Gleanster is a new breed of IT market research. Gleanster benchmarks best practices based on the experiences of thousands of top-performing companies. Gleanster attempts to find out what they are doing right, not only in terms of technologies but also in terms of organizational resources, business processes, and performance metrics. The “Gleansight” benchmark reports include an analysis of all the related technology solution providers.
Gleanster takes a different approach by providing market research that they have gathered: and you can get the data for free. Well, almost. You can actually download the reports for free after you register for the service. And, before downloading, you must agree to their terms. You agree that you can share the data but you won’t sell it (which is pretty standard and fair). But take careful note of their other terms: “Also, as part of the licensing agreement, you are consenting to be contacted by up to five (5) relevant solution providers that may be able to offer additional guidance and help with your specific needs.” Not really a big deal, as I don’t care too much about being contacted: I actually welcome it, and will be happy to entertain any other competitor that wants to sell me their services. If you do not want to be sold as a lead, then you have the option to purchase the research.
I took a look at the Social Media Marketing research data. The report was written by Jim Nail, former CMO of Cymfony and an ex-Forrester analyst, and Kevin Ryan, former VP of social media at Barnes & Noble. Reports are provided in PDF, Adobe Acrobat, format. Here is some interesting information from the Gleanster Social Media Marketing Report:
— Consumer product companies are paying their agencies big money to incorporate social media into their marketing campaigns.
— Retailers have moved beyone customer reviews, and are giving consumers a much larger role in social selling.
— … you can scarcely watch a commercial without seeing the iconic Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube icons as part of the message.
— But the ROI on this effort is still squishy at best.
“Squishy at best” is what Gleanster is calling the social media marketing ROi, they’re saying that “Brands are still trying to determine the value of a Facebook fan…”
The practitioners, the so-called social media experts who are selling companies these social media services, are selling social media services by talking about the cost of not participating in social media–as a value. That’s totally right-on target. In fact, I know self-proclaimed social media experts who are raking in big-bucks selling social media services: and they cannot show the ROI to their clients.
If you are involved in social media marketing, you definitely owe it to yourself to download this social media marketing report. There is a lot of good, valuable information, including:
— Reasons to Implement
— Value Drivers
— Challenges
— Performance Metrics
— Vendor landscape
Other information, such as survey stats, benchmark KPIs (key perfomance indicators), and information about the Core Technologies is also included in the report.