Huge Qnary Product Update: Automagical Topic Feeds

The Qnary product team has been hard at work developing new features and improving functionality for all users. We have recently rolled out publishing, reporting, and Groups along with new features for content creators and to help with workflow.

Today, we are excited to tell the world that we can now deliver even better automated topic-based news feeds for our users and content creators. This means that every Qnary user will have an always updated feed of the latest and greatest related to their interests. It also means that content creators will have access to the latest, most relevant, and most shared content for their clients based on their specific strategies.  Win freaking Win.

So how does it work?

Qnary has always delivered a news feed to our users but previously it was connected to specific sources, which our users loved. We felt there was an opportunity to enhance that feed which lead us to develop topic based feeds.

These feeds are set up based on the content topics which each user is focused. Once the feeds are created, the system monitors those topics in social media. Then we take it a step further. We don't want to bombard our users with everything being shared related to their topics, we only want to show them the best stuff. To do that, we analyze the data and only show the most shared content from the most influential and reputable sources. This ensures our users are able to stay abreast of tending news while eliminating the noise they would normally encounter when consuming on traditional social media networks.

In addition to delivering the feeds, we have also built streamlined sharing functionality. It's now significantly easier for our users to share directly to their social channels or to send a message to their admin to create content for them to share.

Not only is the new sharing functionality easier to use but since we are publishing through our publishing platform we are able to see the engagement and interactions it is receiving. This allows to provide even better reporting and deliver smarter insights and recommendations.

How do you get to see this amazing new version in action?

Simply fly over to the App Store or Google Play to download the latest version, which also includes a number of bug fixes and enhancements to improve UX and functionality. 

Qnary's 2017 Professional Digital Presence Study Highlights

Bant Breen, Qnary's CEO and Founder, shares results from Qnary's 2017 "Professional Digital Presence Study." The study surveyed professionals from around the world to see how corporate leaders view the importance and need to manage their digital presence online. 

Stay tuned, the full white paper with complete findings will be released in November.

Initial Insights from Qnary's Executive Digital Presence Study

Qnary's 2017 Professional Digital Presence Study

When we started Qnary six years ago it was hard to convince executives that their online activities mattered to their professional success and advancement. Many seemed quite comfortable to focus all content and effort behind their corporate brand.  

Wow, how times have changed. Fast-forward to today and executives from big Fortune 500 companies to accelerated growth SMB's clearly realize that what they do on social media and digital media matters.

The results are in from Qnary's 2017 Professional Digital Presence Study and the corporate world is fully awake to the importance and need to manage, optimize and expand their empowered executive voices.

Executives appear to look up to and view positively those professionals that have strong social media presence. Over 73% answered positively when asked how they view senior leaders that have an active professional social media presence.

How do you view senior leader peers who have an active professional social media presence?

The term “thought-leadership” may be overused today but executives appear to be striving aggressively to share and convey their expertise. Joe Kurtzman, editor of "Strategy & Business," coined the term thought-leader back in 1994 for giving accolades to subject matter experts by positioning them as authorities. In Qnary's 2017 study a staggering 87% of professionals surveyed viewed that it is important to very important that they are seen as an industry thought leader in their field.

Do you think it’s important to be seen as an industry thought leader in your field?

Perhaps in the same way one might check out a prospective online blind date, professionals look one another up online. Over 90% of those surveyed stated that they look other executives up to review their backgrounds. Certainly a huge part of this searching is related to recruitment of employees. A part of this activity also appears to be reviewing whether executives are credible. The perception appears to be that if they don't have a robust online presence they are not an active or relevant executive.  

Do you look other executives up online to review their background?

Executives appear to be aware that they need to have an active social media profile to grow their career prospects. A healthy 63% stated that an active professional presence can help their careers.

Do you think having an active professional presence on social media can help your career?

Interestingly there appears to be less worry associated with being active online by professionals. Over 87% of respondents were only somewhat worried to not at all worried about cyber security. And when asked about PR crisis, people did not seem worried. Also, 87% were only somewhat worried to not at all worried about a possible PR crisis. This lack of fear may be related to the confidence that executives are now having online or the lack of understanding of the true PR and cyber security risks.

