Hearsay Social Adds Integrated Social Campaigns, $18M in Funding

Hearsay Social is expanding the functionality of its corporate social media management platform and has raised $18 million in funding to do it.

The service, which launched in February, is unique because it provides franchises and businesses with local chapters the ability to monitor and manage social media across the entire organization. State Farm, 24 Hour Fitness, Farmers Insurance Group and others use it to help their local agents and locations engage with their customers via social media while adhering to corporate and government guidelines.

On Thursday, Hearsay has launched three new features for its platform, including:

A Rogue Page Finder for locating social media pages that use the company’s branding but are either impostor accounts or social media accounts not in the company’s management system. A system for adding corporate hierarchies and roles for fine-tuned social media management.

A tool for launching integrated social campaigns. These campaigns let a company launch branded social campaigns across multiple networks, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. These campaigns can be timed and targeted in different stages so that local branches can manage campaigns appropriate for their audiences.
In addition to the new features, Hearsay announced that NEA and Sequoia Capital have invested $18 million in a Series B round of funding. NEA partner Jon Sakoda will also be joining the company’s board of directors. It previously raised $3 million from Sequoia Capital, Michael Abbott (Twitter), Steve Chen (YouTube), Dave Morin (Path) and Aaron Sittig (Facebook).

The company was founded by Clara Shih (formerly of Salesforce and author of The Facebook Era) and Steve Garrity (formerly of Microsoft).