Case Study: Hype Social
Hype Social helps Twitter and Instagram users gain traction and followers with a unique blend of custom-tailored consulting services and an in-house management platform. I led the development of Hype Social's platform to help automate repetitive tasks and help Hype's clients increase their social media engagement.
About Hype Social
Hype Social employs a suite of strategies to help Twitter and Instagram users engage with more followers and provide more value.
Their proprietary internal platform helps Hype to interact directly with its clients social media accounts and automates specialized workflows for helping their clients gain traction with their audiences.
Challenges
Hype Social manages hundreds of client accounts at a time, so providing them with an administrative tool for managing their client's accounts and gaining visibility into the trends affecting their accounts was paramount.
And because we leveraged the Twitter and Instagram API's to capture real-time data about each client account, scaling the tools proved a challenge.
Social media API's can be a bit cumbersome to work with at scale. Rate limit considerations, network I/O limits, and difficulties in producing automated testing to cover all scenarios all stand in the way of success.
Additionally, Hype's team required a user experience that helped them manage their client base without too much friction. Transparency and visibility were key metrics for success.
How I helped
I built each of the tools in Hype's platform toolbox iteratively and as needs arose. This meant I was able to deliver value to Hype's clients early on in the product development process, instead of specifying a final design and delivering it all at once.
And the experimental nature Hype's services necessitated this kind of approach. As we delivered features, customer inquiry would often guide our development. Before long, Hype had a long list of clients and we were scaling to serve each of them.
Social media at scale
Scaling social media applications can be difficult because it requires capturing data in real-time and responding to it as it is captured. Doing this for a few accounts is easy. At scale, limitations in I/O and API rate limiting start to rear their ugly heads.
I worked with Hype to develop unique strategies for working within the constraints of the social media services. We implemented rate limit throttling to ensure we were well within the bounds of the Twitter and Instagram API Terms of Service. And we employed several database optimization techniques to help manage data at scale.
Heightened visibility
Because social media management relies on metrics to measure success, Hype needed a way to see at-a-glance global and account-level metrics to tune their techniques and ensure clients their strategies are working.
This meant producing both global and account-level dashboards with sophisticated reporting for each account's key performance indicators, as well as automated email alerts in the event something went wrong.
What they say
"Teejay can solve any problem with code. He is personable, smart and fast. Over the course of seven years I have watched him build half a dozen startups by himself.
Beyond being a great developer with a great personality, he truly wants to build the best product possible and is always pushing the envelope for design and experience. Making products that are beautiful, elegant and functional is what he does best.
There is nothing that would stop me from working with Teejay again. In fact, working with him has ruined me for working with other less capable developers.
He’s an amazing talent and a force to be reckoned with."
— E.J. Coughlin, Hype Social
Can automation help your business?
Is your service business relying too much on manual entry for repetitive tasks? Do you have processes in place which serve your clients well, but are costly to implement day-to-day? A custom automation solution can help.
Working with Hype Social has taught me how to automate business processes in a way that reduces your overhead in weeks, not months. I've carried this expertise with me into all my client relationships and would love to see how I can help you.
If you're looking to reduce your overheads with business process automation, get in touch with me today.