Are you worried about your cyber security when participating online?

Are you worried about a possible PR crisis for your business when you or your employees are participating online?

No matter what, it is clear that 2017 is a watershed year for professional activity online and 2018 promises to be a banner year as well. Over 75% of professions were likely to very likely to use social media more professionally over the next year.   

Will you use social media more professionally over the next year?

The study results point clearly to the interest and desire of professionals to increase their digital media presences. Professionals provide such a powerful new dimension to the storytelling of their enterprises and brands. And executive content cuts through. People want to hear from people about what they are doing and thinking and planning. Please reach out for a copy of the complete study that will be issued out in Mid-October.   

Qnary Product Update: Groups are now a thing

The Qnary dev team continues to push forward with amazing new features. Last month we rolled out publishing for Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, which is AWESOME. We actually held off on announcing to not take attention away from the Phish Baker's Dozen run. We are fans and would have felt bad if all of the world's attention was on Qnary's publishing technology. Anyway, the Qnary platform now manages the entire content process from creation and editing to scheduling and publishing. This also means we will be able to capture advanced metrics and analytics for all of the content being shared through our platform. Now that the run is over we feel comfortable telling the world about latest release, Qnary Groups.

The Heck is Qnary Groups?

It's just our latest amazing feature on the Qnary platform. Group management provides the functionality and flexibility to activate small teams, large teams, even an entire organization. Not only does it move us closer to a fully realized Enterprise solution, it also delivers a much more flexible and scalable solution for organizations of all shapes and sizes. So now you are saying to yourself, this sounds amazing but what does this mean?

Groups allows teams to deliver and receive content seamlessly

Instead of one to one relationship for content delivery, Groups provides a one to many relationship for content distribution. The diagram below shows how this new feature works. 

Content is created based on categories set for the organization. Teams within each organization select one or many categories and each member of the team received the category based content for which they signed up.

This is a big deal because it allows companies to extend thought leadership across the entire organization, provides a simple yet powerful distribution workflow for company news, and serves as a desirable personal branding benefit to employees and team members. It's an infinitely scalable content distribution technology solution for organizations of all sizes. With our new Groups feature, not only will senior leaders be able to build influence and highlight their expertise but everyone within the organization can build thought leadership and establish the entire organization as experts within their industry.

How does it work

The new Groups functionality is extremely simple to use for everyone involved. As a manager of admin it's a simple as clicking a few buttons to create groups and send content. Just create the Group and start entering member names. Since the groups are part of your organization they will automagically appear when you begin typing the name. Removing members is as simple as clicking the x and poof, they are gone.

Once the members have been added just click on the New Content link to open the content creation screen and begin adding content. Select the social network for which you are creating content, select a category, add the content, choose whether you want to publish immediately upon approval or schedule a day and time, and click send. That's it. All of the members of that group will receive a notification on their mobile device and they can then approve, reject or edit content. Once approved it will automatically be published at the scheduled time (or immediately if publish on approval was selected)

That's it. While extremely powerful the Groups functionality is a simple and easy to use process for everyone on your team.

Benefits for the entire organization

This new feature delivers a number of benefits for your entire organization, each activated team, and the individual employees who are participating.

The organization will benefit by:

• Achieving expanded distribution and reach of company content
• Highlighting the great things internal teams are doing
• Establishing individual employees as experts in their industry and areas of focus
• Highlighting the company as a great place to work and helping you attract and retain top talent
• Enhancing business development efforts through the authority and trust built by an activated team

Teams will benefit by:

• Gaining increased exposure, internally and externally, for the great work they are doing
• Building awareness of their work among industry peers and trade media
• Establishing themselves as desirable teams for top talent to join

Employees will benefit by:

• Creating an always on social media presence focused on their area of expertise
• Highlighting domain expertise amongst industry peers and media
• Establishing themselves as influencers in their industry
• Engaging and developing relationships with potential partners, clients, event organizers, and media

Yes, it's as AMAZING as it sounds

So now you are out of your mind with excitement and itching to get access to this amazing new feature. Maybe you are not sure how you can get your hands on this big hairy bit of software awesomesauce that you need right now. 

