The Social Marketing Management Software Checklist

Transcription

1 The Social Marketing Management Software Checklist A guide of categories and questions to ask Social Marketing Management Software (SMMS) vendors to make sure you find the the right solution for your social marketing needs. social marketing software

2 Social Marketing Management Software: The Market The rapid growth of social media has led businesses to seek out tools to manage their overall social presence. Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst at Altimeter says, [SMMS tools] enable social marketers to quickly manage, maintain, and conduct reporting on multiple channels. The issue of lack of scale is resonating with social strategists as a result, the market is developing new tools that will help them manage them. There is a growing list of providers who offer seemingly similar offerings and the clutter has made it confusing to distinguish between vendors. This document is designed to provide an overview of questions buyers should ask to make sure they understand what they are getting before they buy. 4 Specific Categories We surveyed 300+ marketers and asked what they are looking for in their social marketing management solution. We were able to bucket our findings into four categories - Publishing, Management, Measurement and Engagement. We used the responses we collected to develop lists of questions buyers can use to evaluate vendors in each area.

3 Publishing Publishing defines the ability of an SMMS to publish content to multiple social destinations. Some solutions are particularly strong on one channel (Twitter for example) or provide the ability to publish to multiple channels with multiple clicks. The questions below help frame a vendor s ability to publish a single piece of content to multiple channels, with one click, in a channel specific manner (i.e. content sent to Facebook is formatted for Facebook; Twitter content is formatted for Twitter; etc.). Does it integrate with all relevant channels (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Slideshare, Foursquare, Wordpress, etc.) Can you create complex content workflows that differentiate who can view content, create content, edit content and publish content to different channels? Can you publish one piece of content to different channels (ex: Facebook, Twitter, etc.) with a single click? Can you see a list of all the people that have engaged with your published content? Can you publish across multiple channels with channel specific customization? (i.e. can you modify content to display accurately on Facebook, Twitter, etc) Is there a quick publish option for conversational posts that incorporates geo-tagging, image upload, location, link preview, link shortening and provide the ability to schedule for a later time? Can you edit or delete published content? Does this system provide a custom URL shortener? Can it integrate with Bit.ly? Does the system support vanity URLs? Does the system provide an audit trail for all content published telling who published what, to where and when? Are rules-based notifications sent when content is published, edited or deleted on specific channels? Can you geo-target and language-target posts? Can you schedule posts and can you easily view a schedule of upcoming content? Can you publish to your website? Can you create an SEO optimized, branded landing page to aggregate all published content? Are new social channels added regularly? Does the system provide an editorial calendar for content and tasks including content previously published and content scheduled to be published? What types of files can be uploaded to publish? Can you include MP3s, PPTs, PDFs, WMVs, etc on a single post and is the system intelligent enough to send the assets to the appropriate channel? Does the system store assets (video, presentations, photos, documents, etc) that have been published? Is the system available as a white-labeled offering? Will the system allow you to change the published by text on Facebook or Twitter? Can you create content templates as a publishing shortcut?

4 Management Management is the vendor s ability to manage and control content, users, permission, workflow and channels through one centralized interface. Vendors offer different levels of management ranging from simple permissioning/access to channels to complex workflow capabilities for content, including approvals and detailed user roles. The questions below help buyers understand a vendor s capability in this area. Can you have multiple users? Can you control what functionality users can access? Can you restrict which channels users can access? Can you set up tasks for users? Are workflows available for content approval? Is there a task management dashboard? Can tasks be organized by priority, status, user, and due date? Can you customize user notifications? Can you manage user notifications on a channel-by-channel basis? Can users from multiple divisions, franchises, departments or locations log in to one central interface and only access software components based on permissions? How many individual user roles does the system support? Can you create complex content workflows that differentiate who can view content, create content, edit content and publish content to different channels? Does the system provide detailed audit trails of who published what content, to where and when? Can a users role be configured to publish only in draft and have that content sent to another user(s) for approval? How detailed are user permissions? Can you limit access down to the tab level? Does the system provide a comment dashboard that allows you to manage all responses including managing which comments have been reviewed and which require a review?

