We’re thrilled to launch the Social Pros podcast with sage and savvy Jay Baer, of Convince and Convert. Argyle CEO, Eric Boggs, will join Jay every week to present the Social Media Stat of the Week, as well as interview an expert practitioner in the field. The first episode features Taulbee Jackson, CEO of Raidious, and chief commander of the Social Media Command Center for Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis and it’s available now.

A new podcast?With @JayBaer and @EricBoggs? That uses ‘Do The Work’? & has a feature on Debunking Stats? Yes please. bit.ly/xYe5k8

— Tom Webster (@webby2001) January 31, 2012

We don’t want to give too much away, but highlights include:

1. Jay’s thoughts on Twitter’s “colossal strategic blunder.”
2. How social media has shifted trust from CEOs to peers.
3. Details on the “world’s greatest internship with beer, nachos, and football.”
4. A catchy guitar intro.

Jay and Eric will meet face to face for the first time next week at Social Fresh East, so get excited about Episode 2, featuring Scott Monty of Ford Motors. Follow us on Twitter for updates and sneak peeks on upcoming guests and content!

Who would you like to hear on Social Pros? Let us know in the comments or tweet us some ideas @argylesocial!

Every second we can shave off tasks repeated throughout the day gives community managers a little bit more of their scarcest resource: time. Our new feature, Hopper, makes consistent, automated publishing to your social properties easier and more efficient than ever. Find content you want to post, throw it in a hopper and Argyle will publish posts throughout the day according to rules you specify.

We asked Stacey, one of our talented developers, to give you a quick overview.

You call the shots

Hopper allows you to set multiple rules throughout the week, so you can fine-tune your social media posting schedule to maximize engagement. Do you have an office in Sydney and San Francisco? Durham, NC and Durham, England? Set multiple rules on your hopper so you publish seven posts from 9-5 in SF and another seven from 9-5 in Sydney. (If you would like to learn more about timing your social media posts, check out our infographic.)

Create multiple hoppers

Do you manage properties for multiple audiences and market segments? Create multiple hoppers that are tailored to your communities like never before. Think of them as buckets. If you post different content to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, Hopper allows you to create multiple buckets. But don’t fret; hoppers still play by the same permission-based system you set up initially. That way, only authorized users can post to hoppers that have been approved by the administrator.

One-click bookmarklet

Curating amazing content is hard enough on its own and our one-click bookmarklet makes posting to your properties easier than ever. Use the bookmarklet to “send to Hopper” with one click and you’re done. It really is that simple.

Email alerts

Once your hopper has a nice long queue of posts, it functions as the well-oiled machine we designed it to be. If your hopper reaches the end of its list, it will send you an email letting you know that your hopper is empty. Think of it as the gas light in your car. Time to fill up.

Which tool, when?

The Hopper works great for some tasks whereas scheduled posts may be better for others. Learn how to choose the right social media tool for the job in our just-released white paper.

If you’ve changed your Facebook cover, you know it requires a hi-res photo of a very strange size (850 pixels x 315 pixels). While folks are busy scouring their computers for large photos, now is an excellent time for non-profits to create covers their supporters can share to spread their cause. After all, you don’t have to be friends with someone to see their cover, so it’s a free 850×315 billboard…..if you do it right.

How can non-profits use the new cover space to build their movement?

1. Empower your already assembled audience: The Surfrider Foundation has over 80 grassroots chapters and some killer images of surf and snow. By offering lightly-branded Surfrider covers, they are spreading their gospel and some pretty jaw-dropping photos.
   
2. Crowdsource your images: The Nature Conservancy already shares a daily nature photo on their homepage, and asks folks to submit their photos via Flickr. If you decide to go this route, be sure to give concise, easy steps for submission. The organization could increase engagement by hosting a ‘Best of’ contest and then using the winners as the official Nature Conservancy covers.
   
3. Promote upcoming events: Team in Training, benefiting the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, has an unparalleled network of athletes training for and raising funds through marathons, triathlons, hikes and more. If Team in Training covers were available, runners of the Maui Marathon could publicize the event and raise more money for LLS.
   
4. Celebrate shared accomplishments: 350.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis and every year, they coordinate events on the same day in over 188 countries. Last year, 350’s mobilization efforts were so large they were photographed by a satellite in space! Ahead of the curve, 350.org already offers stunning Facebook covers. In addition to offering branded covers, they encourage supporters to upload their own 350 photos as their covers.
   
5. Let simplicity shine: The National Resource Defense Council strikes the perfect balance of beauty and brand in their Facebook covers. They let the images convey their message, with simple and direct sentences: “Defend wolves. Save our Oceans. Save America’s last wild places.” What don’t they say? “Donate here! Buy now!” Beware of making your covers too solicitous or people likely won’t use them, and they could violate Facebook’s terms of use. People like the NRDC’s covers so much, they’re asking for more in the comments! (Specifically: snow leopards, cheetahs, and tree frogs.)