Not to worry Groups will be available to everyone. if you are currently a Qnary client, reach out to your account manager and they can tell you all about it. If you are not using our platform, just hit us up here and we can tell you all about it. It will change your world.

Qnary Japan and SoftBank Form Partnership for Multilanguage AI FAQ Engine

Improving Interactive Communication and U.S. Market Development

Reputation Growth Service provider Qnary Japan (herein after Qnary) will partner with SoftBank Corp.(herein after SoftBank) to provide Artificial Intelligence Frequently Asked Question engine APTWARE in Japan and North America. Qnary will bolster its Qnary BirdCloud Solution Suite of Reputation Growth Services with SoftBank's APTWARE Multi-language Compatible Chat Solution.

“We are excited to have the new interactive FAQ systems available as part of Qnary’s reputation growth management service. By providing the AI based social media activation which complements the current Qnary platform,” stated Masahiro Kano, CEO of Qnary Japan.  “users will be able to respond appropriately to the various comments posted on their timelines and/or in messengers at any time, and will have the option to select the method of response. The response can be automated utilizing APTWARE’s AI technology, manual by human operators, or a combination of both. This results in decrease in operators’ and staff time, which leads to cost reduction and at the same time increases customer satisfaction. It can most certainly improve your reputation among your customers, your employees, and your partners.”

APTWARE is a natural language processing solution compatible with multiple languages such as Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean. If an ambiguous question is provided by a customer, the platform will ask questions to narrow down a set of possible answers and present the best suited answer.

APTWARE is used in various business scenarios and implementation of its system has:

1. Saved labor costs at call centers
2. Improved usability of websites
3. Gathered insights on the potential needs of the customers (users) from conversation logs.

Qnary will add APTWARE to its current Reputation Growth Service involving SNS such as Facebook, to further improve the quality of the content and diversify its service. Beginning in April, Qnary will start creating content utilizing APTWARE for its official Facebook account and start monitoring in Japan.

"We are honored to partner with SoftBank on the technological development and implementation of AI in our Qnary solution suite." stated Bant Breen, Founder and CEO of Qnary.

In 2018, SoftBank plans to expand APTWARE to North America, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Korea, while Qnary U.S. is planning to expand its service starting in North America, and proceeding to Europe, and South America. Qnary U.S. works with several of the largest companies in the world across a full-range of business verticals (banking, insurance, manufacturers, retail, food and beverage). Expansion is planned to start by introducing the service to the clients in the verticals.

SoftBank’s APTWARE

APTWARE is a multi-language (Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean) compatible AI FAQ system. It is used for automatic response to inquiries from customers and internal workers and is compatible to multi-devices, and multimedia. SoftBank uses its AI concierge service in its internal portal site, and is accumulating knowhow to be shared with the market.

APTWARE enables the user to “update and add the automatic response answers” and “improve the precision of the answers.” Creating the data allows the absorption of the fluctuating keywords and key phrases. Also, by preparing data scenarios for ambiguous questions, it allows the system to ask “What will you like to know about?” and understand the intention of the questions to provide an accurate answer.

APTWARE product site

https://rizbell.jp/

Qnary Japan

Qnary U.S. was founded as a company in January 2012 with the purpose of providing service focused on Reputation Growth. Its solution is centered on empowering the voice of the professional and to enhance the reputation of Executives and brands by creating optimized social media content for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

Qnary Japan opened its office in March 2016, and in July 2016 formed an alliance including capital involvement and business partnership with News2u, a digital PR Agency.

https://www.qnary.co.jp

Contact:

Qnary Japan Inc.

info_japan@qnary.com

APTWARE

SBMGRP-rizbell_support@g.softbank.co.jp

Phone: 03-6221-9512

Why Companies Should Have Closing Times

I spent the early part of my career working in Manhattan ad agencies where I grew accustomed to long hours. Leaving my office at 2am the night before a pitch wasn’t rare. I remember once, a new coworker asked me one Friday afternoon around 5pm as we were headed into our boss’s office for a meeting, when we would be able to go home and I just laughed. I remember she said concerned, “I have family dinners on Friday, I’m going to be really late.” As a single Manhattan lady, this was like a foreign language to me.

