• by John Capone , November 4, 2009

Twitter and Facebook might be little more than toys to some, but for global brands, when used properly, they can provide direct and personal communication with consumers. In the burgeoning field of social relationship management -- what some call the next generation of CRM -- Atlanta-based Vitrue has established itself as a provider of tools to Fortune 1,000 companies, and its latest offering, dubbed FMS, is an effort to both provide effective communication with consumers across platforms such as Facebook and Twitter for these clients, as well as provide scale for larger marketers.

First off, the system is a kind of SMS for brand managers to centrally control their social media presences -- simultaneously creating customized and optimized content across Facebook and Twitter while also creating discrete and simple blog pages for custom branded short URLS, all from the same place.

"This gives corporate marketers the ability to plug in to multiple fan pages across markets and make the presence consistent," Reggie Bradford, CEO of Vitrue, tells OMD. "Today you have retailers, franchisees, auto dealers, etc. in local markets setting up Facebook pages using local assets, tabs etc...with the Vitrue FMS, our clients have the ability to roll out a system to, say, 1,200 locations or stores, with each one having its own admin interface, and 7 or so customizable apps out of the box (coupons, polling, quizzes, local events/causes, photo upload, local comments, etc) ... And the corporate entity gets consistent navigation, look and feel, logo and colors, the ability to insert national promotions accessible through the corporate presence or the local market."

While the FMS allows for centralized structuring and control, it gives the local franchises the ability to manage messaging and content. The system also provides a dashboard and detailed analytics that track consumer interactions with efforts such as fan counts, impressions, and the like, and allow marketers to do things like moderate and filter comments. The analytics scale down to individual pages or can aggregate data regionally, nationally and globally.

For the time being, Vitrue is pitching its efforts with FMS at TV networks, movie studios, record labels, quick-serve and fast-casual restaurants, auto companies, tourism boards and retailers, and has already deployed it for some of its global brands that fall into these categories.