Altimeter 2012 report Social Media Management Systems

Last year I wrote this blogpost: “Social Media Tools & Listening Centers”. It became one of the Conversation Management Top stories of 2011, that is always a great honor ;). Yesterday Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter Group, follow him on Twitter) published an interesting report: A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation. A perfect match with the article I wrote and a must read if you are wondering right now what kind of social media tools you should buy or use.

According to Altimeter companies with more than 1000 employees have 178 Social Media Accounts, not including employees accounts. With those numbers it’s hard to get grip on your social activities, measure according to your KPI’s and last but not least: offer a coordinated customer experience. The subtitle of the reports says it all: “Get Account Control now, using software and services, or risk a career of continual social media sanitation.” The review of the Social Media Management Systems is based on the following 5 cases:

Based on those five cases Altimeter scored each vendor:

So if you take a look at the cases that matches your situation, the table above gives you a shortlist of vendors that fits your needs. One remark! It’s not about the tools, but what you do with those tools. So don’t even think about buying any of those tools if you don’t have a Social Media Strategy yet.

Combined with my Social Media Tools & Listening Center article this report of Altimeter is the perfect documentation for selecting the right Social Media system/tool.