Get account control now –or risk a career of continual social media sanitation. To match the growing consumer adoption of social media, many companies have launched social media efforts with little planning. As social media spreads beyond corporate communications and marketing, business groups are deploying social media without a standardized process. In fact, enterprise class corporations (those with over 1,000 employees) have an average of 178 social media accounts and this number will only grow if left unchecked. Companies that don’t control these accounts are at risk of having abandoned accounts, lack of consistent experience, or untrained employees creating a crisis.
Join Altimeter’s webinar to discuss this report.
We’ll cover the market trends, industry problems, provide new data not in this report, give insight to the future of this growing space. We’ll also be featuring case studies of success of how top brands are showing success, please submit case studies for review. Register for the webinar on Feb 7th, 2012, and we’ll dive in deeper.
This report puts companies in control based on business needs.
Buyers are confused by the number of vendors claiming similar offerings, and as a result spend months making decisions on who to short list. To fast forward the industry, this report serves to accelerate the process, this report contains the following elements:
- A Thorough Methodology: including 71 interviews, a survey to 144 buyers, a survey to 27 vendors, and analysis from a dedicated research team. Read page 4 for more details
- Five Business Use Cases: Based on interviews with buyers, we sought to find out their needs, rather than focus on software features.
- Altimeter Radar: a decision-making matrix that will help buyers to determine which vendors are best for them.
- Pragmatic Guide: At the end of the report, we feature 11 steps with examples and pitfalls to avoid guide all buyers must complete.
- A resource checklist: buyers should use to ensure that they make the best decision with regard to their social media.
Above is the full report, feel free to read, download and share.
This is just the start of this growing space.
We coined the Social Media Management Systems market and started the first industry list in March, 2010 (read all the posts on this topic). Over the past few quarters, we worked closely with Altimeter Research’s Andrew Jones, and we’ve compiled over 13,000 pieces of data about vendors and what buyers need, case studies, and dozens of interview notes. Our experience helping 3 global companies make decisions on these SMMS vendors has helped us to realize the struggle the entire industry is going to have when it comes to keeping track of this fast-moving space. This report, which is a snapshot in time, documents the industry, and we’ll continue to publish changes in this space over the coming years.
Above Graphic: First, Align by the Five Use Cases for Social Media Management.
Above Graphic: Then, Choose The Right Social Media Management Systems based on Business Needs.
Open Research: Use it, share it, and we’ll publish more.
While there are many types of decision-making reports on the market, this one is unique for the following reasons: 1) We realize that one size does not fit all and we do not lump all vendors into one diagram; instead we segment by use case to show different capabilities, 2) Rather than focusing on enterprise class only, we include those that can serve medium-size companies, as this space is dynamically changing, 3) We publish under Open Research so it can be read by all, rather than sold by subscription, and 4) We disclose our client relationships, including vendors that are clients that were in this report, so you have the utmost confidence in our recommendations.
During the editing process, we pulled out pages and pages of content in the editing process, so expect many future blog posts, webinars, and speeches to continue this discussion.
Related Resources
In the following section, we cross-link to thoughtful reviews of the research report. We look forward to comments from those in the community.
Related Research
- Report: Social Readiness, video of speech at LeWeb
- Report: Career path of the corporate social strategist
- Report: See all my research reports
- Jason Falls has given a thoughtful analysis on the SMMS space
- Cross posted on the Altimeter Group blog
Related Webinars
- Regain Control & Minimize Risk Your Strategy for Managing Corporate Social Media with SocialVolt (client), Feb 15
- Altimeter hosted webinar to discuss the report, its findings, and future of this space from an industry perspective, Feb 7
News Media
- The Huffington Post: Corporations at Risk From Social Media Adoption Issues
- Forbes: Managing Social Media Chaos: A Leadership Priority
- Read Write Web: How to take control over social media proliferation
- MediaPost comments that Companies Struggle To Manage Social Media
- Ragan.com: Companies average 178 social media accounts
- SmartBrief on Social Media
- Social Business News Roundup
- Marketing Charts rehashes the data
- Social Media Today
- Social Media Today: Chris Syme reports on the need for solutions
- Bizreport comments on how companies are struggling
- Corp Comms discusses that Large firms juggle multiple accounts
- Brafton Media notes how companies must control accounts
- Business2Community rehashes key points in the report
- Warc distributes the key numbers found in the report
- WOMMA discusses the risks of having too many accounts
- eMarketer covers the report
- Media News Line: Social Media Accounts and Conversations on the Rise
- The Financial: Social Media Accounts and Conversations on the Rise
Domain Experts
- Marketing Pilgram says it’s time to “Take out the social media trash”
- Jay Baer discusses “Taming the chickens”
- Shel Holtz advises companies to get control of their social media now
- Jason Falls says this report will help help your brand, and offers critiques
- David Deal notices that vendors need to mature
- Kyle-Beth Hilfer provides an important legal view, and warns of dangers
- Peter Kim, former colleague at Forrester, discusses “Herding cats”
- Erik van Roekel notes it’s not about the tools only
- The report also reviewed in Dutch, by Erik van Roekel
- Joe Chernov asks: So You Wanna Launch a Global Social Media Program?