Fast-forward five years, I’m 9-month pregnant, still working those hours. I remember getting home one night around 8pm and asking my husband, “What time do babies normally go to sleep?” He had no idea. We called his sister who was a mother. “Around 7-ish,” she said.

“We aren’t even home by then,” I said, beginning to panic. “Wait, how are we going to do this?” By ‘this’ I didn’t exactly mean How are we going to raise our child? I meant, How are we going to see our child?

After a few months off to wean my new baby into the world, I started a new job not at an ad agency. Instead I moved to a startup—enter Qnary! Qnary was founded and led by two former coworkers of mine from a past agency. Because of these relationships, I felt confident enough to say during the offer, “I accept, BUT I have to leave every day by 5:30pm.” They said that was fine.

Two years later, I still leave every day by 5:30pm. I’m often the first one out the door. I’m unabashed by this. Part of it is because I know that if I don’t leave then, I won’t have an hour with my toddler that day, and that hour is really important to both me and my child. But it’s also in a large part because I am really confident about my output of work, which I’ve been really proud of. I credit this to having a personal office ‘closing time,’ which I believe fosters better work.

Here are a few reasons why I think this is the case, and why I would recommend considering having an office ‘closing time’ for your company.

You are more productive when there is an end time

When there is a gun to your head, you are more productive. It’s much easier to push off what you actually have to do, when there isn’t a clock ticking in your ear. When 3:30pm hits now, I realize I only have two hours left and I kick it into high gear. How many more tasks can I complete if I really focus right now? As a result, I’m pretty much always focused because I am so aware I only have a finite amount of hours.

You prioritize better and put what must be done, first

Instead of pushing off what you don’t really want to do first, you do what you must get done first. You become hyper aware of the priorities you need to accomplish that day, and working in the same time frame each day, you become better able to realistically understand how many of those priorities you can actually accomplish. You become a target deadline setting ninja.

You don’t get bitter about work and you don’t burnout

Ad agencies have a high burnout rate and I understand why. After a few years at past agencies, I would always burnout like clockwork. I never realized this until after the fact. But it’s what happens when you feel like you are being taken advantage of, which happens when you constantly feel pressure to stay at the office later than you want to. This makes for not-great work and a not great company culture.

And face it, you still work at home

For better or worse, thanks to today’s technology, you are plugged into work 24/7. You check emails at home. You don’t allow bottlenecks to happen. You answer the phone when a colleague or client calls. And it’s fine when this happens, because you know keeping things moving is really important.

Big ideas never happen inside an office

I realized recently that all of my big, good ideas come from my weekend morning runs. These are the ideas that have really helped to shape my department. I have adopted the habit of often emailing my boss bright and early on a Saturday with an idea, super sweaty on the East River running path. I have never gotten a big idea at my desk.

You are happier

You just are. We say so often how important maintaining a “work, life balance” is and it’s true. Perhaps, as how we work continues to evolve with technology, it is becoming more important that we establish a healthy “work, life integration.” When I am outside of the office, often times I am still thinking about problems and challenges happening inside the office. And I am happy to do that, because I am happy at work. I have a healthy relationship with it.

Sitting at your office desk late at night being bitter doesn’t help your company. That generally isn’t the context that produces great work. Having a group of happy employees that are prioritizing what needs to get done effectively and figuring out challenges when they are in their brightest headspace—that does produce better work, and it makes for better companies.

The Qnary Platform: Where Are We?

When people ask me what I do, I never have a clear answer. It’s always been that way. I don’t mean my parents (or my children, for that matter). They just know I “work with computers.” So of course, they expect me to fix their computers that they’ve cocked up. Fair enough. 

Now, if someone gets what I do (build digital products), my favorite follow-up question is “Why would you do that?” What they mean is “Why would the market need that?” or “How did you decide to build the thing and not some other thing?” That’s a good question. So I’ll answer it right here and talk about what we do at Qnary and why we decided to build some thing and not another thing and why we think this thing is Really Important!

