• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, December 15, 2011

With most big brands and companies adopting social media as a marketing and customer relations platform, there’s growing demand for enterprise social media management tools which give local social media managers sufficient flexibility to carry out their duties while at the same time ensuring an appropriate degree of centralized control. One of the companies responding to this demand is Expion, which was recently tapped by 360i for social media management, and which has also launched a pilot providing social media management tools to 100 H&R Block locations nationwide.

Expion began as an ad hoc social media management platform created for clients in the restaurant business, and still has a substantial presence in chain restaurants, including Applebee’s and Chili’s, as well as national chain retail. However the company is making forays into new areas, including financial services, where local operations can benefit from the same kind of coordinated-but-localized social media management on Facebook and other social media platforms.

The H&R Block pilot has required Expion to learn how to comply with the stringent standards for customer interface in financial services, where storing and communicating financial information is subject to strict protocols.

Restaurants, retail, and financial service chains are just part of the company’s business, however. Kevin Magee, Expion’s director of sales said Expion’s enterprise social media management tools are getting traction with agencies (like 360i) and national brand advertisers who need to engage consumers at the local level: “Most big brands need to have strategies to geotarget off their main Facebook page.  A soft drink brand, for example, could have 80 separate pages for their one soft drink brand, for different countries, across all the different languages, all the way down to the town and local level. Like retailers, we enable the brand to support all these local users, but with the proper restrictions.”

Because social media marketing doesn’t take place in a vacuum, Expion also offers brands, agencies, and other marketing clients competitive intelligence, including “determining what your competitor’s top posts are, giving you the ability to track your competitors and benchmark others on social media.” And it’s not all competitive: the same tools can help marketers learn about new techniques from “someone they admire in another vertical who does a nice job with social.”