I’ve been reading and participating in Forrester “Wave” reports for years and it’s always interesting to see how people react to the vendor technology evaluations in these reports. Sure, it’s always great to be selected as one of the companies to participate and we are certainly thrilled to continue to be ranked as one of the top providers in the industry, but for me the real value of the Wave Report goes far beyond which companies were named “Leaders” and “Strong Performers.”

The inside information and trend data collected and synthesized by the lead analyst, in this case the extremely knowledgeable Zach Hofer-Shall, is usually as valuable, if not more, than designated vendor bragging rights for the next 12 months. You’ll see all kinds of online discussion and buzz about the report, but virtually none of it will be about the key industry insights and trends highlighted by Zach and his research team. With that in mind, here are a few of the key takeaways that I found most interesting:

• the emergence of social media is helping companies transition from “Brand Listening” to “Social Intelligence,” the concept of informing marketing and business decisions with insights from social media conversations and data;
• the industry remains still very much in relative infancy and will continue to be challenged even more in the future by the ever-moving target of new social media communities, technologies and shifting online consumer behavior;
• the demand for improved text analytics and sentiment analysis accuracy will rapidly escalate in importance as social intelligence continues to infiltrate every aspect of a company’s operations;
• social business insights is fast becoming an enterprise-wide discipline and is no longer being driven mostly by only the marketing and communications departments; and,
• the winners and losers in this space will have nothing to do with how big a name they are or how much money they spend. Technology innovation combined with smart people and services will be the real winners.

As always, we welcome your comments on the industry and the “Wave” report, a complimentary copy of which you can download from our site.

Mike Spataro

At Web 2.0 in San Francisco to hear a panel from Peter Kim, Charlene Li, and Jeremiah Owyang.

Failure Point 1: How do you get your culture involved?

Jeremiah says “this is one of biggest issues that enterprise face in terms of embracing social media”. Charlene..”Culture change requires big guns”. Focus on customer satisfaction and existing corporate goals and use social channels to support it. Models of social media embrace at organizations: “The Tire” - outside in, “The Tower” - PR or Comms drive, and “The Hub & Spoke”.

Failure Point 2: How do you make campaigns work?

Failure here is in the fact that we treat it or call it a campaign in the 1st place. This is an ongoing relationship with customers not just a campaign. Long term businesses needs to change - transformation issue again. The bottom line is that customers in the social graph want relationships and value added interaction. If a community is built, interactive, and value-added you can have a campaign but it can’t be turn on or off. Marketing needs to evolve to better include customer experience and on going community management.

Failure Point 3:How do I measure success?

Many marketers continue to use wrong metrics for success. Measure where you are, were you’ve been, where you are going. Like that. Why measure and what are you trying to accomplish, say Charlene. You need also look to the ways that message your existing channel to some extent. Pete measurement in marketing is huge fail irrespective of social media marketing. Marketing needs to have better P&L and measurements. Interesting show hands about number folks that really aren’t measuring it. Amazing. They will fail and lose funding.

Failure Point 4: Does any of this matter?

Motrin example used - many in audience were unaware of the the example. Surprising…and that failure will happen. Realize that and learn from it. It does and will increasingly grow. We are only getting started but many are still unaware of the channel, the content, and its impact. Pete mentioned that we need to remember the early days of e-commerce and where we are now.

Great job and questions from the audience. And Visible Technologies got a nice shout out that we help companies with listening and engagement.

Blake Cahill
Visible Technologies

In a new report from Forrester Research analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, entitled “Social Media Playtime is Over” new data supports what many social media providers and evangelists have discussing for sometime. The findings from a recent study show that 53% of marketers plan to increase spending in social media while 42% will remain the same this despite the current economic malaise.

To quote Jeremiah’s report “The recession has put more pressure on interactive marketers to deliver measurable results. While many marketing budgets are being cinched, more than 50% of interactive marketers say they will increase their spending on social marketing. Why? These inexpensive tools can quickly get marketing messages out through interactive discussion and rapid word of mouth and, properly managed, can deliver measurable results. But in this downturn, interactive marketers must move beyond experimentation by making social applications a permanent part of marketing, measuring and demonstrating their value, and integrating them into marketing efforts.”

