social marketing

Yesterday, we published the annual refresh of our Forrester social consumer segmentation. In 2021, consumers who use social media at least weekly (the heaviest users we survey) overwhelmingly prefer to interact with friends/family over brands/companies and influencers on social media. The real question for brands is: “Does my target audience want to interact with my […]

As Facebook eyes the metaverse, Forrester's latest survey shows consumers want substantive changes to Facebook's ecosystem. Read our full analysis here.

Facebook, Inc. is in the hot seat again due to a recent The Wall Street Journal “Facebook Files” exposé and 60 Minutes whistleblower interview. As we’ve said again and again, a singular event won’t be enough to bring down the social media behemoth. Facebook will experience a degradation of its reputation by a thousand cuts: […]

Today, we published The Forrester Wave™: Social Suites, Q3 2021. Since our last evaluation, the vendors in this space have spent two years amassing their platforms via a mix of organic and M&A activity. The market has reached an inflection point: Social suites’ era of collecting modules and features should wind down — and must now yield to a […]

The channel is very large, highly diverse, and incredibly decentralized. Channel partners know that to be successful, they need to carve out a niche — whether that be by line of business, by industry (and, increasingly, by subindustry), by size of customer, geographically, technologically, and by business model. These six vectors are not mutually exclusive, […]

First the social networks conquered text. Then they dominated video. And now, the new frontier: audio. New app Clubhouse has garnered significant buzz for its audio-based chatroom environment, where users can join live conversations with people and topics they follow. Last month, Twitter announced its acquisition of Breaker, a social podcasting app, and quickly transitioned […]

Brand marketers shouldn’t be asking if their consumers are on social media, but rather, “Do they want to hear from my brand?” Discover the segments of social customers and their preferences.

My father told me once, “If you see something wrong happening in the world, you can either do nothing, or you can do something.” And I already tried nothing. — Steve Trevor, Wonder Woman Social networks, tech vendors ingesting social data, and brands running social listening practices might all be wondering the same thing right […]

Facebook has thrived in the short term with record-setting users and revenue. Long term, its outlook remains bleak.

Throwback to the mid-2000s: Facebook was founded, and Hannah Montana premiered. Miley Stewart was an average American kid with an alter ego pop star named Hannah Montana. Miley/Hannah’s dual identity allowed her to escape the public eye while still reaping fame and fortune — ultimately, living “the best of both worlds.” Cut to 2020: Social […]

In the past two months, I’ve received dozens of inquiries about TikTok. While the case is still unsettled, I wanted to summarize some of my comments in this blog post. Is banning TikTok in the US “tit for tat”? Not really. People often compare the US government’s handling of TikTok with the Facebook and Google […]

Will The North Face be the North Star for other companies to stick to corporate values and rethink their organic and advertising presences on social media

More than one in three consumers believe social media does more harm than good. Many brands spend tremendous time and money on social media, only to get a tepid (or even angry) response. On this episode of What It Means, Senior Analyst Jessica Liu discusses a timely question: Is it time to break up with social media?

The communications industry is facing a perfect storm of converging forces, from COVID-19 to the rise of influencer marketing and even AI. At Forrester, we research around 10,000 global technology vendors that utilize indirect sales and often get asked about the value of PR in the channel. A trend that is affecting many channel leaders […]

There may be more to the move than meets the eye. The acquisition will give Facebook access to data it will find useful.

A detailed analysis of how consumers are using social media in the customer lifecycle and an intriguing option for brands.

More and more marketers at global brands in China, such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Volkswagen, and Walmart, are replacing their globally contracted marketing technology (martech) vendors with viable Chinese ones. They have realized that deep localization is the only way to succeed. This requires not only China-specific marketing strategies and local decision-making power but also deep […]

Smart, timely, and heartfelt responses to the outbreak have helped leading brands gain customer affinity.

Mmmmm . . . Millennials. If you haven’t already heard (about a million times), this generation is taking over the workforce and becoming more responsible for making purchasing decisions on the job. Whether or not you believe the projections that most of the US labor force will be run by Millennials by 2025, many studies […]