At the most basic level you need two things, namely: You need an IMAP account and you need an authorized source.

Transcription

1 Submit Social Updates via For Those In a Hurry, Here Are The Basic Setup Instructions At the most basic level you need two things, namely: You need an IMAP account and you need an authorized source. Step 1: Add an IMAP account. This is the target account that will be in the TO: of your s. Select Scheduled Updates, Send Updates via , Add IMAP Account in the menu and follow the instructions on the form. Step 2: Add an authorized submission source. This will typically be your own address, or an employee s address. This is the address that will be in the FROM: of your s. Select Scheduled Updates, Send Updates via , Add Source in the menu and follow the instructions on the form. On this form, connect the address to the IMAP account that you added in the previous step. Using this same menu item in Step 2, you can add as many authorized sources as you want. You re Done: That s all there is to it. Now you can send s from the address(es) (Step 2) to the target account (Step 1), and the system will automatically convert those s into social updates. Now, For More Details What Can I Do With It? Updating your social accounts cannot get any easier. Send an . No special access. No additional accounts. No expensive solutions. No additional employee training. No sharing or divulging social account passwords. from approved source account you own Social update Your social account(s) Imagine you, and your employees, being able to: Send s from their existing addresses to an address that you own (on your own server, or on Gmail, Hotmail, etc.); Have those s turned into standard social updates and published on your Twitter account(s), your Facebook account(s), your Facebook Page(s), and other social accounts; Have the updates automatically tagged with an author tag that you define (eg., ^Mary or ^JohnD); Append a URL to the update text, which will automatically be shortened via either dld.bz or bit.ly, from where you can get click stats; Submit social updates for all your social accounts in this manner using only and one SocialOomph Professional account. You remain in total control of who can submit updates via , because: Copyright 2011 SocialOomph.com. All Rights Reserved. Page 1

2 You add and authorize specific addresses as valid submission sources; You specify the target social account(s) where the s from a specific address must be published; You define the author tag that is automatically appended to the updates from a specific address (it cannot be overridden or changed by the employee); The moment you remove an address from the list of valid submission sources, that person can send as many s as they like, none of them get published. Being able to create social updates from s is particularly useful where: You browse the web and a link to that web page via your browser s menu, or via an link on the web page itself (provided that you can specify the From address); You want several people to contribute updates to your social accounts with minimum disruption of their work routines and maximum efficiency. Say Again, What Do My Employees Need? Your employees need only their existing accounts, nothing more. They do not need a SocialOomph account. All you need is one SocialOomph Professional account, where you authorize the addresses of the employees whom you want to submit updates to your social accounts. Must The Be In a Special Format? There are a few very simple rules that must be followed: The Subject line of the contains the text of the social update. The Subject line cannot be empty. If it is longer than the allowed length of a social update (Twitter: 140, Facebook: 420) it is truncated. It can contain a hyperlink, but any hyperlink in the Subject is not shortened. The Body of the can contain a hyperlink, eg., If the Body contains more than one hyperlink, only the very first one is used and the rest are ignored. This hyperlink is automatically shortened using either dld.bz or bit.ly (depending on how you ve set up your SocialOomph account). The Body of the can also be blank. If it contains text, HTML, or anything else, it is ignored. In other words, the system uses only the Subject line and the first hyperlink found in the Body. Examples: Simple text tweet. o Subject: I submitted this tweet via ! o Body: empty o Resulting tweet: I submitted this tweet via ! Text tweet with a hyperlink. o Subject: Submit tweets via with SocialOomph! o Body: o Resulting tweet: Submit tweets via with SocialOomph! Is This Only For Employees? Absolutely not. You can authorize any address as a valid submission source. It can be your own address or the address of an employee, a partner, an associate, a contractor, a student, etc. It can be a Gmail address, a Hotmail address, an address on your own domain, etc. Copyright 2011 SocialOomph.com. All Rights Reserved. Page 2

