Socialbakers

Socialbakers, a.s.

Type	Private Company
Founded	October 13, 2008
Founder(s)	Jan Řežáb, Lukáš Maixner, Martin Homolka
Key people	Jan Řežáb (CEO), Lukáš Maixner, Martin Homolka, Jiří Voves
Employees	350
Slogan(s)	"The Recipe For Social Marketing Success"
Website	socialbakers.com
Alexa rank	4,334 (April 2014)[1]
Type of site	Social media statistics & blog
Available in	English
Launched	November 23, 2009
Current status	Active

Socialbakers is a Czech social media analytics and publishing company that provides social media management services and deep data analytics for thousands of brands that market on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and VK. Its main goal is to help companies monitor and optimize the effectiveness of their social media campaigns, benchmark against competitors and industry standards, and track the right social media Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in order to improve their marketing success and efficiency. The company was first founded in 2008 as Candytech by Jan Řežáb (CEO), Martin Homolka, Lukáš Maixner, and Jiří Voves. Socialbakers has grown to have offices in Prague, London, San Francisco, New York, Plzeň, Split, Singapore, Sydney, Paris, Munich, São Paulo, Mexico City, Dubai and Istanbul, with hundreds of team members. As of 2014, they’ve successfully undergone three investment rounds totaling $34 million.

The Socialbakers.com website is notable for its massive database of free social media statistics, as well as its blog, research studies, and Industry and Regional breakdowns. The site averages more than 700,000 visits monthly. As of Q4 2014, Socialbakers counts half of the Fortune 500 companies as clients.

Summary

Socialbakers was founded by Jan Řežáb, Martin Homolka, Jiří Voves, and Lukáš Maixner in 2008 as Candytech, a social media agency that quickly transformed into a product company. In November 2009, they launched Facebakers.com so their users could find Facebook statistics updated daily.[8]

At the end of 2010, Facebakers was renamed to Socialbakers. In January 2011, Socialbakers launched Market Insights, which allowed users to monitor market sectors on Facebook, compare their page within the chosen market sector and analyze the performance of their page and their competitors' pages. In September 2011, Socialbakers raised $2 million in funding from Earlybird Venture.^[2] In November 2012, Socialbakers raised another $6 million from Index Ventures, with additional follow-on funding from first-round investors. In February 2014, Socialbakers completed a $26 million Series C round. This new funding was also led by Index Ventures.^[3] Since 2012, Socialbakers hold an event called Socialbakers Engage biannually in New York City and London.

Detailed History

Founding

Socialbakers was founded by Jan Řežáb, Lukáš Maixner, and Martin Homolka in October 13, 2008. Initially called Candytech, it was a social media agency that quickly transformed into a product company. Candytech developed applications for regional agencies and brands. In November 2009, the founders launched Facebakers.com, where users could find daily-updated statistics from Facebook, with a primary focus on country statistics.^[4]

2010

In July 2010, Socialbakers launched the FanPage Analyzer.^[5] It gave users information about the fundamental issues their Facebook Pages experienced, as well as for their competition. In September, the portal was updated with new features that included Daily Active Users and Weekly Active Users graphs. In October, Facebakers redesigned their web portal, with Facebook brands now arranged by category, by different market sectors, and with the ability to filter them by country enabled.^[6] At the end of 2010, Facebakers was renamed to Socialbakers to avoid any confusion between the two.^[7]

2011

In January 2011, Socialbakers launched Market Insights,^[8] which allowed users to monitor market sectors on Facebook, compare their Page within the chosen market sector, and analyze the performance of their Page and their competitors' Pages.^[9] In the same month, they began the Social Media Awards, which judged Facebook Pages according to a couple of key factors, including Best Fan Engagement Rate, Most Engaging Page, and more.^[10] In March, Socialbakers launched Facebook city statistics.^[11]

In May 2011, Socialbakers launched a Facebook Page management system, CMS.^[12] Later that month, Socialbakers started monitoring LinkedIn statistics by country. This was the first time Socialbakers had gone outside Facebook monitoring, stating that "social networking is more than just Facebook".^[13] On this same note, they launched Twitter profile statistics that July, monitoring brands and media companies alike.^[14] In August of that year, Socialbakers introduced Engagement Builder (previously called the Social CMS), which was an improved Page Manager for businesses.^[15]

In September 2011, Socialbakers raised $2 million in funding from Early Bird Venture, which was used to acquire companies like Checkfacebook.com and Social RSS (a feed reader for Facebook).^[16] In October, they integrated Google+ monitoring into their portfolio of social networks. By the end of the year, they had started monitoring YouTube channel statistics, with daily stats and key rankings.^[17]

