24SevenSocial Restructure (ENG)

Prefer the Norwegian version? Read it here.

24SevenSocial’s big restructure project is just a few days away from launch! We’ve rebuilt the foundation for 24SevenSocial. The goal: to make user administration and access more intuitive and logical. This is something you – the users – have given us a lot of constructive feedback on, so now we’re fixing it.

The launch is scheduled for the last weekend of August – 27 and 28. The platform may be a bit unstable during the weekend. Not for campaigns, landing pages and cruise controls you’ve set up beforehand, but if you log in Saturday and Sunday, you may experience that things are a little unstable.

To elaborate on what the restructure really means, I’ve interviewed 24SevenSocial’s Product Manager – Sjur Grønningsæter, and the Head of Customer Success – Kenneth Bjerke:

We’re talking about restructure – what does that mean?

Sjur: “Basically, we’re rebuilding the core of our system from the ground up.”

Kenneth adds: “It’s a bunch of structural upgrades that will make life easier for our users. It will result in a more straight forward and less cluttered system, especially with respect to admin roles and permissions – both in 24SevenSocial and in your social channels.

Can you elaborate on that?

Sjur: “The restructuring is focused on the admin roles. Today some of the 24SevenSocial tools use “brands” as access level. This means that your user role is based on which Facebook Page you’re paying to have connected to 24SevenSocial. Inbox for customer service, and Creator for Facebook-contests and landing pages work like that. Meanwhile, other tools use your Facebook Page role as access level. So if you’re an admin of 100 Facebook Pages, you can use 24SevenSocial on all 100 pages. Publisher and Ads work like that. This is neither consistent nor logical, and we know some of you have struggled to understand this.

That’s why we’re now creating four levels: Account, Team, Project and Solo Space.” Sjur and Kenneth explain with the following structure:

1. Account: same as before – this is your company’s 24SevenSocial-account, the top level, and where you have a contract and license with 24SevenSocial. This is where admins set up teams.
2. Teams: A group of members with access to a set of ad accounts, Business manager IDs, and brands (Facebook Pages and Instagram profiles). A team is a loose grouping inside of an Account. An example of how to use teams can be a company where customer service and marketing perform different tasks. The company can set up one team with access to tools relevant for customer service, and another team for marketing – with ads, publishing and landing pages. Meanwhile, both teams can have access to the statistics tools. These two teams can work on the same Facebook Pages, but with different tasks. That said, most smaller companies will do just fine with one team where they collaborate and share access rights.
   
   Teams is where you administrate access rights in 24SevenSocial, but also Facebook roles, Facebook Ad account accesses, and Business Manager. If you update a role from Teams, it will also be updated as a role in Facebook.
3. Projects: Lots of ad agencies use 24SevenSocial. Projects is just a type of Team adapted to agencies. In a project, an agency and client can work together without other clients or other consultants seeing or accessing it. This leads to better control of the agency’s and client’s data.
4. Solo Space: This is more of a supplement because a lot of users use 24SevenSocial to publish on Facebook Pages that they haven’t connected with 24SevenSocial, and aren’t paying for. They’re doing this based on their admin roles on the Facebook pages. We will keep allowing this, and the Solo Space will be where you can publish and advertise, independent from which brands you’ve actually connected to 24SevenSocial. Solo Space works for the tools Planner, Publisher, Ads, Audiencer and fb.st.”

Why are we restructuring now?

Sjur: “In product development you always have a starting point. 24SevenSocial was started as a widget center for Facebook apps i 2009. It was close to impossible at that time to know what 24SevenSocial would be like in 2017. We had now come to a point where it was getting technically and structurally harder to keep developing 24SevenSocial. The tools had simply outgrown the core system that it was all built on.

We also saw that the user setup was no longer logical for our users. With all that we’re planning of features and upgrades in the coming months, now was the time to do it.

All major upgrades lead to some friction. What do you think will be the biggest challenge when we launch this?

Kenneth: “The biggest challenge will be to get the right Teams in place. We’re working hard and thoroughly with this now, to minimize the friction of that transfer. Many have gotten emails from us about this in the past months, and most have also answered – so we’re good to go here. But then there are also quite a few people who haven’t replied, and worst case is that these users log in and realize they no longer have access to anything in 24SevenSocial. They will have to contact us, and we’ll fix it. The reason is that they haven’t been put in the right teams, and without access to a team, you don’t have access to the tools. With teams set up with the right admin roles, you’re all set to use 24SevenSocial like you always have.

For people who log in to 24SevenSocial and find they don’t have the right access, they can use the Solo Space. From there you can publish posts and run ads. And then you’ll have to contact us at support@24sevensocial.com to be organized into the right team. You can also reach us at +47 404 14 700, and at our Facebook-chat: m.me/24sevensocial.com”.”

Sjur adds that we’ll be listening to the users – like we always do. “We’ll be on our toes to fix things if anything goes wrong – or even goes suboptimal. So don’t hesitate letting us know if anything isn’t working right, or you have any feedback to share. The changes we’re now making are based on feedback from the users, and clearly that feedback will mean a lot in the continued process”.

Are there any changes to the pricing?

Sjur: “Not short term for regular accounts. Agencies will now be able to sell projects, instead of having to sell licenses, or connecting client brands to their own accounts. A project will cost NOK 1800,- per month, which is half of the price of a new 24SevenSocial license. A project can be switched on and off, without any set duration. Agencies can buy client projects in 24SevenSocial on a monthly basis, and can schedule a hard stop if they want it switched off after a set campaign period. After that the client project will be frozen. By “frozen” we mean that we won’t delete any data or work, even though the project has been switched off.”

Is there any difference from company to company on how the restructure will work?

Kenneth: “If you’re a small shop with just one team – where everyone has access to everything – then you’ll just keep working like you used to. The biggest impact will be on larger companies where there are more people and several teams working together. On the short term, the value of the restructure will be clearest to larger companies and agencies.”

Should people prepare anything on their own?

Kenneth: “24SevenSocial users should check if they’ve received an email from us that’s gone unnoticed. In one of the latest emails we sent out, we ask who should have access to what, so that we can help out with the setup in advance. If you’ve gotten an email, but haven’t read it – read it – it should make the onboarding as easy as a breeze. If you haven’t received anything from us, send us an email at support@24sevensocial.com and we’ll help you.”

Sjur: “Admins must know that they can now control the Facebook roles of their team members. If they have team members who do not have access to Facebook pages, they may experience a role conflict in 24SevenSocial. This is easy for admins to fix. We’ve written tons of help texts for the platform that will help you solve things like this. Just remember that we now use Facebook roles as a basis for 24SevenSocial roles. That way 24SevenSocial will be more consistent with Facebook.”

Will there be any down time during the migration?

Kenneth: “The system can be a little unstable during the launch weekend. That’s it. If you have a campaign that’s supposed to run this weekend, I recommend you set it up before the weekend. Ongoing activities and campaigns will not be affected. If you need to answer your customers on Facebook this weekend, we recommend you do it directly in Facebook saturday and sunday.”

How can people ask for help?

Kenneth: “Our Facebook chat is great: m.me/24sevensocial.com
Same with email: support@24sevensocial.com
You can also call us at +47 404 14 700”

Sjur: “One thing that I’m itching to get off my chest: what we’re doing now is ground work for all the cool things that we’re planning. Hot tip: wait and see what will happen with Inbox in the near future. It’s going to be awesome”.