Submit Social Updates via Email
For Those In a Hurry, Here Are The Basic Setup Instructions
At the most basic level you need two things, namely: You need an IMAP email account and you need an authorized email source. Step 1: Add an IMAP email account. This is the “target email account” that will be in the TO: of your emails. Select “Scheduled Updates, Send Updates via Email, Add IMAP Account” in the menu and follow the instructions on the form. Step 2: Add an authorized email submission source. This will typically be your own email address, or an employee’s email address. This is the address that will be in the FROM: of your emails. Select “Scheduled Updates, Send Updates via Email, Add Email Source” in the menu and follow the instructions on the form. On this form, connect the email address to the IMAP email account that you added in the previous step. Using this same menu item in Step 2, you can add as many authorized email sources as you want. You’re Done: That’s all there is to it. Now you can send emails from the email address(es) (Step 2) to the target email account (Step 1), and the system will automatically convert those emails into social updates.Now, For More Details
What Can I Do With It?
Updating your social accounts cannot get any easier. Send an email. No special access. No additional accounts. No expensive solutions. No additional employee training. No sharing or divulging social account passwords. Email from approved source Email account you own Social update Your social account(s) Imagine you, and your employees, being able to: Send emails from their existing email addresses to an email address that you own (on your own server, or on Gmail, Hotmail, etc.); Have those emails turned into standard social updates and published on your Twitter account(s), your Facebook account(s), your Facebook Page(s), and other social accounts; Have the updates automatically tagged with an author tag that you define (eg., ^Mary or ^JohnD); Append a URL to the update text, which will automatically be shortened via either dld.bz or bit.ly, from where you can get click stats; Submit social updates for all your social accounts in this manner using only email and one SocialOomph Professional account. You remain in total control of who can submit updates via email, because: You add and authorize specific email addresses as valid email submission sources; You specify the target social account(s) where the emails from a specific email address must be published; You define the author tag that is automatically appended to the updates from a specific email address (it cannot be overridden or changed by the employee); The moment you remove an email address from the list of valid submission sources, that person can send as many emails as they like, none of them get published. Being able to create social updates from emails is particularly useful where: You browse the web and email a link to that web page via your browser’s menu, or via an “email” link on the web page itself (provided that you can specify the From address); You want several people to contribute updates to your social accounts with minimum disruption of their work routines and maximum efficiency.
Say Again, What Do My Employees Need?
Your employees need only their existing email accounts, nothing more. They do not need a SocialOomph account. All you need is one SocialOomph Professional account, where you authorize the email addresses of the employees whom you want to submit updates to your social accounts.Must The Email Be In a Special Format?
There are a few very simple rules that must be followed: The Subject line of the email contains the text of the social update. The Subject line cannot be empty. If it is longer than the allowed length of a social update (Twitter: 140, Facebook: 420) it is truncated. It can contain a hyperlink, but any hyperlink in the Subject is not shortened. The Body of the email can contain a hyperlink, eg., http://www.domain.com/target_page.html. If the Body contains more than one hyperlink, only the very first one is used and the rest are ignored. This hyperlink is automatically shortened using either dld.bz or bit.ly (depending on how you’ve set up your SocialOomph account). The Body of the email can also be blank. If it contains text, HTML, or anything else, it is ignored. In other words, the system uses only the Subject line and the first hyperlink found in the Body. Examples: Simple text tweet. o Subject: I submitted this tweet via email! o Body: empty o Resulting tweet: I submitted this tweet via email! Text tweet with a hyperlink. o Subject: Submit tweets via email with SocialOomph! o Body: http://www.socialoomph.com o Resulting tweet: Submit tweets via email with SocialOomph! http://dld.bz/bIs This Only For Employees?
Absolutely not. You can authorize any email address as a valid email submission source. It can be your own emailWhat Kind Of Security Is There?
Only emails sent from an authorized email address to a specific target email address that you own (let’s call this the “target email account”) are processed and turned into social updates. In fact, the system accesses the target email account via the standard IMAP email protocol (the same used by Outlook to access your email account), and retrieves only emails from authorized email addresses. All other emails are simply ignored. In other words, if somebody else sends emails to the target email account from an unauthorized email address, those emails are not turned into social updates. Spam that gets into that target email account is similarly also not turned into social updates.Are There Any Limits?
Currently the only limit is the total number of emails that are read from an IMAP email account. That limit is 500 per calendar day (in the Central timezone). Meaning, the system will read and process a maximum of 500 authorized emails from a specific IMAP email account during any calendar day. If there are more than 500 emails, the remainder will be left in the IMAP account for processing the next day. Unauthorized emails (spam, emails from other email addresses) do not count towards the limit.How Long Before An Email Is Published As a Social Update?
