US online adults who want to stay in touch with a company are almost three times more likely to visit a brand’s website than to engage with that brand on Facebook, according to a new Forrester survey of more than 4,500 respondents. Yet, Facebook and Twitter are by far the most common social marketing tactics used by brands.

Marketers recently surveyed by Forrester nearly unanimously cite Facebook and Twitter as social marketing tactics currently in use, compared with less popular options like YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, branded blogs, and paid social ads.

The reality is though, Twitter and Facebook don’t deliver on the customer relationships marketers crave — and building those valuable social relationships will require a fresh look at other social marketing tactics, writes analyst Nate Elliott in new Forrester research.

“Facebook and Twitter are no longer the center of the social universe,” writes Elliott, “and while they’ll continue to collect billions in display ad revenues, they’re just not the most important sites for social marketers anymore.”

Smart marketers will begin to realize this shift over the next two years, turning to smaller social networks like Instagram to build relationships, in addition to adding social relationship tools to their own sites.

To learn more about this research, visit the Marketing Leadership blog.