Cloze, a startup that helps users manage their messages on email and social networks, is launching a new tool today that helps teams circulate content through those channels. It’s called, appropriately enough, Circulate.it.
Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer Alex Coté said that if you’re “an executive sales guy” or a member of a sales or marketing team, you probably feel like you should be sharing interesting content, or content that reflects well on your company, but the actual process of doing so can be “very painful,” particularly when you’re trying to get the rest of your team to share.
With Circulate.it, the Cloze team is trying to make things as simple as possible. There are browser extensions for sharing content in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, as well as a bookmarklet for mobile, but the real improvement is in what happens after someone shares content with the rest of their team. Shared content can be sent out individually or aggregated in a daily newsletter (Coté said the format was “Medium-inspired”). The newsletter comes with a big “share” button, and assuming you’ve authorized Circulate.it to post to your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn account, it only takes a couple of clicks for each person to share.
Behind the scenes, Circulate.it handles the scheduling of each post, so you don’t have to worry about spacing things out (you can also adjust the timing for things like embargoes). It also offers analytics data, so people can see whose sharing is the most effective.
Now you may be wondering if sharing an article on Facebook is all that hard, and I agree with you that it really isn’t. But again once you try to get large groups of people to share, things get complicated (another startup Addvocate has also tackled the problem) and Coté said you start dealing with people who “can barely spell Twitter,” and they certainly aren’t using more advanced tools like HootSuite.
Circulate.it offers a free plan for individuals. Its team plans start at $49 per month for 25 users.