We gotta admit: we love HootSuite.  Like millions of other social media professionals, we depend on it every day to communicate with colleagues, meet new customers and stay on top of current events.

Besides offering a great social CRM platform, we’ve learned that HootSuite is a great group of people to work with. They understand that most business owners, sales reps and social marketing professionals are still learning how to “be social”, and they are committed to helping people learn how to do it right. Just check out the reams of helpful content they offer.

That’s why we are stoked to announce that NeedTagger is now available as a FREE app inside HootSuite’s App Directory. That’s right, now you can sift Twitter for potential customers right inside the most widely-used social CRM tool in the world.

Here’s What You Get

Within HootSuite, all NeedTagger FREE users get the following features at no charge:

  • create one intent-filtered prospecting stream (see our list of pre-tested filters)
  • edit your stream definition any time
  • search within your stream using keywords and block words
  • send messages to prospects using Hootsuite’s standard engagement tools, including scheduling, security, etc.
  • tag messages to work on later

Messaging Caps Apply (FREE users only)

With almost 5 million people using HootSuite, NeedTagger FREE users are subject to daily messaging caps to prevent anyone from being overwhelmed with offers of help. If a person’s daily cap has been reached, then all of the person’s posts will be greyed-out within NeedTagger for the rest of the day.

Upgrade to Customize

NeedTagger PRO users have no messaging caps and enjoy powerful custom features, including:

  • mine Twitter’s full fire hose of data (over 400 million posts per day)
  • create 5 custom campaigns (also available in HootSuite)
  • customize campaigns with location filters, keywords and block words (unlimited)
  • track the clicks and shares generated by your outreach
  • monitor your NeedTagger-generated traffic in Google Analytics
  • create and re-use message templates
  • store landing pages
  • and more

Pro Users Can Use Hootsuite, too

Starting this week, NeedTagger Pro users will also be able to access their custom campaigns inside HootSuite. However, certain features such as tracking via Insight analytics and message templates are not currently available in HootSuite.  Paid accounts do not have message caps.

How to install NeedTagger into your HootSuite environment

  1. Select Tools / App Director / All Apps from the left hand menu bar.
  2. Select NeedTagger to install the app into your Hootsuite environment
  3. Select MyApps / NeedTagger / Settings.
  4. Sign in or register your FREE account.
  5. Select your FREE filtered stream and GO
  6. Engage with potential customers on Twitter!

Let us know what you think about this by leaving your comment below.

(the power of ad-hoc markets on Twitter)

There’s a stir going on in the UK right now about the London 2012 Olympic committee shutting down a Twitter-based ticket availability alert service called @ticketalert.

 

As the Techcrunch article explains,

Adam Naisbitt created  on Twitter and deep-linked into the Olympics ticket site to allow people to find out about tickets as they became available. It garnered over 11,000 followers this week. A London 2012 spokesman has said its ticket agent had now blocked the feed. Naisbitt is trying to re-start the service.

However, a new site has now appeared doing the same thing. Andrew Davey, founder of tech startupSquadify, set up @SqadTicketWatch in the last couple of days.

Cool idea. Luckily, they got it up again.

Ad-hoc markets like this pop up all the time on Twitter.  Sometimes they resemble spam, but in other cases (like this one) they provide an incredibly valuable service to consumers.  For almost zero cost.

This type of social marketing has many of the attributes of a “home run” in advertising, for example:

  • customers opt-in
  • people share the offer with others
  • it’s really inexpensive
  • results are measurable
  • it meets a real need efficiently and quickly (thank you!)

A big part of the reason ad hoc markets work well on Twitter is because unlike Facebook, forums and LinkedIn, Twitter is a completely public network.  It is also really simple to use and was purpose built to operate over mobile devices.  It’s convenient.

The products and services that seem best suited for marketing via ad-hoc markets share the following attributes:

  • there’s limited supply vs. demand (imagined or real)
  • the product is transient or time-sensitive (tickets, travel, meals, car shows, events, etc.)
  • is easy to purchase online
  • a value of a few hundred $ or less
  • solves a personal need (vs. business solutions)
  • implies social status (popular brand, meme, product; or, recently endorsed by celebrity, etc.)… this gets the viral heat going

Do any of your products or services fit the bill?  If so, your business can probably harness Twitter’s frictionless marketplace to stimulate ad-hoc demand for your goods and services, too.