Forrester

Why Read This Report

Over the years, we've evaluated the tools that marketers use to monitor, measure, and learn from online conversations. These listening platforms capture social media to help users analyze data and identify business insights. While public relations (PR) and marketing teams have historically used listening platforms to monitor social networks for crises, the vendors must now serve a variety of business users as the applications for social data grow across the organization. As a result, listening platforms must evolve to become more than social media monitoring tools. They must capture more than just social media, employ text analytics engines to mine the content, and deliver users actionable insights. With this expanded scope, listening platforms will evolve into a critical enterprise marketing technology. This is an update to the January 2012 "It's Time For Listening Platforms To Grow Up" report, covering new examples for the social intelligence playbook.