Important: It is never ever immediate. If you need a solution where you send the email, and within seconds it appears as a tweet on your Twitter account, then our solution is not for you. In other words, our solution is not for time‐critical social updates. When you send an email, it can take several minutes (between 15 minutes and an hour depending on system load) before you will see the social update as scheduled in your SocialOomph account. The social update will be scheduled to be published on the social account sometime in the future. At that point in time it is just another scheduled social update and you can edit it and modify its scheduled time if required.What Happens To The Emails In My IMAP Email Account?
Emails from approved email sources are processed and deleted from your IMAP email account. Emails from unauthorized sources are not touched and they remain in your IMAP account’s inbox.Can I Use Folders In My IMAP Email Account?
Our system reads emails only from your Inbox. In other words, do not create any filters or rules that move authorized emails out of the Inbox, or they will not be processed.How Do I Enable It ‐ Basic?
At the most basic level you need two things, namely: You need an IMAP email account and you need an authorized email source. Step 1: Add an IMAP email account. This is the “target email account” mentioned above. Select “Scheduled Updates, Send Updates via Email, Add IMAP Account” in the menu and follow the instructions on the form.Step 2: Add an authorized email submission source. This will typically be your own email address, or an employee’s email address. Select “Scheduled Updates, Send Updates via Email, Add Email Source” in the menu and follow the instructions on the form. On this form, connect the email address to the IMAP email account that you added in the previous step. Using this same menu item in Step 2, you can add as many authorized email sources as you want. You’re Done: That’s all there is to it. Now you can send emails from the email address(es) (Step 2) to the target email account (Step 1), and the system will automatically convert those emails into social updates.
More Advanced Configurations
You can add as many IMAP email accounts as you want, and you can attach as many authorized email addresses to an IMAP email account as you want. Plus, an email address can be an authorized source on more than one IMAP email account where it can be configured to publish to different social accounts. Okay, let’s try and say that in plain English by way of an example. You have three IMAP email accounts under your control: marketingtweets@yourdomain.com, versiontweets@yourdomain.com, and technicaltips@yourdomain.com. You have four employees and one external consultant who will be writing social updates. The employees are: John (john@yourdomain.com), Mary (mary@yourdomain.com), Peter (peter@yourdomain.com), and Bonny (bonny@yourdomain.com). The external consultant is William (williamconsulting100@gmail.com). You want Mary and William to send technical tip updates, but the external consultant’s tips go only to your Twitter account and not to your technical Facebook Page, while Mary’s updates go to Twitter and Facebook. Here’s how you configure it: Add technicaltips@yourdomain.com as an IMAP email account. Add mary@yourdomain.com as an email source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Twitter social account with an author tag of “Mary”. Again add mary@yourdomain.com as an email source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Facebook Page social account with no author tag because she’s the only one who will publish to that Page. Add williamconsulting100@gmail.com as an email source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Twitter account with an author tag of “Bill”. Now, when Mary sends an email from mary@yourdomain.com to technicaltips@yourdomain.com, that email will be published as a social update on your Twitter account, tagged with ^Mary, and on your Facebook Page with no author tag. When William sends an email from williamconsulting100@gmail.com to technicaltips@yourdomain.com, that email will be published as a social update only on your Twitter account and will be tagged with ^Bill. You want John and Bonny to send updates to your Twitter account regarding new versions of your products. Here’s how Add john@yourdomain.com as an email source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Twitter social account with an author tag of “John”. Add bonny@yourdomain.com as an email source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Twitter social account with an author tag of “Bonny”. Now, when John sends an email from john@yourdomain.com to versiontweets@yourdomain.com, the email will be published to your Twitter account and will be tagged with ^John. When Bonny sends an email from bonny@yourdomain.com to versiontweets@yourdomain.com, the email will be published to your Twitter account and will be tagged with ^Bonny. Lastly, you want Mary and Peter to send marketing updates to your Twitter account. Here’s how to configure it: Add marketingtweets@yourdomain.com as an IMAP email account. Add mary@yourdomain.com as an email source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Twitter social account with an author tag of “MaryM”. Add peter@yourdomain.com as an email source on that IMAP account and configure it to publish to your Twitter social account with an author tag of “Peter”. Now, when Peter sends an email from peter@yourdomain.com to marketingtweets@yourdomain.com, the email will be published to your Twitter account and will be tagged with ^Peter. When Mary sends an email from mary@yourdomain.com to marketingtweets@yourdomain.com, the email will be published to your Twitter account and will be tagged with ^MaryM. Have you noticed what Mary can now do? Mary can now send two types of social updates from her email account by simply using different email addresses in the To field of the email. If Mary sends an email to technicaltips@yourdomain.com, that email will be published as a social update on your Twitter account, tagged with ^Mary, and on your Facebook Page with no author tag. If she sends an email to marketingtweets@yourdomain.com, the email will be published to your Twitter account and will be tagged with ^MaryM. The combinations are as powerful and flexible as you want to make them. There is no limit to the number of IMAP email accounts that you add to your SocialOomph account, and there is no limit to the number of authorized email sources that you add to an IMAP email account.
