Hootsuite Adds Social Campaign & Contest Management To Its Platform

Social media management firm Hootsuite announced today that it is adding the ability to manage contests, UGC galleries and other customized social campaigns.

The new feature — Hootsuite Campaigns — is based on a product created by Brightkit, a Vancouver-based startup that Hootsuite has acquired (the acquisition was also announced today). Campaigns offers digital marketers the ability to run 13 types of contests, sweepstakes and galleries that can be embedded on microsites, viewed on social networks and mobile devices. Brightkit has been included in Hootsuite’s app directory since 2013.

“Organizations are looking for new and exciting ways to engage their audience,” Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes said in a release. “Hootsuite Campaigns extends our social marketing capabilities, allowing businesses to reach new audiences through engaging contests, sweepstakes and galleries, all managed from their Hootsuite dashboard.”

More details from the company about how the product helps marketers:

• Create social media galleries to aggregate mentions and rich media containing specific hashtags, monitor incoming content before it appears publicly
• Initiate contests that encourage participation and sharing for social virality, create a monitoring stream to follow adoption and target messages to by region or demographic to focus engagement
• Manage and moderate social campaigns from the Hootsuite dashboard
• Easily export social campaign data for real-time analysis and action
• Gain valuable insight into customer feedback and create social impressions that generate leads

Postscript: A previous version of this post included an incorrect annual fee for Campaigns. A Hootsuite spokesperson clarified via email: “Hootsuite Campaigns is currently released as a standalone product designed for enterprise-level marketing teams. Pricing is comparable to Hootsuite’s existing Enterprise platform.”