Engagio Organizes Your Social Media Conversations Onsite Or Via Gmail

Engagio is an interesting new web tool that began as a way to keep track of one's social media conversations and has expanded into what they call a "Conversations Network." It has a number of interesting features, including a Gmail extension for Chrome, that make it a potentially powerful tool for music marketing. By emphasizing discussions and comments, Engagio is forefronting one of the richer elements in social media marketing.

I have to admit, I'm not the best target for new social media tools because I tend to plod along much too slowly to keep up with them as anything but news. However I've always tried to keep up with my web conversations even back in the day when blog comments didn't offer email alerts for responses. I used to do ridiculous things like bookmark links to blog posts on which I commented so I could go back and see if there was a response.

That was an unwieldy approach and something I would not have had time to do if I was marketing anything beyond my writing and web publishing activity. Now a variety of tools to ease such processes exist. Though Engagio founder and CEO William Mougayar says his intention is not to compete with Hootsuite or TweetDeck, one can see similar potential.

Engagio is a free service. It's organized in two main parts, a dashboard to track one's own activity and a recently added Engagement Discovery Dashboard that includes not only your conversations but those of others you wish to include.

They've also released a free Chrome app for Gmail. It enables you to do a lot of this stuff from Gmail including the ability to post to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Given that Gmail is becoming a core tool for many users, this extension may be what ultimately separates Engagio from other services. It also may make it more interesting for folks who already use services like Hootsuite but also use Gmail since it's not (yet) a Hootsuite replacement.  A Firefox extension is said to be on the way.  As things develop this option may allow Engagio to become a strong complement to other tools.

Engagio is also developing more social network aspects. Whether or not that process is ultimately an improvement or becomes a Bit.ly maneuver turning a useful tool into another network one doesn't need remains to be seen.

More:

• Engagio Features
• The Engagio Blog

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith blogs about business at Flux Research: Business Changes and about dance at All World Dance: News. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.