For Interactive Marketing Professionals

Consumers using social technologies threaten traditional marketing institutions like brands and ad campaigns. Marketers understand that they need to get involved, but often don't know where to start. We constantly get questions from our clients about how to implement social technologies such as blogs, communities, wikis, widgets, social networks, and others. But they're often asking the wrong question.

Forrester can help you overcome all of these challenges with our Social Technographics® profiles, analyst expertise and best practices, and Forrester's POST methodology.

Executives are going about social strategy backwards: picking technologies like blogs or communities first instead of focusing on what they want to accomplish. Don't ask what technology to use. Ask first who you're trying to reach, what you're trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your customers. Then, and only then, can you decide what technologies to use.

Forrester's POST methodology enables you to make smarter marketing decisions with social technologies. POST is a four-step process:

• People. Review your target customer's social behaviors and attitudes.
• Objectives. Decide on your social technology goals.
• Strategy. Determine how your objectives will change your relationship with customers.
• Technology. Choose the appropriate technologies to deploy.

Our objective and data-driven profiles provide us with the tools to create actionable recommendations to help you effectively benefit from your customers' social behaviors. Companies that take these four steps in order and then put success metrics in place are the most likely to succeed.

Forrester offers a range of offerings, based on the depth of your strategy needs. All of our engagements are based on our extensive customer data and broad experience with social strategies and practices.

• People. Forrester will create a Social Technographics® profile of your target customer leveraging Forrester’s data or field a custom survey with our proprietary battery of questions to identify and categorize social technology behaviors.
• Objectives. Forrester will conduct interviews with stakeholders around the organization to understand the range of business needs and goals and define what business goals you want to accomplish.
• Strategy. Forrester will analyze the Forrester Technographics data, business objectives and leverage analyst expertise to identify a social technology strategy for how you will accomplish your goal and change your relationship with customers.
• Technology. Forrester remains independent of any technology or vendor bias or influence and will recommend the most appropriate technology including detailed examples and best practices in and outside your industry.

Using our POST methodology, Forrester can help you cut through the hype and find the most effective social technology strategy for your marketing organization.