Aug. 9, 2023

A former Sanford Health marketing executive has launched a product designed to support social media needs.

Brooke Fitts, who most recently was chief marketing officer at Profile by Sanford, has launched Jodder, a service that provides localized social media content and management services to small businesses and franchises.

As she consulted with companies in search of marketing help, she consistently was asked about providing social media support.

It was something she also had seen working in the franchise world.

“We worked with agencies to build out beautiful brand campaigns, we had great assets, we did a lot of work to help franchisees launch brand awareness, but they wouldn’t do it,” Fitts said. “They wouldn’t spend the money in the market to do it or hire people to do it. We would build out a calendar and spoon-feed everything, and we couldn’t get them to do it.”

She realized “there was the potential to help a lot of small businesses with this common challenge,” she said. “Many business owners simply do not have the time to strategize, plan and create content on their own. Nor do they typically have the budget to hire an agency or internal staff to consistently support their social media efforts.”

Fitts partnered with former colleague and Sanford Health chief marketing officer Kimber Severson as a strategic adviser and investment partner, and the two launched Jodder as “an affordable, uncomplicated social media platform and content service,” she said.

“We strategize, create and post on all of the social channels where our clients want to have a consistent brand presence.”

Jodder is designed to help create and publish social media content with varying degrees of content support. The company is using a network of content producers to support Jodder’s clients, led by director of client success and training Milana Semmler, whose background also includes marketing at Profile by Sanford.

“We are extremely proud and excited to create a service that connects content creators and small-business owners to deliver consumer brand awareness,” Fitts said. “Because we believe every business, no matter how small, should be able to tell the world about the great work they are doing.”

There is a built-in approval process option that allows for different levels of oversight, as well as the ability to automate certain posts such as job listings or blogs.

“The key was finding something that was affordable and could work with our business model and manage multiple brands and make it easy for content writers,” Fitts said.

“It allows us to be much more efficient as content creators to create a lot of content in a short time but allows us to send updates to all our socials if we need a timely post.”

The platform is a good fit for businesses seeking brand awareness through social media and not as much for one that relies on social media for day-to-day sales such as a boutique, the founders said.

Clients are assigned a content strategist who learns about the organization, sets up or connects their social accounts, creates the content calendar and builds out the clients’ uniquely branded social content.

Jodder is available for a flat monthly rate with packages beginning at $99 a month.

“Being affordable was a huge part of the solution,” Fitts said. “People could go to agencies, but for most of the people we work with, it wouldn’t make sense.”

More than a dozen businesses participated in Jodder’s pilot launch earlier this year, and many are using it on multiple accounts, Fitts said.

“In addition, we continue to track with our anticipated growth goals without putting much effort into marketing yet, giving us great optimism of the opportunity in front of us,” she said. “Recurring and new business from existing clients is the highest compliment we could receive for the services we provide. It also tells us that we could be on to something and that we need to ready the business to take on more clients.”