Tuesday April 17 was a big day for JugnooMe, the social business platform from parent company Jugnoo, as we launched a major update to the platform.
Originally launched as a private beta late last year, we’ve come a long way since these early days. A lot of this has been by listening to the feedback of our early beta users, as well as monitoring social media channels to understand the pain points of our target audience(s).
Couple that with a very cool and agile team that’s focused on bringing the most kick-ass social media all-in-one solution to market, and yesterday’s release was a very big step in the Jugnoo journey.
So, what is JugnooMe and what are these new features? Let’s begin.
The JugnooMe Vision
In a nutshell, JugnooMe is simply a way of bringing all the best features of various social media tools on the market today, and having them all live under a single, unified dashboard.
This then helps business owners that struggle with time and resources to manage their time more effectively, which results in them being able to focus more on ther core business and make profits.
It also helps the solo entrepreneur, the blogger, the stay-at-home parents, the franchisors, the non-profits and more be far more effective in their own use of social media, from content creation to distribution and measuring.
Simply put, we’re here to help anyone make the social web simple, accessible and monetizable. Because at the end of the day, while followers and friends are great, the mortgage people don’t let us pay for our homes by retweets…
JugnooMe is the first salvo in this overall goal of Jugnoo’s – there’s much more to come, but for now we’re solely concentrating on our social media dashboard offerings. Which brings us to the update.
JugnooMe 2.0 – More Than Just an Update
For anyone that used our early beta, the change is a pretty big one from that platform. But then, that’s to be expected for any company that wants to grow properly, as opposed to just turning up and hoping early buzz will be enough to gain you success.
For me, personally, it’s the difference between watching a young child struggle to find their balance and a confident youngster that throws away the training wheels on their new bike.
Yes, I’m incredibly biased, but I’m also incredibly proud of the whole team here and the strides they’ve taken. For example:
New and Improved User Interface and Navigation
Our design team completely revamped the experience inside the dashboard, and made the navigation a lot more user-friendly and intuitive. The side navigation is (currently) broken down into two key areas, Activity and Apps. This helps you get straight to the area that matters to you the most.
Our minimized top navigation keeps everything simple and uncluttered, and is more for the maintenance area of your experience, including setting up your business details, websites, social keywords and more.
It’s a far cry from our first iteration and kudos to our designers for the makeover.
It’s All About the Apps, Baby!
As JugnooMe continues our journey to help make social media simple for everyone, one of the ways we’re going to achieve this is by an apps-based system.
While I can’t go into too much detail here, since it’s proprietary and includes some cool new features scheduled for the next update, we want to make the JugnooMe experience your experience.
So, while we might offer X amount of solutions, you would only find benefit from a few. Instead of us cluttering up your dashboard, you now just have the apps that make sense to you.
This could be Social Dashboard, Analytics, Facebook Promotions and Video tools.
We think it’s a more elegant approach and also allows users to create their own plans as we introduce our premium solutions in the next couple of months (the beta of JugnooMe is currently free for everyone to use).
Currently the apps are all active, but the option to pick and choose is most definitely in the schedule for the next iteration.
Social Sentiment Beta
As human beings, we all want to be liked. We can say we don’t, and feign indifference, but criticism often stings while love and cookies make us smile (I think that’s the right comparison). Anyhoo…
Social media users are no different, and one of the ways to gauge whether we’re viewed as cookies or crankies is by sentiment analysis. This lets us know if we’re seen in a positive, negative or neutral light.
As part of this new JugnooMe release, we’ve opened up our sentiment engine (beta version) to our users, to help us educate the algorithm better for your needs.
This will allow you a simple overview of the sentiment behind a tweet or Facebook update, and reply immediately from within the dashboard area.
Our future sentiment engine will also include forums, blogs and other social networks, and offer more interactive features to help you protect your brand reputation whether you’re a business or solo professional. For now, though, it gives you an idea of where we’re going.
Facebook Promotions
While we’ve always had Facebook Promotions from the start in the form of simple coupons for special offers, we’ve significantly increased the number of templates available.
Additionally, you can also create a Facebook Slideshow app, complete with product/service description and URL to your dedicated sales page or store. The Slideshow sits on a tab on your Facebook Page, and you can create as many slideshows as you wish (for multiple products or storefronts).
Again, this is one of our new beta features and is just the start – look out for more Facebook apps in future releases.
Video Killed the Radio Star
At least, it did according to The Buggles. However, even though we know radio is still alive and well, there’s nothing quite like a cool promo video to either highlight your business, brand, products, events or more.
With this in mind, our updated SVM – social video marketing – platform now has more templates than ever before, ranging from Property (perfect for realtors) to Consultant (agency videos), Spotlight B&W (ideal for portfolios) to Simple (great for invites or special events).
We’ll be continuing to add templates with each new release, and may even drop the odd new one is just as a surprise in-between releases!
Statistics and More Statistics!
If there’s one thing we pretty much all agree on, it’s that it’s always nice to have a quick overview of just how you or your business is performing. Sure, individual stats and reports are cool, but a one-pager can be even cooler when in a rush.
Our new Activity Landing Page has a simple yet effective collection of your most important information – Social Search results (including sentiment), Website Analytics, Twitter statistics (for now) and Tasks (not as evil as they sound, but quick tips to get you more effective with our platform and social media).
From there, you can dive into the areas you need more information on, and then make the necessary changes to be more effective and share online via our universal J-Post option, that allows you to update your Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube and Posterous accounts.
It’s Cool But It’s Just the Beginning
These are just some of the main features in the new update. There are more inside – the ability to make default posting profiles (if you use more networks than others) as well as an optional social media plugin in the shape of a toolbar you can display on your website.
This lets visitors share your content as well as connect with you by email or visit your storefront. If you don’t have a business but still want to use the plugin, you can choose not to display your contact or Google Map information.
Note: If you do use the toolbar, it’s currently ad-supported (meaning pop-up ads will display briefly from the plugin). Future versions will allow paid opt-out or ad partnership options.
To say this is a major update would be an understatement – we really have released what is essentially a new product altogether. But it’s just the start.
We have a very aggressive release schedule for the rest of this year, including coming out of beta once our solutions are locked down, with some very cool features and tools coming your way that you won’t find anywhere else (promise!).
Add to that a huge social media event that Jugnoo is hosting in the fine city of Toronto this July (more details very soon!) and we’re definitely looking to make our statement about who we are and where we want to be.
And that includes you every step of the way. We’re always listening to feedback and this release is a result of that – and we’re not going to stop listening. We really want to make a platform that anyone and everyone can use, and want to use because it’s geared towards them.
Ready to have a look at JugnooMe? Check out our video below for a clearer idea on how we can help the everyday business owner, then hop on over to our sign-up page and we’ll get you onboard sharpish – see you on the other side!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQuHRICtXmk[/youtube]
