At Vitrue, we make it a habit to gauge our effectiveness by the feedback and direction we get from clients.  If they’re happy, we’re happy.  If they need something, we want to develop a product that satisfies that need.  But while that’s where we get our satisfaction, it’s always nice to be objectively assessed, and subsequently praised, by independent sources.

The Altimeter Group has just put out a report authored by Jeremiah Owyang entitled “A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation.”  The report seeks to review of the social media management software space, its competitive set, and how it fits into the challenges brands are facing in managing and integrating their social media channels.

A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation

View more documents from Jeremiah Owyang

And, it turns out, there are a lot of channels to deal with.  Consider these numbers from the report: on average, a company is managing 39.2 Twitter accounts, 31.9 blogs, 29.9 Facebook Pages, and 28.8 LinkedIn accounts.  Add to that the number of forums, message boards, communities, YouTube channels, Foursquare, Flickr and Gowalla accounts, and the average company is dealing with 178 social media accounts.  Wow.

How in the world do you incorporate that into your existing business functions and processes?  How do you come up with enough worthwhile content to fill all these channels?  How do you integrate all of these channels to effectively execute an overall social strategy?  Streamlining the internal processes that manage their social plan is in fact the top priority of 59% of companies surveyed for the report.  That’s the highest percentage of any priority, meaning social relationship management platforms such as Vitrue’s are becoming an indispensible component of corporate life.  Altimeter found SMMS adoption to be growing rapidly, even outpacing predictions.

So the need is there.  But how do companies choose a social media management software company?  Altimeter sees the overall market as still immature.  That’s not a statement on the behavior at office happy hours, it just means there are players still attempting to enter the market.  That said, there are market leaders such as Vitrue who have clearly established themselves.  Altimeter recommends buyers prioritize based on the five most common reasons for adopting social media management.

1. Intense Engagement – in which Vitrue scored above average
2. Social Broadcasting – in which Vitrue scored strong cability (the highest measure)
3. Platform Campaign Marketing – in which Vitrue scored strong capability
4. Distributed Brand Presence – in which Vitrue scored above average
5. Tailored Customizations – in which Vitrue scored strong capability

We were specifically called out and cited as an example of high quality tailored customizations:

This vendor aims to allow brands and agencies to “manage, moderate, and maximize relationships at scale.”  And indeed, we heard from Intel that one reason they opted for Vitrue was the “need to scale a campaign worldwide in a matter of hours.”  For example, when an Intel Asia-based campaign became a viral phenomenon, other regions wanted to feature the campaign, and Intel needed to implement quickly.

We hope that analyses of our company such as this will direct brands that are searching for a social relationship management platform to speak with us first.  The Altimeter report spells out trends that continue to plague companies when it comes to social: lack of clear goals and strategy, a struggle to maintain control over an increasing amount of social media accounts, integration problems, and an inability to provide a coordinated customer experience across a variety of tools.

With the right technology partner, we have seen companies face down these challenges and emerge with comprehensive, effective plans as well as the tools to implement them.  Their successes are very gratifying, because the reason Vitrue works so hard to excel is so that more and more brands will have workable, positive experiences, and continue growing the space and allocating marketing dollars to social, an arena that is serving to empower both the brand and the consumer.