For a Winston-Salem software company, necessity really was the mother of invention when it came to its first-ever SaaS product.
Solutions Afoot launched Brandsona, a software that helps schedule and plan social media and other marketing content, earlier this month for beta testing.
“I needed a tool to consolidate the millions of places I needed to navigate to,” said Kelsey Hart, director of marketing at Solutions Afoot. “Working with developers and being a developer myself, it was like, 'Why don’t we make one ourselves?' ”
Founded in 2017 by CEO Josh Schuminsky, Solutions Afoot develops custom software applications for its clients. The company was a finalist in TBJ’s 2022 Inno Madness competition.
Brandsona allows users to plan and edit both social media and blog posts, all stemming from a central dashboard. Unlike other social media scheduling software, Brandsona is intended to be more internal and more organizational, Hart explained. However, it can be shared across teams so that if a team member working on a social media post is not in the organization, for example, they are still able to utilize the platform.
“There’s checks and balances in place before [the posts] get put onto social media platforms,” Hart said. “We did a similar approach for blog content as well, where you can create the content and schedule it out indefinitely.”
The software also has a customer testimonial feature, where users can submit a video testimonial, written testimonial and client information that can then be shared on a reviews section of their website. Users can also send a link, created by Brandsona, to their clients so the clients can submit their testimonials themselves.
But for Hart, the best feature of Brandsona is its branding solution that captures all of a user’s branding kit, from its logos to its hex codes to its fonts.
“There’s been many times where I’ve worked with clients that don’t have a branding kit. If we’re trying to build websites or doing a marketing campaign and we don’t have the basic elements of their brand, [it’s difficult] to execute that,” she said.
Brandsona is industry-agnostic and can be used for teams of any size, the company said.
Brandsona came together in less than two months, which the Solutions Afoot team recognizes is much faster than typical software development timelines. Hart explained she was able to test the software while doing her normal duties, helping to speed up development time.
Although Solutions Afoot did not say how many, Schuminsky said he has been pleased with the response to the beta testing. An official launch is expected in a few weeks.
“It’s a useful tool for marketing houses and for businesses that do their own marketing,” he said.