Now you know how to use covers theoretically, how do you create one, technically? Luckily, John Haydon wrote a post explaining just that.

Have you spotted any other organizations using Facebook covers to promote their cause? Let me know in the comments.

Who owns your Twitter handle if it’s half professional and half personal? Along with your email inbox and keycard entry, do you need to hand over your @Company_MyName handle and all of its followers on your last day? An unfolding court case will determine just that, and community managers around the world are paying attention.

Noah Kravitz and PhoneDog are currently embroiled in a landmark lawsuit that may change the way Twitter handles are created, used, and eventually handed off in the workplace. Noah and his currently employer, TechnoBuffalo, have sounded off on the matter, and PhoneDog has posted a public statement. Great coverage has appeared in Time, the New York Times, and countless tech blogs, so I won’t dig into the details here. If you want to go deep, here’s the court filing.

PhoneDog’s largest allegation is that Kravitz owes the company $340,000 for the following he took with him as @PhoneDog_Noah. PhoneDog alleges that “industry standard” places the value of a Twitter follower at $2.50. Times that by the 8 months in question and the 17,000 followers amassed and Kravitz allegedly owes PhoneDog $340,000.

But my question is – what “industry standard” places a follower at $2.50? What about non-tweeting followers – those who use Twitter simply for news? What about bots? Are they worth $2.50 as well? Using the highly reputable and scientifically sound WhatisMyTwitterAccountWorth, I discovered @NoahKravitz’s account to be worth only $10,046! And TweetValue places it even lower at $5,080. My luddite grandmother, who proudly proclaims I work “on the internet”, values the account at zero. In our own research last spring, we found the average value of a follower to be $.25 per month, valuing the account at $34,000 over the eight month period.

PhoneDog’s allegations might have more weight if the values used were rooted in actual data rather than an “industry standard” that the industry clearly doesn’t agree with. But whether $1 or $1,000,000, this story isn’t ultimately about money. It’s a case of mismanagement.

Social accounts have become significant corporate assets, and should be treated as such. When an employee borrows a company car, they get the keys—the company doesn’t also give them the title. It’s clear that the company owns the car, and the keys are on loan. Companies need to be managing their social accounts the same way.

This is actually one of the core functions that any social media management system provides. Employees that use Argyle, or any SMMS, don’t have direct access to social accounts. They have access to the SMMS, which can get revoked at any time.

If PhoneDog had taken the appropriate steps to protect their corporate assets, they wouldn’t find themselves in court today.

Have you?

The Altimeter Group published “A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation” today. You can download a copy here or view an embedded version below.

I received an advance copy of the research earlier this week. I think it is great that a research organization is focusing on our industry and on social media management (SMM) products. And I think that this is a fantastic report for the most part.

That said, I do have some reservations. I sent the following feedback to the authors – Jeremiah Owyang and Andrew Jones – and thought I’d also share on the Argyle blog.

First of all, I’m happy that Argyle is included in the report. We’re a younger company and we’ve raised less capital than our competitors, so the fact that we’re “in the game” (so to speak) reflects the quality of our product, our focus on our customers, and our ability to execute as a team.

Though the report makes a great effort, I think it does little to clarify some of the market confusion. The intended audience for this report is very obviously the enterprise buyer – all of the examples are Fortune 500 brands and massive corporations. Thus it is very misleading that the report compares vendors targeting different segments as apples to apples. HootSuite is a small business offering – its pricing starts at free. Argyle is targeting the mid-market with products in the hundreds of dollars per month. Syncapse is doing full-service deals at $3M per year. These are apples, oranges, and bananas.

While we’re all in the same category, SMM vendors are building very different products for very different customers. If a prospective buyer is making a purchase decision between Syncapse, Argyle, and HootSuite, then they probably don’t have a very thoughtful understanding of their needs…or at best didn’t do a very thorough evaluation. (Though we’re very happy to compete for those deals, of course!)

I also think that Altimeter missed the mark with the use cases they included in the report. I was very surprised that the report doesn’t suggest a lead/revenue generation use case – which is a primary goal for any online retailer or small/mid B2B marketer…or Argyle Social customer. Socialzing one’s brand for the purposes of generating likes and engagement is a very different proposition than socializing with the intent to drive sales. Brands like Coca Cola have very different needs than uber-retailers like Best Buy…which has very different needs than smaller retailers, like Argyle customer Lake Champlain Chocolates.

I think Jason Falls’ analysis of the industry was a bit more insightful. He describes eight current SMM use cases, and then six areas where he believes SMM will play a bigger role moving forward. And, in typical Falls fashion, he’s dead-on.