Running a startup or small business today typically entails monumental workloads, so we forgive companies that forget to tweet at their followers every day.
But Audrey Melnik won’t, because her service makes it stupidly easy.
Melnik today launched her latest startup, ZootRock, which helps businesses maintain an active social media presence with minimal effort. After a quick setup process, the social tool spits out articles, images, and quotes to your social accounts on a regular basis, with as much or little manual curation as you want.
ZootRock supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Scoop.it, and RSS, with more platforms coming soon. It sources content from around 200 streams, though it adds more every day. ZootRock customers can subscribe to existing streams or request new ones, said Melnik.
Above: ZootRock CEO Audrey Melnik.
Melnik has been testing out the service with around 600 beta users. A company representative passed along some social accounts hooked up to ZootRock so we could take a look at the service in action.
Sure enough, it looked like a robot was in charge. The Bubblecoin Bitcoin Community Facebook page posted the same article six times in a row this past weekend.
But that was the most egregious misuse of the tool. For the most part, the accounts posted content relevant to their audiences. And ZootRock doesn’t prevent humans from inserting some personality into their posts: Folks using the tool can review and edit posts before the go live on their accounts.
“Around 80% of the time you spend on social is sourcing great content,” Melnik told VentureBeat. “We help find that content. It's up to the person managing that to decide how much additional effort they want to inject.”
Above: The ZootRock dashboard.
The idea for ZootRock stemmed from Melnik’s previous startup, WotWentWrong, which crowdsourced relationship advice. Melnik hired a social consultant to boost her company’s social media presence, but she wasn’t thrilled with the results. So she scrapped the consultant and built a tool to keep her social accounts posting content on a regular basis.
"I ended up getting more followers than when I had the social consultant doing it for me,” Melnik told VentureBeat. “That was the genesis of ZootRock.”
ZootRock is part of 500 Startups’ ninth batch, which has been great validation for the startup, said Melnik.
“There are lots of highs and lows in the life of a startup, and it's great to have that support base,” she said.
Now that the tool is broadly available, Melnik is focused on building out the team and raising a seed round.
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