A recent Forrester Research report, by Suresh Vittal, furthers the discussion and lays out the foundations and consideration marketers must consider as they begin launching social media programs for the brands.

As the social channel and consumer adoption of social technologies has exploded — brands can no longer sit idly by. The key first step in understanding the “Groundswell” as Forrester coins it, is to invest in Listening. This can be done via free or paid tools and technologies but can quickly be overwhelming if the noise to action ratios are out of balance.

Listening tools can aid marketers in their brand tracking, crisis monitoring, campaign measurement, market research efforts and customer support efforts but all come with a cost. Listening technologies that can support marketers are not the same and can cost varying amounts depending on the levels of data, insight, and action marketers want. Additionally, costs are not just related to the actual technologies investments but need to factor in actual organizational and human capital investments required to glean the insight, results, and cost savings from interacting in the social channel.

Suresh groups listening technologies into three categories:

- Full featured platforms for ongoing tracking and interaction with the social channel and consumers primarily focused on cross-enterprise use with multi-channel data, sentiment, and workflow/management tools. (Glad to see Visible referenced in this category)

- Brand Monitoring dashboards that are less expensive and require more work in terms of much of the  automation that full featured platforms provide. Although, duly noted they continue to quickly mature.

- One time projects and consulting offering that serve social analysis but at a high cost. (Some brands and agencies do continue to invest this way based on “getting started” or “special projects” for launches or affinity group insight)

Additionally, Suresh articulates some of the values of paid technologies over free tool around three key areas:

1. Limited data collection in free tools

2. Limited filtering and data processing technologies in free tools

3. Limited way of viewing and interpting the data collected in free tools

I have always argued that free tools are a great place to get started but will either quickly overwhelm a marketer or agency or will fail to deliver the actionable insight that technology vendors have been working at honing and perfecting since the emergence of the channel.

Although, I would argue that the end of the research piece is the part that most folks completely under estimate and fail to plan for as they launch “social media programs” and that is in the areas of staffing for social media listening and interaction, training, and insight extraction.

Thanks Suresh for serving up another helpful dose of understanding and considerations for marketers as they are exploring and expanding their investments in this category.

Blake Cahill

SVP of Marketing

Visible Technologies