LeadSift is a Canada-based startup that connects businesses with social media leads found through Twitter and Foursquare. The company on Tuesday announced that it has raised $500,000 in seed funding from Omers Ventures who’s investments have included such startups as Hootsuite.
With the seed funding, the social media startup will put money towards developing their current product. LeadSift will also ramp up marketing efforts and staff numbers. Facebook and LinkedIn will also be added to the company’s product line over time.
Here’s an example of how the service works:
- A Twitter user posts they want a new phone
- LeadSift finds the tweet and forwards it to a relevant business
- That business can then connect with the user and potentially make a sale
President and CEO Tapajyoti Das explained why they’re focusing on Twitter and Foursquare first:
“Our algorithms can understand any form of short text (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, comments etc.) and generate leads from them. The reason we are focusing primarily on Twitter now is because of the public nature of the platform. The majority of the profiles/posts on Twitter are public; hence mining them and following up with them is much easier, but such is not the case with Facebook and the like.”
There’s a lot of work to be done with monetizing leads from social media, for example IBM recently shared that Twitter didn’t contribute to sales on Black Friday. LeadSift is currently in beta and is only working with a small group of businesses.
To learn more and to be notified when the company fully launches you can visit here.
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