3 What Kind Of Security Is There? Only s sent from an authorized address to a specific target address that you own (let s call this the target account ) are processed and turned into social updates. In fact, the system accesses the target account via the standard IMAP protocol (the same used by Outlook to access your account), and retrieves only s from authorized addresses. All other s are simply ignored. In other words, if somebody else sends s to the target account from an unauthorized address, those s are not turned into social updates. Spam that gets into that target account is similarly also not turned into social updates. Are There Any Limits? Currently the only limit is the total number of s that are read from an IMAP account. That limit is 500 per calendar day (in the Central timezone). Meaning, the system will read and process a maximum of 500 authorized s from a specific IMAP account during any calendar day. If there are more than 500 s, the remainder will be left in the IMAP account for processing the next day. Unauthorized s (spam, s from other addresses) do not count towards the limit. How Long Before An Is Published As a Social Update? Important: It is never ever immediate. If you need a solution where you send the , and within seconds it appears as a tweet on your Twitter account, then our solution is not for you. In other words, our solution is not for time critical social updates. When you send an , it can take several minutes (between 15 minutes and an hour depending on system load) before you will see the social update as scheduled in your SocialOomph account. The social update will be scheduled to be published on the social account sometime in the future. At that point in time it is just another scheduled social update and you can edit it and modify its scheduled time if required. What Happens To The s In My IMAP Account? s from approved sources are processed and deleted from your IMAP account. s from unauthorized sources are not touched and they remain in your IMAP account s inbox. Can I Use Folders In My IMAP Account? Our system reads s only from your Inbox. In other words, do not create any filters or rules that move authorized s out of the Inbox, or they will not be processed. How Do I Enable It Basic? At the most basic level you need two things, namely: You need an IMAP account and you need an authorized source. Step 1: Add an IMAP account. This is the target account mentioned above. Select Scheduled Updates, Send Updates via , Add IMAP Account in the menu and follow the instructions on the form. Copyright 2011 SocialOomph.com. All Rights Reserved. Page 3

4 Step 2: Add an authorized submission source. This will typically be your own address, or an employee s address. Select Scheduled Updates, Send Updates via , Add Source in the menu and follow the instructions on the form. On this form, connect the address to the IMAP account that you added in the previous step. Using this same menu item in Step 2, you can add as many authorized sources as you want. You re Done: That s all there is to it. Now you can send s from the address(es) (Step 2) to the target account (Step 1), and the system will automatically convert those s into social updates. More Advanced Configurations You can add as many IMAP accounts as you want, and you can attach as many authorized addresses to an IMAP account as you want. Plus, an address can be an authorized source on more than one IMAP account where it can be configured to publish to different social accounts. Okay, let s try and say that in plain English by way of an example. You have three IMAP accounts under your control: marketingtweets@yourdomain.com, versiontweets@yourdomain.com, and technicaltips@yourdomain.com. You have four employees and one external consultant who will be writing social updates. The employees are: John (john@yourdomain.com), Mary (mary@yourdomain.com), Peter (peter@yourdomain.com), and Bonny (bonny@yourdomain.com). The external consultant is William (williamconsulting100@gmail.com). You want Mary and William to send technical tip updates, but the external consultant s tips go only to your Twitter account and not to your technical Facebook Page, while Mary s updates go to Twitter and Facebook. Here s how you configure it: Add technicaltips@yourdomain.com as an IMAP account. Add mary@yourdomain.com as an source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Twitter social account with an author tag of Mary. Again add mary@yourdomain.com as an source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Facebook Page social account with no author tag because she s the only one who will publish to that Page. Add williamconsulting100@gmail.com as an source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Twitter account with an author tag of Bill. Now, when Mary sends an from mary@yourdomain.com to technicaltips@yourdomain.com, that will be published as a social update on your Twitter account, tagged with ^Mary, and on your Facebook Page with no author tag. When William sends an from williamconsulting100@gmail.com to technicaltips@yourdomain.com, that will be published as a social update only on your Twitter account and will be tagged with ^Bill. You want John and Bonny to send updates to your Twitter account regarding new versions of your products. Here s how you configure it: Add versiontweets@yourdomain.com as an IMAP account. Copyright 2011 SocialOomph.com. All Rights Reserved. Page 4

5 Add as an source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Twitter social account with an author tag of John. Add as an source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Twitter social account with an author tag of Bonny. Now, when John sends an from to the will be published to your Twitter account and will be tagged with ^John. When Bonny sends an from to the will be published to your Twitter account and will be tagged with ^Bonny. Lastly, you want Mary and Peter to send marketing updates to your Twitter account. Here s how to configure it: Add marketingtweets@yourdomain.com as an IMAP account. Add mary@yourdomain.com as an source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Twitter social account with an author tag of MaryM. Add peter@yourdomain.com as an source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Twitter social account with an author tag of Peter. Now, when Peter sends an from peter@yourdomain.com to marketingtweets@yourdomain.com, the will be published to your Twitter account and will be tagged with ^Peter. When Mary sends an from mary@yourdomain.com to marketingtweets@yourdomain.com, the will be published to your Twitter account and will be tagged with ^MaryM. Have you noticed what Mary can now do? Mary can now send two types of social updates from her account by simply using different addresses in the To field of the . If Mary sends an to technicaltips@yourdomain.com, that will be published as a social update on your Twitter account, tagged with ^Mary, and on your Facebook Page with no author tag. If she sends an to marketingtweets@yourdomain.com, the will be published to your Twitter account and will be tagged with ^MaryM. The combinations are as powerful and flexible as you want to make them. There is no limit to the number of IMAP accounts that you add to your SocialOomph account, and there is no limit to the number of authorized sources that you add to an IMAP account. Questions? Please submit a support ticket with any questions you have at Copyright 2011 SocialOomph.com. All Rights Reserved. Page 5