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Vendor Landscape Plus: Social Media Management Platforms

Reign in social media by choosing a management platform that's right for you.

More Details

Your Challenge

  • The proliferation of social media services has made actively managing social initiatives a challenging task.
  • The SMMP market is a loosely coupled collection of vendors that excel only at monitoring and analytics, vendors who excel only at social engagement and a few vendors who do both. Sometimes multiple products are necessary.
  • Regulatory-related industries must archive some types of social interactions, just like email and IM. Compliance features vary widely across the SMMP market.

Our Advice

Critical Insight
  • SMMPs empower managers with a variety of tools for effective (and efficient) use of enterprise social media.
  • Selecting an SMMP involves defining the organization’s functional requirements, creating a shortlist based on these requirements, formally evaluating vendor offerings, and choosing the platform that is best tailored to the organization’s unique circumstances.
Impact and Result
  • Understand the features and business benefits of using a SMMP to effectively manage social media initiatives.
  • Determine functional requirements based on organizational needs to focus product evaluation on the right things.
  • Understand the current state of the SMMP market to evaluate and select an SMMP vendor that best meets the organization's requirements.
  • Implement according to organizational roles for the best fit to existing PR, Marketing, and Customer Service processes.

Get to Action

  1. Narrow down your list of SMMP vendors

    Create a manageable list of vendor candidates from among a field of over 50 vendors.

  2. Compare leading vendors and develop a shortlist

    Narrow the leading vendors down to the most appropriate few.

  3. Contrast and evaluate a shortlist of vendors

Related Solution Sets

Leverage Social Media for Enhanced Customer Interaction

Attract more flies through other flies, not honey.

Design a Customer Service Strategy that Serves the Social Customer

Drive customer satisfaction & retention with social channels.

3 Comments

  • Missing_comment
    Meriel Corbett-Weir - 2011-07-27

    Hi Dan - I'm interested to hear case studies on organizations that have implemented enterprise Facebook. Can you please assist? We need a collaboration platform other than share point

    • 9eb6a2810126f534ebf65557616f34d1_comment
      Info-Tech Research Group - 2011-07-27

      Thanks for your comment, Meriel. This set is part of our CRM research, focused on external customers, which is focused on social collaboration with external parties, not internal collaboration among employees (we suspect this is what you're seeking). The internal enterprise collaboration is here:
      Collaboration & Teamware
      .

      We have strategy, selects, and implement for internal social collaboration, including using Facebook-like platforms that were designed for employees. The collaboration platform select is being refreshed and replaced by a collaboration platform "Vendor Landscape Plus" right now, as we speak; we just turned it in for scoring last Friday. It should be out in 4-8 weeks. Also, there is very specific unified communications research, focused on internal UC, voice and video here: Voice & Video.

      We hope this helps.

  • Missing_comment
    Henry Mayorga - 2012-01-09

    We are looking for a vendor that will allow us to manage our social media initiative but being highly regulated we need the ability to monitor, store and review all social media comms made on behalf of the firm. We are looking at a short list that includes Socialware, Smarsh, Actiance. Any help would be welcome

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Reign in social media by choosing a management platform that's right for you.

Companies Who Helped

  • Affiliated Customs Brokers
  • Avatar Interactive
  • Bruno Group
  • City of Las Vegas
  • Clarke IT Solutions Inc.
  • Galaxy Optical
  • Johnson & Johnson Insurance Company
  • King County
  • Leon County Board of County Commissioners
  • Medicine Lodge Memorial Hospital
  • T.E.A.M. AG
  • The National Association of College Stores
  • Ulistic Inc.

Solution Road Map

Other Solution Sets in Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service Applications
1. Vendor Landscape Plus: Lead Management Automation Platforms
From lead, to qualified prospect, to customer.
2. Design a Customer Service Strategy that Serves the Social Customer
Drive customer satisfaction & retention with social channels.
3. Vendor Landscape Plus: Customer Service Management Platforms
Select the right software to resolve customer service inquiries from start to finish.
4. Vendor Landscape Plus: Customer Service Knowledge Management Platforms
Provide agents and customers with solutions, not search engines.
5. Vendor Landscape Plus: E-mail Marketing Services
Give Marketing the help it needs without getting dragged into the IT weeds.
6. Leverage Social Media for Enhanced Customer Interaction
Attract more flies through other flies, not honey.
7. Vendor Landscape Plus: Social Media Management Platforms
Reign in social media by choosing a management platform that's right for you.
8. Formulate a Social Analytics Strategy
Decide when to do more than merely follow yourself on Twitter.
9. Implement a Social Media Program
Develop, execute, and govern a cohesive social media program across your entire organization to unlock the full potential of your social media strategy.
10. Vendor Landscape Plus: Field Service Automation Solution
Field service in the age of extreme mobility.
View the full Solution Road Map