- Eloqua: 5 Wows from Altimeter’s A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation
- Bazaarvoice discusses the dangers of proliferation
- Angela Hausman, warns of social media risks
- Stuart Bruce reviews the findings
- Adi Gaskell reviews the report
- Vidar ‘blacktar’ Andersen reviews the report
- Gemma Went says the report was “Handy”
- Steve MacAlpine notes many have to navigate the social media maze
- Jon Gatrell reminds of Solutions, Integration, Fragmentation and Governance
- Customer Think covers the report
- MT Business says this is a “must read”
- Marshall Sponder reviews the pros and cons of the report
- Gerald Hensel of Blast Radius reviews the report
- Todd Defren discusses the numbers from the report
- Jesse Stay, the head of social at LDS reviews the report and provides more context
- Mediatel discusses the report
- Social IRL covers the report, and discusses the upcoming webinar
- Slidescene shares the report
- Aseem Badshah hopes to see consolidate of accounts
Agency Reviews
- Mindjumpers says this report will save you money
- Video: Tac Anderson and Jen Grant of Waggener Edstrom Worldwide review the report
- Tac Anderson says companies need to get a strategy first, before tools
- We Are Social covers the report, also in Italian
- Michael Brito of Edelman covers the report
- Michael Brito also covers this at Social Business Review
- Christine Perkett says enterprises are still confused
- Blast Radius shares the report
Software Vendor Reviews
- Vitrue discusses the report
- Heresay Social shares the report
- Shoutlet discusses the report
- Argyle Social gives their POV on the report
- Syncapse head of Research, Christopher Berry, shares
- Buddy Media covers the report
- Awareness covers the report
- One to One covers the report
- Syncapse reviews the report
- The Targeted Group reviews the report
- Spinklr shares their thoughts
Other Notes
Update Jan 5th end of day: We corrected the report to notate a correct total of 71 interviews, not 70.
Thanks Jeremiah for yet another insightful and incredibly helpful report! We’re glad that you see Wildfire as a fast mover.Â
Since you interviewed us for this report several months ago, we’ve implemented many, many enhancements to our platform. We’ve deepened our language capabilities and permissions, enabling our customers to control campaigns in scores of countries and languages. We’re getting glowing feedback about the upgrades from numerous customers that manage several hundred or even several thousand pages using Wildfire, including Facebook itself, which manages 60+ of its own brand pages with our platform. I’d say we are now very strong in the Distributed Brand Presence category.Â
We’ve also added new capabilities to our messaging product; under the category of Intense Engagement, we cover the vast majority of the features you list including: monitoring and alerting tools, workflow routing, and tiered governance features. We look forward to seeing these improvements included in upcoming reports. Thanks again for providing such insightful information! – Victoria Ransom, CEO, Wildfire Interactive, Inc.
This is awesome and immensely timely! EMC is beginning to get our arms around our own social proliferation. Thanks!
Jeremiah thanks for this. Exciting to see it all come together as I know how much work you and the team put into it. Congratulations on the release. Â
Jeremiah thanks for this. Exciting to see it all come together as I know how much work you and the team put into it. Congratulations on the release. Â
Keith, I’m glad to hear you’ll be using this report for your business! Â Let us know how it goes.Â
Thank you Victoria, I look forward to continued updates.Â
Great work Jeremiah, you are certainly kicking of 2012 to a fast and great start!
Thank you Jeremiah, this report and much of your work is greatly appreciated. It provides great analysis that is helping my startup team better understand that market. Keep up the great work and great tweets (I’m @Dsox).
Great piece of work, thank you very much. There’s a little typo in your blogpost, I guess. Isn’t the webinar supposed to be in 2012 instead of 2011? 😉
Jeremiah – I obviously can’t be the first to say so, but I want to give you a big “congratulations.” I have watched first hand how hard your whole team worked to produce this report and we here at the Targeted Group were honored to be included in the report and look forward to being an active participant in the many future conversations as well.
