PostSpeaker was developed in 2016 by content marketer Peter Boots and software developer Satya van Heummen. How did the idea come about?
Peter: “For one of our customers, we were looking for a way to increase your social reach without having to advertise immediately. One of the best ways is to use your ambassadors for this. In this case, it concerned organizations providing the same service, but could also be fans, colleagues, members, co-organizers or other stakeholders. In other words, people and parties who are willing to share your content. ”
Peter continues: “In practice, however, sharing is not easy. The willingness may be there, but they either forget it, are too busy or think it is too much hassle. As a result, you spend a lot of time working there every time. going back to the back and never knowing how often a post will be shared.
Now there were tools on the market with which you could automatically post messages to social media accounts of other people, such as Hootsuite and Buffer, but there are two important disadvantages. Firstly, as an ambassador you have lost complete control. You don’t know what will be posted to which of your accounts and when. Second, you will have to share your login information. Suppose you want to share for your organization, then you must share your LinkedIn login details with your employer. You don’t want that.
We were looking for something with which an ambassador has full control and therefore knows what will be liked and/or shared and when. Moreover, he had to retain the option not to promote a post or to add a comment. Yes, of course such a tool did not exist yet. Then we made it ourselves.”
Satya adds: “There are also tools where sharing is not automatic, but where you prepare content in one central place and then ask your ambassadors (employees, for example) to share that content. But why would you always ask if you are anyway? knows that someone wants to share? That’s just a hassle: you have to keep asking and the other person has to share every time.
We turned that around: people give permission once and then share “by default” and automatically. By including the option that a scheduled message can be viewed and possibly adjusted or rejected, the effort is minimal and the control optimal. ”
