Jessica Liu

This blog post is part of Forrester’s Holiday 2018 retail series. Despite news of brands such as Nike, Adidas, Allbirds, and SeatGeek successfully selling on social networks, social media is still not a place that consumers buy products and services. Our Forrester Social Technographics® data uncovers that consumers use social media least in the buy stage of […]

Brandwatch and Crimson Hexagon, two social listening platforms, announced their merger today. The company will maintain the Brandwatch name with Brandwatch Founder and CEO Giles Palmer at the helm. At Forrester, we’ve been pushing for the next evolution in the social listening space. Our recent evaluation, “The Forrester Wave™: Social Listening Platforms, Q3 2018,” found […]

Once upon a time, most brands relied on six-week-plus cycles of feedback through consumer surveys and expensive focus groups to listen to their consumers. Today, social listening platforms have become a staple in most brands’ marketing tech stacks because of their ability to give brands near real-time feedback and insight into conversations about their brands, […]

What you’ll hear from the press this week: Facebook missed its earnings for the first time since 2015. But in our world, 43% YOY increase in revenue and 11% YOY increase in DAUs and MAUs is still a solid performance. Facebook continues to diversify by augmenting its core Facebook social network with ancillary products (Instagram, […]

Fifty-three percent of business and technology decision makers and influencers tell us they want to better leverage social listening technologies to understand customer requirements and achieve their firm’s goal of addressing rising customer expectations.* This shouldn’t come as a surprise; social listening platforms (SLPs) offer a unique window into customers’ lives, opinions, and preferences. SLPs are heavy hitters in the martech stack and are […]

Fifty-three percent of business and technology decision makers and influencers tell us they want to better leverage social listening technologies to understand customer requirements and achieve their firm’s goal of addressing rising customer expectations.* This shouldn’t come as a surprise; social listening platforms (SLPs) offer a unique window into customers’ lives, opinions, and preferences. SLPs are heavy hitters in the martech stack and are […]

Marketing has come a long way, but it is not yet customer-obsessed. To address this gap, we’re pleased to announce the launch of Forrester’s new marketing innovation playbook. It’s time for companies to undergo a marketing makeover. This playbook guides brands through assessing four pillars: mindset, talent, process, and insights. “Marketing innovation” and “process,” you ask? […]

Marketing has come a long way, but it is not yet customer-obsessed. To address this gap, we’re pleased to announce the launch of Forrester’s new marketing innovation playbook. It’s time for companies to undergo a marketing makeover. This playbook guides brands through assessing four pillars: mindset, talent, process, and insights. “Marketing innovation” and “process,” you ask? […]

Shame on Facebook. The Cambridge Analytica scandal has exposed the social network’s egregious misstep. Here at Forrester, we are furiously fielding inquiries about what this failure to protect user data means. Most questions are immediate and tactical in nature. These questions are certainly pressing so let’s address them. But then let’s discuss the bigger questions that […]

Snapchat recently launched a product redesign to the dismay of power users and relief of Snapchat newbs. Its original ephemeral messaging and scavenger hunt of a UX appealed to an exploratory young audience. The app’s overhaul is a classic case of a company losing sight of what’s most important: the core customer. Snapchat has prioritized […]

January 1 is upon us which means new year resolutions, fresh plans, and endless possibilities. One area marketers should focus on in 2018: social intelligence. Why? Social data can influence the entire enterprise and put humanity back in customer data crunching – but only if combined with other data sources like CRM, customer service, market […]

Brands are taking the plunge and livestreaming everything from events (Macy’s and their Thanksgiving Day parade) to product demos (Birchbox) to promotional offers (Lowe’s Black Friday deals) to education (T. Rowe Price retirement planning advice). But how should brands tackle social livestreaming? It’s not as simple as grabbing an iPhone and hitting “Live” on that […]

Much ink has been spilled over United Airlines' latest public incident and social media's role in rapidly spreading video of a passenger being dragged off an airplane. Today's consumers are more polarized than ever and increasingly expressing their opinions and showing their own values in the way they spend their money. Brands worry about making […]

Last April, we blogged about Twitter’s marquee agreement with the National Football League (NFL). The industry was abuzz: The two joining forces meant a marrying of live programming with social commentary. In its inaugural season, Twitter-NFL’s powerful partnership presented an enticing live streaming package for marketers because: Marketers view social media as an attractive marketing […]

44% of marketers say they haven't been able to show the impact of social at all and another 36% say they have a good sense of the qualitative, but not quantitative, impact of social initiatives. Marketers feel stuck with engagement metrics that don't tell them anything about the business impact of their social programs. And, […]

Yesterday Facebook blogged "An Update on Metrics and Reporting" to inform marketers that several of their organic metrics were misreported including organic reach, time spent on Instant Articles, and follower count. This follows Facebook's revelatory September announcement that their video metrics contained a discrepancy and were over-reported. The industry was outraged. But who’s really at fault […]

We’ll let you in on a little secret: Pinterest isn’t what you think it is. When Pinterest emerged, it was immediately labeled as a social network alongside Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, and even the ill-fated Google+. Why? Because we as humans like to categorize things and also because Pinterest shares a few key features with […]

Social marketing often feels like running a race against an unlikely competitor: your own customers. In the social media world, consumer behaviors and technical functionality evolve so quickly that the minute you feel good about your social presence and perhaps have even pulled neck-and-neck with your customers’ social media behaviors, they surge ahead and leave […]

Don’t worry; you’re not the only one wondering. Forrester’s POST methodology for social marketing success dictates four steps:  1. People 2. Objective 3. Strategy 4. Technology Often, marketers lead with T, but they need to start with P. The $64,000 question about People is not whether customers use social media, but rather if they want […]