Below is my research agenda (which includes my research team Christine Tran and Andrew Jones) for the customer strategy group here at Altimeter Group. I’ll cross post this from the ‘Research Tab‘ on the upper right of my blog.
Research, A Subset of the Web Strategy Mission
While I’m best known as an “Industry Analyst”, I choose that title as that’s easiest to understand, overtime, I hope to do away with that title. Although research is the foundation for all my activities, recognize that it’s only part of how we help clients in their education, research, strategy, and planning. My career mission, (which is greater than any job I work at) is to help companies connect with their customers using technologies. This has been the motto of this blog for the last 5 years (obviously with a focus on web) and I’ll continue this over the course of my career.
About The Approach: Open Research
I don’t publish numerous reports, but instead, I publish fewer reports and focus on going deeper with greater market impact. Because we publish this under Open Research premise (for public consumption under creative commons) these reports spread further, and have more market impact and influence to improve the industry. (see slideshare numbers in links below). These research reports are expensive to do and take months to create, yet we’ve figured out a model that the more you help us spread the reports, the more we can do.
2011 Research Agenda:
This research agenda was chosen based on what we heard from buyers (we have data to backup why these initiatives are important), and also mixing with our own insights on where the market is headed.
- How to Spend on Social Business by Maturity (completed)
- How companies build and manage Customer Advocacy Programs (underway, and workshop available)
- How companies prepare internally for social business
- Social Media Management Systems (SMMS) Vendor Comparison (Q3, 2011)
- Social Media and Website Integration (Q2, 2011)
- Social Stack Framework/2012 Social Business Trends/Forecast (Q4, 2011)
- Note May 31st: I’ve removed mobile marketing, and added the first report, and updated dates)
Each of these research items represent advisory, speaking, and webinar opportunities for clients. Caveat: While the reports in Q1 and Q2 are locked in, this market changes so quickly so the Q3 and Q4 items may change to meet the needs of the market.
Do you want to brief us for this research?
Research requires ecosystem input, and If you want to brief us, please send an email to briefings@altimetergroup.com and include in the subject line ‘Customer Strategy Research’, and we will review.
Previous Research
Below is a list of some of the previous research we’ve completed, please explore the links to see the vibrant discussions and market impact from each report.
- Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist
- 8 Success Criteria for Facebook Page, supplementary data.
- Social Marketing Analytics
- The 18 Use Cases of Social CRM, The New Rules of Relationship Management
- See more previous research on the ‘research tab‘
Your Feedback Wanted
I’m very open to hearing about the questions you’re answer, so please share within the comments, I read every comment and it influences the research we conduct.
Jeremiah and team, this is a great plan of attack for 2011. As an person in this space(s), I always find your research and posts to be invaluable in helping us be more strategic in our thinking and more ‘in-tune’ with what is happening in the space. I most look forward to your spending, vendor and mobile reports to come. These are ever evolving areas in which every B2B and B2C should be looking at on a consistent basis. I would also love to see more around KPIs, as this is something everyone thinks they know how to do, but do they really? Are they really measuring impact on business and revenue? Hearing how and what other companies are measuring may open the eyes of others who have not gotten to that point of maturity yet.
As always, thanks for sharing.
Steve, coming from you, a Strategist, it’s great to hear we’re on the right track.
Jeremiah, looks like Q2 will be big for Buddy Media. Will definitely set something up so we can give you an updated look under the hood. Bummed I’m missing you while I’m in SF. Next time.