2012

In January 2012, Socialbakers launched Analytics for Twitter.^[18] They started providing analytics of Twitter statistics like Daily Follower Growth, Daily Tweet vs. Retweet Ratio, Total Number of Mentions, and more.^[19] In March, they standardized engagement metrics for comparison across both Facebook and Twitter.^[20] In April, Socialbakers became Facebook's Preferred Marketing Developer.^[21]

In May 2012, Socialbakers launched the Rating of Brands (NPS), which allowed users to rate a brand from 0 to 10 according to "How likely it is that you would recommend the brand to your friends"^[22] and later that month, they launched YouTube Analytics in Analytics so that users could start monitoring YouTube Channels with metrics like Total Views, Daily Views, etc.^[23]

In June, Socialbakers introduced the standard for social customer care, called "Socially Devoted".^[24] The "Socially Devoted" certificate was awarded to those whose Profile (Page Wall/Timeline) was open to questions and feedback from Fans (over 25% of global brands had closed their walls at the time), respond to at least 65% of questions, and responded to each Fan individually in a timely manner.^[25] In August, they introduced a new tool called Listening, which allows users to search keywords on social networks and update them in a dashboard.^[26] Later that month, a new limited beta version of Market Insights was launched.^[27] In September, Socialbakers introduced an upgraded version of the Builder platform, for marketers and businesses to manage and analyze their social media activity on multiple platforms.^[28]

In November, Socialbakers raised $6 million from Index Ventures, with additional follow-up funding from first-round investors. This was the second major investment in the company, after the $2 million from Earlybird Venture Capital.^[29]

2014

In February Socialbakers completed a $26 million Series C financing round. This new funding was led by Index Ventures.^[30]

Rebranding

On Tuesday, December 2, 2014, Socialbakers.com was relaunched with an entirely new design.^[31] The redesign marked the completion of a multi-year effort.

Tools and Services

The Socialbakers Marketing Suite consists of several social media management tools, including Analytics, for competitive insights and benchmarking; Builder, an enterprise publishing tool; Ads, which optimizes and manages ads on Facebook and Twitter; Listening, which helps brands follow the conversations happening around their brand; and Professional Services, Socialbakers' consulting wing, which works closely with clients to help them master their unique social landscapes.

Socialbakers Analytics gives customers insights by monitoring social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, VK, and YouTube (with added reports for Instagram). The software offers performance indicators to measure fan growth, track key influencers, analyze engagement rates and interactions, benchmark performance against competitors and industry standards, optimize social media presence and generate graphical reports. Socialbakers Builder is a tool for scheduling and publishing content as well as aggregating the conversation on social media around a brand. Apart from the main product Suite, Socialbakers offers several services including EdgeRank Checker, a deep-learning algorithm that tells users what content works best for their brand's Facebook pages, among other things.

Social Media Benchmarks

Apart from the metrics that Socialbakers offers in their tools for brands to monitor, they have promoted several ways for brands to track their social media success and benchmark against competition. One of the first benchmarks was Socially Devoted - a certificate awarded to brands that respond to at least 65% of a high volume of questions that users ask them on Facebook and Twitter.^[32] Socialbakers also awards Smart Storytellers, a benchmark that “looks at the number of Average Post Interactions in relation to post frequency.”^[31] Socialbakers also awards Smart Storytellers, a benchmark that “looks at the number of Average Post Interactions in relation to post frequency.”^[33]

In October 2014, Socialbakers announced Promoted Post Detection, a service that allows brands to differentiate between paid and organic reach by using public data only. This allows brands to see the post boosting strategies of their competitors: how many posts they boost, and what percentage of interactions they gained with promoted content.^[34]

On the same day, Socialbakers announced that they had partnered with Lenovo to create a new social media benchmark called the Social Health Index, a custom report that allows brands to compare several metrics across multiple platforms against other brands of their choosing - from direct competition to general leaders in social.^[35] This score is made by analyzing a client against their cluster, and breaking down performance for each brand on each network by four qualities (Participation, Acquisition, Retention and Sharability, or P.A.R.S).^[36] The scores are all then averaged and a final picture emerges of how each competitor compares to one another, overall.

Further reading

• "The Exciting Future of Socialbakers Analytics" at Socialbakers Blog
• "How Social Media Creates a Better World" at Tedx
• "Socialbakers bakes its data analytics down to a Social Health Index" at Venture Beat

References

External links

• Official website