5 Measurement Measurement defines a platform s ability to measure your social media activities as relates to your business objectives. Many systems are good at reporting on the basic measures of social media (likes, followers, fans, clicks, etc) while few are able to provide metrics that provide insight into those numbers. Even fewer are able to combine social data with other sources to present a complete picture of your activity and how it impacts your business. Can you view reports aggregated across all social channels? Can you drill down to the channel specific level? Does reporting allow you to get reports on influencers? Can you see sentiment analysis on the channels you publish content to, the content you publish, the comments you receive as well as the individuals who make comments? Can you drill down to report on individual pages within channels? Can you drill down to report on individual comments within pages? Can you view people specific reports that tell you who is interacting and engaging with your content? Do reports contain sentiment monitoring for both comments and users? Can you edit sentiment for individual comments? Can you edit the sentiment keywords and scores to fit your business needs? Can you export data into excel? Can you export branded, ready-to-distribute PDFs? Is all social data automatically archived? Can you incorporate non-social data, such as Google Analytics and Omniture, into custom reports and dashboards? Can you mine raw social data? Can you create and develop your own dashboards? Does the system provide an audit trail for all content published telling who published what, to where and when? Are you easily able to push data into other reporting and business intelligence tools? Can you find trend reporting for things like activity, reach and engagement that you can track over time? Can you report on all comments specific posts have received? Is there an easy way to report on user activity? Are you able to track and manage links while automatically generating codes to identify which channels generated leads and customers? Are you able to report on the individuals who interact with your content including the ability to view their social profile, sentiment and areas of influence while capturing their conversations? Are you able to identify your top content authors and most engaged audience members? Can you set up user roles to limit reporting for individual users based on their permissions? Can you report on custom URLs generated through the system? Can you easily view content previously published and content scheduled in the future?

6 Engagement Engagement defines a system s ability to manage interactions with your audience on the social web. Some vendors are very strong on particular channels (Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, etc) while our research shows buyers are seeking one solution to capture engagement and provide a centralized interface for responding. Additionally, the research shows that buyers are looking to understand more about the individuals who make up their audience to better craft and manage replies. Can you do real-time monitoring of conversations on Facebook and Twitter? Can you identify influencers? Can you easily create monitoring streams through a conversation dashboard? Can you easily access all comments/replies in an engagement dashboard? Can you reply to individuals directly from the engagement dashboard? Can you create tasks from the engagement dashboard? Can you delete comments/replies from the engagement dashboard? Does the platform allow you to create social profiles, including profile data, influence score, and activity? Is there a central console allowing you to view and manage all comments across all channels (including Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)? Are all comments aggregated into the system allowing you to manage responses? Does the platform integrate with Klout to give you an influence score and influential topics of the contact? Can you import content published outside the system and report on that content? Can you save social profiles? How flexible are the streams you can setup? Can you create and monitor streams across multiple channels? Will the system allow you to change the published by text on Facebook or Twitter? Can you easily create lists to group individuals? Are all comments stored in the system and attributed to a specific social profile? Can you view historical sentiment on an individual alongside the sentiment of their most recent comment to help prioritize follow-up? Can you flag which comments need review and identify which have been reviewed? Can you easily identify and remove comments that contain obscene language or are spam?

7 Intangibles Some of the popular requests we heard from buyers fell outside of the buckets of Publishing, Management, Measurement and Engagement. We classified these as the intangibles of a social marketing management system. Is the product easy to use? Do you understand the terminology used in the system? Is training provided? How often are new features released? Do they use an agile development model? Do they provide documentation on new features and functionality? Is the navigation intuitive and easy to understand? How many customers do they currently have? What types of customers is the vendor working with? Are customers leaving the vendor in favor for other alternatives? If so, why? How is support and customer service handled? Do their current customers give them high marks? Does the system require a lot of hand holding to learn? How responsive is the sales and customer service team? How quickly will you be up and running? Was the system developed by an agency or a company experienced in building SaaS solutions? Is pricing straightforward or are their hidden costs that increase your monthly expense as you grow?

8 Photo Credits Cover istockphoto: Social media speech bubbles gradient colors background, File #: Credit: jez, Twitter Typographic Wallpaper, Used under creative commons license Credit: Nan Palmero, Foursquare Pins and Tattoos - SXSW 2010, Used under a creative commons license nanpalmero/ / Credit: Poolie, flickr Badges, Used under a creative commons license, Credit: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid, laughingsquid.com, Facebook, Used under a creative commons license, laughingsquid/ / Credit: M i x y, YouTube Cupcake, Used under a creative commons license, Page 3-8 All photo s on pages 3-8 were acquired through istockphoto

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