Sorry, folks - I got a copy of this great report a day early and I'm a few days late in getting it to you. But you'll soon see why. When you get a 20-page report in your inbox with meat on (mostly) every page, you want to take some time before reading it, let alone sharing it.
John Lovett at Web Analytics Demystified (who I had the pleasure of joining on a panel recently) and Jeremiah Owyang at Altimeter Group (who's been a friend for years now) released an overview for how to think about finding the right vendor for measuring any of your social media programs.
The report starts in earnest, as far as what really grabbed me, on page 9 in the PDF from Web Analytics Demystified, or on page 10 in the version from Jeremiah below, which I grabbed via his blog
Here, you start to get the four business objectives four measuring social marketing, their key performance indicators, and the vendors to watch. The rest, as they say, is commentary.
This is a area I focus on quite a bit, and it's refreshing to see the objectives so clearly stated here. They're worth enumerating:
- Foster dialog
- Promote advocacy
- Facilitate support
- Spur innovation
These are all defined in as much detail as anyone should need in the following pages.
The vendors to watch should be taken with a grain of salt. I've looked into most of the vendors listed here, and quite a few that aren't on the list. The report's not meant to be a vendor guide, and it isn't. Some of the best vendors out there aren't included at all in the list, while some mentioned have a long way to go. There's also a big difference often in vendors that can work with large brands vs small businesses.
That shouldn't detract from the real value of the report - understanding social business objectives and how you measure them.