We at Qnary come from the worlds of ad tech and digital brand management. We know brands. We know the powerful digital platforms that brands get to use to manage their online presence. We also know that your data is out and about being sold and bought and analyzed by these brands. As much as we know and love brands, we thought “Well that aint fair. People are pretty important. People should have these tools for themselves. And they should know more about how their data and identities are being handled online. Right?" Well why would people need that? Yep. There it is! We heard that when we built tools for brands, too. Why would a brand want to be on social media? Isn’t that for people? Woah…things are really sounding meta here, eh?!

Everyone needs to understand and manage their online selves.

Put simply, four years ago we built a platform that would allow anyone to brand themselves online. Rather than help people hide online, we understood that - with just a small amount of effort - a person could easily grow and manage a digital footprint. SEO management, branding, and audience growth tools and reports were put into the platform, laying down the groundwork for the experience. This was great, but it posed a problem for the product team:  What was our core use case? We were working with a wide variety of individuals interested in managing and controlling their online identities. We needed to focus the business now.
 

Dashboarded To Death

This is what it  can feel like to a digital marketer. Big brands talked about War Rooms of monitoring and reporting dashboards run by teams of analysts to make sense of it all. We had a dashboard too. It was a straightforward one, but it was a dashboard all the same, and required a person with a marketers mind to log in to yet another tool and make sense of some (very pretty, we thought) graphs and visual displays. But do regular people want to see dashboards? We thought so…but we weren’t so sure.

The Personal Digital Footprint dashboard

Qnary Curate

As part of the Qnary arsenal, we automatically generated a unique web page for users where they could easily curate items from their social networks or whatever links they wanted to create a sort of living, curated branding page. This was also very attractive and our users who did leverage it reported great satisfaction. These curated pages also landed high in search results.

Sign up, connect, and voila!

The Shift

As we progressed, our business started to focus more and more on professionals and executives. As younger employees who understood the particulars of curating their social media profiles came on board and as more and more subject experts and thought leaders took to Twitter and other social media, companies understood that executives needed to actively have a voice, despite the potential pitfalls that could come with it. So they needed a strategy and a plan and the tools to execute. And, of course, the execution needed to be efficient, mobile-first, and trustworthy. Anyone who has built technology solutions for busy people know this. So we had a use case. It just happened to be a very tough one. These are busy people constantly on the go.

Gratuitous cheesy stock photo appearance

The Platform Today

Today we have a mobile-first platform that gets relevant content to our clients in real-time either created by real people or by suggestions based on conversations and news relevant to the unique individual’s expertise and topics of interest. Individuals receive vetted content to post via mobile, a feed of hyper-relevant news and conversations, and insights based on their social media engagement and new mentions of them across the internet. While they are tethered to content managers and creators, they are also empowered to engage on their own. Personal PR-in-the-pocket. Tinder for content.

Not necessarily a marketing solution

What we have found in the marketplace is that many folks initially think of our solution as a marketing solution (and it can be). While some features tend to stack up against Employee Advocacy tools, we are not interested in employees amplifying messages from the marketing team looking for earned media. We are interested in carefully and effectively empowering the individual voices that make up an organization. What we hear again and again from clients who have used marketing solutions for content sharing is that “We can’t get our employees to use it” and “We have a problem with good content.” Employees feel like it’s a chore. They don’t feel like content is for them and their personal professional growth.

We’ve come full circle. 

Years of working with brands in “traditional” digital advertising and then in social media made me a bit of a cynic. At some point the question we heard nearly a decade ago - why should our brand be on social media? - is relevant again today, though in a different light. Of course they should be on social media. But social media is still first and foremost “social”. People want to hear from authentic voices and real people. Business partners and clients want to  know who they are doing business with. Professionals know that growing their personal brands fuels the growth of their business and their careers. They are comfortable knowing that they have a strategy and are actively engaged in something they didn’t have time for, didn’t know how to do, or weren’t allowed to do because of potential risks. involved. 

Qnary started with a vision and while the product has done some maneuvering, we’ve kept to that vision. Today thousands of unique pieces of content hundreds of alerts, and thousands of targeted news and conversations are delivered to our mobile app for professionals who are serious about becoming more engaged with their colleagues and employees and more empowered to grow their professional footprint.  