The main highlights of the report include:

• Many marketers are already using social technologies for marketing, almost all of interactive marketers surveyed are currently using some form of social media and most plan increases despite the recession, starting with investments in social networks, blogs, and user-generated content.
• While social application spending remains small, Fifty-three percent of interactive marketers using social media expect that their budgets for social media marketing will increase as a response to the recession.
• Despite this shift toward social, these budgets remain minute compared with larger expenditures like advertising. Interactive marketers at large companies are still only spending a fraction of their resources on social marketing.
• Social applications aren’t a formalized line item in marketing budgets. Social marketing isn’t yet a formalized line item in the marketing budget, as most social application budgets aren’t predetermined.
• Forrester data suggests that marketers intend to invest more in social media but need to justify larger budgets.
• Marketers shouldn’t continue to invest in social media as an experiment but rather as a long term strategic program/plan.
• Marketers must demonstrate that social investments are effective and how it moves customers down the marketing funnel by measuring awareness, interactions, and intent to buy.
• Social media applications must prove effectiveness in order to pry budgets away from corporate marketing or advertising. Marketers should invest in a listening platform, then integrate social marketing metrics like share of voice and engagement that can reveal ROI through leads and purchase.

Nice report Jeremiah.

Blake Cahill
Visible Technologies

There are many who continue to question Twitter, its increasing importance to consumers and brands, or its overall monetization strategies. But, the data of user growth is staggering and brand participation and initial results from brand interaction more than promising. So many brands that we know and interact with like Microsoft, Alaska Air, Southwest, Wachovia, Dell, PCC Markets and others are doing a great job at building loyal followings, creating real-time communication platforms with customers, and the ability to target marketing specials. These interactions and the follower base are what is generating revenue and cost savings — creating more traction than fan pages of yesteryear did for many brands in places like FaceBook or MySpace.

So, this is why Twitter is and will continue to be valuable. In a recent article from Joe Marchese at SocialVibe he writes “Why Google Will Buy Twitter and Make Billions”. Google’s success has been its ability to “organize information on the Web (search results) and to monetize people’s intentions (marketing based on what people are searching for). Simply put, Google is a multibillion-dollar company because it can put marketers in front of people at the right time in the right way. Google has cornered the market on searching the Web for information, and monetizing that behavior.”

Twitter is the growing consumer interaction channel of choice and is now introducing search functionality that when honed and perfected as Joe says “will bring with it all the riches of search marketing…and will make Twitter worth billions — and why Google will (or at least should) buy Twitter.”  The power in Twitter conversations is that it will “help people find out where to find current discussions on a subject.”  Now what is that worth to marketers and advertisers?  Just as Google has been able to monetize around the traffic of search terms Twitter will be able to monetize around events, passions, concerns, etc. Joe writes “People are already fascinated by watching people discuss various events or topics live in real time, using Twitter search and # (hash tags). What these services do is to provide me with information (a stream of people’s thoughts) on any keyword, or series of keywords. Sound familiar.”

Well, if it worked for Google then it could and should work for Twitter.  “Google has proven that if you can provide a useful search experience, then you can provide useful marketing. If you can provide useful marketing, you can return amazing ROI for marketers. If you can provide amazing ROI for marketers, you can make a lot of money, say Joe.”

All these consumer and business conversations be it on Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, and LinkedIn platforms are where brands and digital investment will continue to flow.  The need for marketers and organizations to understand this new landscape and to build and deploy the people, processes, and technologies to interact with these new channels is impertative.  See my post from a few weeks back with some ‘09 predictions and comments from a Forrester Report.

Nice article Joe.  I agree with you about the opportunity for Twitter or the next platform that may emerge.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Lisa Bradner, another of Forrester’s Marketing Leadership Professionals, just published a new piece of research on why brands should develop social media content. The report reveals how Forrester’s Consumer Technographics(R) research shows that loyal, socially connected consumers value content created by their favorite brands more than peer-generated content. To quote the report “this startling fact clearly demonstrates that brands with social currency have a unique opportunity to deepen relationships online.”

The key takeaway for marketers is to determine if their brand has currency, deepen engagement and interaction online with their customers and to increase the use of social media as part of the marketing mix. By doing the it “raises brand relevance, affinity, and loyalty”. I would add that by increasing these types of efforts a brand will also see higher volumes of conversations, more positive sentiment, and an increase in click-through/purchases online or off-line. I have seen alot of the Technographics data and this report is a great read and cut at that data. I would strongly encourage marketers to get a copy of the report.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies