We recently embarked on a Forrester-wide research project to benchmark the use of social technologies across enterprise organizations led by my colleague Sean Corcoran. Why is this important? Well, as you may know, Forrester covers social technologies from a wide range of perspectives — from roles in marketing to IT to technology professionals. We find that each of these roles differs in its general “social maturity” and that most companies are experiencing pockets of success, but few, if any, are successfully implementing it across the board. Full maturity in this space could take years, but there are clear differences in how some ahead-of-the-curve companies are using social technologies for business results. The one question we know that our clients — across roles — are interested in is: “Where is my organization compared to others in the use of social media?”

To help answer that question for our various roles, we're conducting a survey and doing interviews to understand:

  • How do you define “social maturity,” and why is it important to get there?
  • Which companies are ahead of the curve in implementing social technologies for both external use (i.e., for customers/consumers) and/or internal use (i.e., for employees/partners)?
  • What have been the biggest drivers of success?
  • What are the biggest challenges?
  • What steps do most organizations need to take and why?

 

The point of all of this is that we'd like your help. If you're interested, here's how:

  • If you work for an organization that markets products or services to consumers or businesses (i.e., “clients” in vendor speak), then please take this survey. We want to hear from anyone involved in social — whether from marketing, PR, IT, legal, finance, HR, etc. For your efforts, we will share a free executive summary of the survey results.
  • If you are a vendor, an agency, a consultant, or even just a consumer interested in sharing your thoughts, we can’t include you in the survey. But we do want to hear from you, so please feel free to comment on this blog or on our community site with your thoughts. We promise to keep the conversation going, and we will be writing a blog post on some of the findings when the research is published.

 

We want to hear from you, so please, share your thoughts.