As you noted in the report, the quality of the consulting services and true data analytics are big needs in the industry. We are going to be doing a series of blog posts highlighting those specific capabilities. You have provided such a valuable road map for enterprise clients to identify their needs and quickly navigate the landscape of solution providers.
From the whole team here at TTG, we thank you and greatly appreciate all that happens at the “hangar.”
Jeremiah, we™re looking
forward to reading and digging through your report. As you know, uberVU is working to help enterprises not only
deploy social media with a plan, but also to monitor, measure and analyze for
long term success. We’re soon delivering our own report on the 4 pillars of
social media “ and we look forward to sharing and talking with you February.
Keep up the great work in this space “ businesses need continued guidance from
experts like you as they plan for and choose the best route to social media
success.Â
Â
-Mark Pascarella, CEO |
uberVU
Thank you sir, you’re a class act. We’re very glad to continue to serve the industry.
Kudos Jeremiah! Wonderful to see a report that truly understands the differences among the social media software vendors and addresses the core business problems facing today’s enterprises that we are all trying solve. Spredfast is honored to be mentioned along side these innovative companies.
– Ken Cho, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Spredfast
Great report, Jeremiah. Â Just by breaking down SMM into 5 use cases for enterprises, you’re giving enterprise buyers and vendors a new way to talk about both needs and fit. It’s also helpful to see a “Consumers’ Report” type of chart of the 27 SMMS vendors in your study. Â
Loved the pragmatic recommendations for buyers! I think buyers should also look at the functional side of SMMS in Jason Falls’ October 24 post.
One idea I do question – the Platform Campaign Marketing use. This seemed a bit “odd man out” as it pretty much focused only on Facebook. Â And it’s not necessarily the case that a vendor like Wildfire that excels on Facebook campaigns would excel equally across Twitter, LinkedIn and G+. Â
All in all, very informative, helpful, packed with data and recommendations. Â I’m really looking forward to your webinar on this – many, many thanks!
Jeremiah: Kudos for this latest attempt to add some clarity to this fast moving and growing space. Our thoughts here:Â
http://www.buddymedia.com/newsroom/2012/01/buddy-media-named-%E2%80%9Cstrong-player%E2%80%9D-in-new-altimeter-group-report-3/
Thanks Suzanne, we hope it helps buyers to build a plan, select the right partners.
Thanks Suzanne, we hope it helps buyers to build a plan, select the right partners.
Great piece of work
Wish to see client/customer satisfaction as a future addition in this report. Long term SMMS need this data independently.
You and your team deserves the best. This report is very beneficial to a very new and evolving technology.
Well done.
Wish to see client/customer satisfaction as a future addition in this report. Long term SMMS need this data independently.
You and your team deserves the best. This report is very beneficial to a very new and evolving technology.
Well done.
We actually have customer satisfaction data of the vendors, that will surface later. Â The challenge is that there are so many options right now, that the data sets can get very small due to the explosion of vendors. Â I will discuss this more in future posts.
We actually have customer satisfaction data of the vendors, that will surface later. Â The challenge is that there are so many options right now, that the data sets can get very small due to the explosion of vendors. Â I will discuss this more in future posts.
Thank you Ken, you’re a gent.Â
Thank you Ken, you’re a gent.Â
Thank you Mark, I look forward to the discussion.
Silly me, time warp!Â
That’s great to hear! Â Which use case are you Steve?
Great Guide. You don’t have to look very hard to see the lack of synergy across the various social platforms. Focusing more on synergy, and less on quantity, will always yield the best results.
Great Guide. You don’t have to look very hard to see the lack of synergy across the various social platforms. Focusing more on synergy, and less on quantity, will always yield the best results.
Thanks for this Jeremiah, useful and insightful as always.
Out of curiosity, any reason that Sprout Social isn’t on the vendor list? Did they fail to respond, or did they not meet your initial criteria?
This is a really good read for me, Must admit that you are one of the best bloggers I ever saw.Thanks for posting this informative article.
I most appreciated the 5 Use Cases–that’s a very helpful frame for defining and differentiating SMM objectives. But I found myself struggling to fit many of the B2B companies we work with into one of those cases. These companies need systems to support targeted engagement–specific and differentiated market segments that need consistent engagement with strategically directed content and useful metrics beyond followers and likes. This use case requires more focus on intelligence and analytics, rather than just monitoring and coordination of engagement. I’m not sure if you’d see that as a different use case, or how you’d see it fitting into one of the existing cases… Thanks, Jeremiah, for another solid paper.
Your article helped me a lot, thanks for the information. I also like your blog theme, can you tell me how you did it?