Don't Buy Influence, Build Influence

Influencer marketing, it's been around forever but has been rebranded from the way less hip celebrity endorsement. Basically, you pay people cooler than you to tell their legions of loyal followers how awesome your product/company/service is. Since their followers hang on their every word they will all run right out and buy your shit. Of course, nobody cares what a kid making cat memes thinks about insurance (or anything besides how to make awesome cat memes). Consumers and clients making purchase decisions would rather hear from experts about the product/company/service they are considering purchasing. Why throw gobs of money at someone who doesn't have any expertise about your product/company/service instead of arming your people with the tools to build their influence?

Influence is earned and can be fleeting

The idea behind influencer marketing makes sense. You are partnering with someone who has built an audience who likes them, trusts them, and looks forward to seeing their stuff. But if that stuff is not relevant to your product/company/service, all of that influencer means nothing. Also, influencer marketing campaigns can go very wrong.

and another

Now these are sort of extreme examples of poorly implemented influencer campaigns where the influencer was just cashing a check. Even though the products they were influencing were somewhat relevant the campaigns were failures because it was obvious they were paid for their endorsement and they didn't care enough to be thoughtful about what they were doing. Not only does the influencer lose trust and authority but the brands who paid them see no return and lose brand equity and trust, too.

Your Best Influencers are in your company

Instead of paying outsiders who really know nothing about your product/company/service why not help your leaders and employees build their influence? They have knowledge and expertise that interest others outside of your company and they can provide ongoing results not attainable through a one time marketing campaign of dubious value. Give them the tools to build an audience and share their domain expertise with the world (especially your customers). Allow them to talk about things they are expert in (and not just schill for your company) and connect with their audience authentically. It highlights the awesome and super smart people you have working for you. When they do share promotional content they can have a much more profound impact and actually drive real business results. It keeps them happy and drives positive ROI (without a huge payout to an Internet celebrity who doesn't have any clue about your product/company/service).

So instead of spending time and money on your next influencer campaign, start building influencers from within. It will have a profound impact on your business for a long time, keep your leaders & employees engaged, and save you a lot of money.

Power to the People

Photo Credit: http://solidarityhalifax.ca/campaigns/power/

When we started Qnary 5 years ago, we began with a simple premise: people are important. Whether a sole proprietor, a small medical practice, a senior executive at a huge organization or just a dude, people are the power behind social media. Businesses and brands may be the lens through which the industry views social media, but it's human connection that holds everything together. Hence, our goal was and still is to give the people the tools to navigate and thrive in this seemingly complex and ever-changing environment. We set out to give the power back to the people and it's been amazing to see it take shape and become reality.

Humans Crave Personal Connections

People have an innate need to connect with other people. It's a core part of what makes us human- we are social creatures. We want to hear what others are thinking and share our thoughts to create meaningful bonds. This human connection is the essence of social media. It's why brands are so keen on participating in the medium. In the end, we all know that brands are there for one thing, and it's not to make meaningful connections...it's all about the 💰💰💰💰💰. Sure, some brands are really doing it right with social media and creating meaningful interactions with their consumers, often serving as an amalgam of customer service, HR, and PR. But in general, brands are on social media for business. While there is nothing wrong with that, the value gained through social media becomes harder to achieve as more people are waking up to this fact that their feed is inundated with commercial content. That's why Facebook's algorithms continue to evolve to lessen the visibility of brand content to ensure we are connecting with real people. Brands have a place but people want to connect with people.

Qnary Returns the Power to the People

Our premise has evolved but has not changed. We still believe that people are what matters in social media and your people are how others view your brand. Building a successful social media effort should not be solely focused on the brand strategy. Your leaders, executives, and employees should be a core part of any social efforts. Your partners, customers, and employees want to hear from your people. When your people share their expertise and unique experiences it humanizes your company and creates more meaningful connections with the audience you are trying to reach. Establishing thought-leadership not only improves the status of the people within your organization, it also highlights your company as a place made up of really smart people. Smart companies are waking up to this new (old) reality and it will improve their business and make social media a more interesting and better place.