheduling tweets, monitoring search terms, assigning tweets and rolling out CoTweet to 280+ Whole Foods stores.

“CoTweet makes it so easy to explain to somebody how to manage [our Twitter] account…it really puts it in a neat little package. On Twitter directly, it’s a bit difficult to explain to someone who’s never seen the tool before, what the point is.” Winnie Hsia, Whole Foods

See more testimonials on CoTweet’s YouTube Channel

Jesse Engle, CEO of CoTweet, interviews Morgan Johnston about how jetBlue uses CoTweet to manage their corporate Twitter account at the 140 Twitter Conference in Mountain View, CA.

The ability to collaborate with team members from across the company… to bring them all in as resources and assign responses to subject matter experts is great.

Morgan Johnston, jetBlue

See more testimonials on CoTweet’s YouTube Channel

Julia talks about how she uses CoTweet for @juliaroy, @pepsi, @nowpropelled and @fordfiesta.

CoTweet has really changed the whole way that I am able to use Twitter

Julia Roy, UnderCurrent

See more testimonials on CoTweet’s YouTube Channel

Startup Helps Companies Such as Whole Foods, Starbucks, JetBlue, Ford, Microsoft and Others Manage Brand Presence on Twitter

San Francisco, Calif. — July 9,2009 — CoTweet today announced it has raised $1.1M in venture funding from a group of high-profile investors including Baseline Ventures, Founders Fund, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Maples Investments and Freestyle Capital - social media heavy hitters whose prior investments include Facebook, Twitter, Google, Digg and Yammer, among others.

CoTweet is a web-based collaboration platform that helps companies reach and engage customers in...

Wow, where’d April go? It was another great month for CoTweet, both in terms of product development and market acceptance. Here are some highlights:

“…savvy startup CoTweet has come up with a magic formula for Twittering brands that is one part CRM and one part marketing tool, that they hope many a company will want to pay for.” CoTweet: The Twitter CRM Tool of Choice for BestBuy, JetBlue, and Ford

— Mashable

“As CoTweet provides real value to people managing consumer brands, it will not be hard for the company to charge for its service. ” CoTweet mentioned in Rafe Needleman’s Accosted by Twitter...

Twelve organizations - Best Buy, Ford, Hershey Entertainment & Resorts, JetBlue, Intuit, Meetup.com, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Robert Verdi, Inc., Rotary International, Sprint and Waterford Wedgwood USA - have joined an innovative program we’re calling the CoTweet Cohort.

The CoTweet Cohort

During a six-month period, the companies will use the CoTweet platform as a primary tool for communicating through Twitter and will participate in an ongoing discussion regarding opportunities and best practices for leveraging social media to further business objectives.

The CoTweet Cohort allows participants to...

Big news – Laura Fitton, reigning Queen of “Twitter for business” and founder of Pistachio Consulting, has joined CoTweet’s Advisory Board.

Laura Fitton (@pistachio)

Laura (@pistachio) was among the first people on the planet to recognize the profound impact Twitter would have on business and is shaping how companies large and small are embracing not only Twitter, but also what she calls “microsharing” in general. Laura is just the latest addition to an already strong Advisory Board, which includes technology consultant and analyst Jerry Michalski (@jerrymichalski) and serial entrepreneur and...

I remember nearly 20 years ago when I first heard the phrase, "Imagine your brand were at a cocktail party. What would it wear and who would it talk to?" It sounded so smart and sophisticated. It made me want to be a brand guy. (Today it stimulates my gag reflex, but that's another story).

We've already got sticks. Introducing a new "carat." And a new tool.

Brands do have personalities. We as humans love to project personalities on inanimate objects. It helps us relate, on terms we can understand. Projecting a personality onto something, however, doesn't make it human. At least for now, social...