Sociocaster wants to be Hootsuite for Indonesia

Sociocaster team

These days, brands are using social media is all kinds of ways, ranging from simple promos and advertising to more in-depth dialogue with customers. As the public now has the freedom to comment and complain to brands directly, many companies are having trouble keeping up. Only about 20 percent of consumer comments generate brand responses on social media, and the average response time is more than 11 hours, according to a recent eMarketer study. This communication lag on social media creates opportunities for startups to make marketers’ jobs a lot easier.

Sociocaster, an Indonesia-based startup, is one of several new firms trying to fill this gap. It aims to replicate Hootsuite’s success by providing a brand management tool geared towards the archipelago’s small businesses. Remember that Jakarta is the social media capital of the world, so the imperative for brands to engage with Indonesians via social networks is particularly strong.

Looking ahead, Sociocaster – which launched in April 2014 – wants to expand worldwide and compete head-on with the big boys like Hootsuite or SocialSprout in a US$1 billion market.

Sociocaster CEO Adi Suandharu tells Tech in Asia that right now the product is still at an early age. But the basic features are already up and running. Given that Facebook and Twitter are the two major social networks in Indonesia, Suandharu says that the startup’s three-man team is currently focusing on those two platforms for now. “We’re planning on supporting 12 different social media platforms on Sociocaster, including IFTTT,” says Suandharu. In case you don’t know, IFTTT is an automation tool that connects internet services.

Schooling small businesses

Unlike Hootsuite, which limits features based on the user’s subscription plan, Sociocaster enables all its features on its free plan. However, it differentiates each plan by limiting the number of social media accounts that a user can manage. Apart from the free package, the cheapest plan starts at US$7 and allows subscribers to manage 25 Facebook and Twitter accounts. It also allows three company members to manage the accounts. The more expensive one at US$27 allows for unlimited social media accounts and up to 10 company members.

One of Sociocaster’s main features is called Content Discovery, with which you can search content on up to five different social media platforms and share it through your own accounts. This makes sense for small business who don’t have the resources to assign someone full-time to manage all their social media channels. With Sociocaster, users can also quickly find content that relates to their businesses and schedule said content to appear on their own social media accounts at scheduled times throughout the week.

Right now, Sociocaster only has around 30 subscribers and is a completely bootstrapped operation. However, the company has been monetizing since day one, pushing the paid plans to keep the lights on. It is currently developing another feature called Unified Inbox, which will apply to all social media as oppose to just Facebook and Twitter.

Suandharu adds that the main difficulties in running Sociocaster in Indonesia is the lack of awareness that social media is a great tool for a small business’ marketing campaign. “The market needs to be educated. The consumer needs to know the power of social media,” he concludes.

See: The latest numbers on web, mobile, and social media in Indonesia (INFOGRAPHIC)