Social listening platforms are failing marketers

But just a few years ago, social listening platforms offered marketers such ROI promise, with big acquisitions from the likes of Salesforce and Oracle. But now these listening tools are seen as a necessary evil, according to new Forrester research. Social listening platforms that capture, manage, and enable analysis of social data are essential tools for social marketers and customer insights (CI) pros alike, but at most organizations the prestige and perceived value of a listening platform plummet outside of the social and analytics teams. Both listening platform vendors and the marketers who use them must take steps to infuse social data more deeply into the organization, in a unified way, to ensure the longevity and success of a social listening function. The Forrester report replaces the previous tools and technology report for the social intelligence playbook. It is completely rewritten based on new research. The bottom line, writes Forrester: While social listening platforms deserve some blame, these platforms will never save a failing marketer. To be successful with these tools, marketers must partner with their data insights peers to build a process that consistently shares results. <link http: www.forrester.com>www.forrester.com