What do Harley Davidson, Mentos, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Crocs, Eddie Bauer, Maybelline, Denver Broncos, University of Texas Athletic Department, and Purina all have in common? They’re brands that have signed up with Vitrue, a social media marketing company — just in the last quarter. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was their best quarter ever in terms of revenue and expansion.
It’s been a while since we’ve written about the company — in fact, as far as I can tell, it has been about four years. Back then, Vitrue was just getting started, taking seed funding from Ron Conway and others. Since then, they’ve raised several million more dollars, but have also developed an SRM (social relationship management) platform that is used by some of the largest companies in the world.
Four years ago, Facebook wasn’t anything close to what it is today, and Twitter didn’t exist. Now, of course, Vitrue’s business is heavily wrapped around social networks such as those. The blog Inside Facebook did a good Q&A recently with CEO Reggie Bradford on how specifically his company utilizes Facebook.
From Q2 to Q3 this year, Vitrue says revenue grew nearly 100 percent as they tripled accounts using their SRM platform while also greatly expanding access their their API. To manage the growth, the company has also doubled their workforce in 2010, we’re told. But even after that, they remain cash-flow positive.
Currently, the service says it managed over 680 Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts for various clients. That adds up to some 276 million fans/followers (a nearly 250 percent jump in growth from Q2). They also moderate some 5 million comments for clients. Ugh — that would be my least favorite job ever.
Seeing as the company seems to be rocking and rolling, it probably won’t be another four years before we update on them again. Just a guess.