Firstup

Score9.1 out of 10

33 Reviews and Ratings

What is Firstup?

Firstup (formerly Dynamic Signal & SocialChorus, merged in 2021) offers an Employee Communication and Engagement Platform that aims to create a connected, inclusive, and engaged workforce where people feel valued and empowered to be their best. Firstup can be used to generate UGC, enabling employees to share on-brand content with their social networks, and keep employees engaged with gamification (e.g. leaderboards, competitions, etc.), and through making their thoughts known through surveys and polls.

#1 most frequent

Manufacturing

25.7%

27 installations of 105

#2 most frequent

Health Care and Social Assistance

21.0%

22 installations of 105

#3 most frequent

Retail Trade

5.7%

6 installations of 105

Anat Hazanchuk View profile

Sr. Social Media and Content Manager in Marketing at PagerDuty (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Firstup as our Employee Advocacy Program at PD. We use this platform to get our employees to share company news, job openings, blogs, product launches, and other announcements to their social networks/email contacts and spread brand awareness. We have the majority of our employees active on the program and it's had positive feedback!

Pros

Easy for managers to schedule out activities for employees to share with their networks.
Easy for employees to connect social networks and share company news directly within the platform.
Great customer service- the accounts team is very attentive and answer questions quickly to get customers set up for success.

Cons

Promotion of organic corporate content- would be great to get amplification of posts that are directly on the corporate channels instead of having them shared on individual employee accounts.

Return on Investment

Employee Response Rate has increased sharing company news.
Increase in engagement YoY.

Other Software Used

Sprout Social, WordPress

Jordan McDaniel Hinkebein View profile

Marketing Director in Marketing at Hilldrup (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Firstup is used by our sales teams, marketing team, and execs to build brand awareness about different specialty services we provide, case studies we have done, and company news. We use it to promote ourselves and our brand on social media. It helps our teams because they don't have to come up with the posts themselves - marketing handles that, and the team just shares it to amplify the voice.

Pros

Extremely easy to use - from a management standpoint and a user perspective.
Helps amplify the brand voice beyond brand social media pages.
Gets our brand recognized and raises awareness.
Shares "wins" within the company about new hires, promotions, cool projects, etc.

Cons

I manage an exec's account, and I wish I could log in to my account and toggle to his to manage it rather than having to log in separately. Other than that, I truly can't think of anything!

Return on Investment

We look at the earned media revenue tool that Firstup has, and we have earned media of over $4000 most months. Amazing!
We have been recognized by peers, clients, and partner agents who say they always see our Hilldrup news pop up on social media!
Marketing has been able to control the voice of the brand while amplifying the message to new audiences - amazing!

Raleigh Decker View profile

Senior Director of Communications in Corporate at World's Finest® Chocolate (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Firstup delivers consistent, real-time communications to our team of employees whether working in the plant or in the office. We used to rely on a combination of emails and posting printed notices by the timeclocks. Now, everyone in the company gets relevant, targeted information at the same time. This has been especially impactful during COVID-19 when half of our workforce went remote overnight.

Pros

ROI--Creating a business case showing the positive impact an app will make
Customization--We can easily send targeted communications to our team
Support--Even after the sale, we've felt supported by the sales team and the Customer Success team

Cons

We'd love to see a calendar added that would show key upcoming dates.
It would be awesome if the Message feature had a drop-down directory you could scroll through vs. requiring you to type a few letters before the potential names came up.

Return on Investment

We've cut down on the number of emails sent to the office team, a big time saver.

Ben Peck

System Administrator in Information Technology at Cherokee Nation Businesses (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Firstup is being used by our whole organization. It is our primary means of communication with employees. We also use the quick links as an entry point to many essential systems to drive users through the communication platform. It helps us reach employees where they are, especially for our employees that do not have email access.

Pros

It looks professional and creates trust.
They worked with us to ensure a seamless authentication for SSO.
It simplifies the back end article creation process.
It reports well on our outreach metrics.
Their weekly customer success meetings keep us in the know.

Cons

In the past year, we've had a couple of multi-hour outages. They could do better at fault tolerance.
The steps required to update apps is quite cumbersome, especially for the Apple store.
I have problems with user management around rehires. There is no mechanism to unsuspend users automatically if they are in a new user upload.

Return on Investment

It is our primary communication platform and we've obtained a very high percentage of reach though it.
Employees trust the content since it is our authoritative source.
We have confusion when people leave the platform via the link and subsequently have a problem and believe it is a DySi problem. It integrates that well.

Verified User

Manager (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Firstup is an optional communication tool for employees across our large organization. This tool helps us share news and other important messages with employees who are not sitting in front of computers during their workday.

Pros

Intuitive, easy-to-use templates for posts, newsletters and email notifications.
Consistent upgrades and innovation that keeps the tool current with other apps.
Flexibility on how users can use the tool (i.e. comments, sharing photos, etc.) This decision is left to each organization, individually.

Cons

There is room for improvement to make this a primary communication tool, including more ADA compliance features for users, more robust reporting options for administrators and additional options to filter user profiles for an enhanced app experience.
Although our experience has been quite positive, I do think there is room for Firstup to learn from industries outside of their own. I feel some of their recommendations (and assumptions) are based on the experience inside their own walls. We don't run business the same way. And to assume we should do business their way for the sake of the tool seems like a misstep.

Return on Investment

Enhanced culture and morale

Firstup

What is Firstup?