Social Media Management Systems and Strategy

Yesterday, Jeremiah Owyang, with Andrew Jones and Christine Tran – from the Altimeter Group, published “A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation”.

It’s so huge and so packed with goodness about Social Media Management Systems (SMMS) that I couldn’t do it justice in three bullet points. I extracted three choice quotes below.

Choice quotes:

• “Corporations should not jump into social media without a clear goal…Instead align goals towards business objectives.” (p. 23)

• “Unlike one-way marketing of yester-year, company must be ready to engage with negative conversations, often taking them head-on.” (p. 23)

• “New media efforts will be scrutinized by management as budgets shift. Be prepared to measure.” (p. 23)

Editorial:

• They’re correct in emphasizing the importance of strategy and process beyond the tools.

• Twenty-seven SMMS providers were evaluated (!!!). Why so many? Like they say, low barriers to entry – after all, API’s are so easy, right? (They’re not. Easy to get in. Hard to do well.)

• Social is a very different beast. The TL;DR is page 23. Then flip to page 14 to see an excellent radar of the space.

Blatant Call Out (I head up research at Syncapse):

• In that ranking of 27 SMMS, Syncapse scored ‘strong capabilities’ in 4 out of the 5 use cases, and ‘above average’ in the other one. Syncapse was the only partner to score so well.

The report is a must read if you have any interest in this space, starting a strategy, or preparing a RFP.

***

I’m Christopher Berry.
I tweet about analytics @cjpberry
I write at christopherberry.ca