Curious how some others compare? Here's 4 more vendors I just scored: Lyzasoft (collaborative BI): 19 ZohoReports: 23 Baynote (social search): 33 (Social Climber) Informatica: 103 - would be new leader (Social Maven) and for kicks I did WebTrends as well, who not surprisingly were off the charts with a crazy number of blog posts/comments and a solid Twitter score as well.

Hi Seth - Thanks for stopping by and your suggestion! Spotfire is a great addition. I ran their numbers and they'd score a 72. Ahead of Cognos, and solidly in 'Mavens' group, but still #6 overall out of 16. You are spot on RE their blogging - they had the most posts in May/June/July (3 more than SAS), but relatively few blog comments (only 0.14 comments per post). They also have good but not great scores on Twitter. Now that I'm doing updates 'real-time' any other vendors folks want me to score? Allen

Thanks for the read and comment! I'll definitely include Zoho in the next round of this analysis. Allen

Hi John - great post and real nice summary of some of the key elements of a COE, which can be a very helpful structure when scaling up tech+people driven corp initiatives. Here are a few other pieces/techniques I've used when rolling these out: For early discovery and helping with the 'order' and consensus building, I like starting with a mission statement for enterprise social. For measures and KPI, start with a mix of tactical and highly measurable metrics like traffics/clicks and more 'value-add' but harder to measure ones like lifetime customer value. For aligning the vision and promoting a common language (key to working across different orgs IMO), establish or adapt a maturity model to show 'we are here' and 'we are going HERE' - for an example see http://blog.offerpop.com/?p=23. Again, really enjoyed the post, and thanks for allowing me to share a few additional ideas - would love your thoughts! Allen

I just published an update with scores for 6 additional vendors (and also looked at how the leading email marketing providers would rank as well). Check it out here: http://bit.ly/9YI56q and keep the comments coming! Allen

Joseph - thanks for the read and comment! I agree that B2B (and even B2C) SM tools are in their infancy. In fact if you look at what is available for email marketing, SM has a long way to go. And you're right that the highest scoring vendors in this study generally have a better mix of how-to info, best practices, featured experts vs just pushing out product announcements. I think this mix is key, just as other media channels have settled into a mix of 70-90% 'content' vs 10-30% 'ads.' Allen

Great question - and I agree the survey answers are pretty honest & telling. When I have my consultant's hat on, I would favor a more strategic approach to social media/marketing/commerce driven by lots of discussions, discovery, benchmarking, a proper mission, practical KPIs and roadmap etc. But as you point out not everyone is on-board with this level of commitment or investment. Interestingly I find that customer service organizations and those that have invested in online support and self-service efforts are more likely to be open to this approach vs. marketing folks. Of course I also wear a marketing hat myself (at Offerpop), and given everything on my plate - and the fact that our product actually is a platform for social marketing - I tend to fall back into tactical mode in practice! As long as your social marketing programs are guided by some best practices and frameworks like our maturity model (see http://blog.offerpop.com/?p=23), AND you track KPIs and make adjustments, I think a (mostly) tactical approach can work pretty well - at least when starting out or when you are part of small-ish org. What do you think? Allen

Mike - thanks for stopping by and I look forward to seeing some of the new programs you are launching. and Hi Lauren - it sounds like a great idea to combine some of the collaboration posts (from Wikinomics blog I assume?) with your CIM content. In fact a mix of commentary, how-to info, case studies and even news summaries makes for a nice variety of blog content - and multiple 'hooks' to draw readers and comments IMO. As for your question about shared quality of top scorers in this study, I'd say they have both a strong cross-channel focus (promoting Twitter on email/Web, blog on Twitter, etc) + active programs to recruit new fans/followers AND a good frequency/variety (guest bloggers, topics I mentioned above etc) of content. And given my experience launching the blog at eVergance and now at Offerpop, I think there is a bit of old-fashioned outreach to friends/colleagues/influencers to read and post comments to 'seed' the discussion. Hope this is helpful + happy to share more ideas! Allen

Hi Bill - great post and topic. As someone who started in corp R&D I think there is amazing potential here. And crowd-sourced innovation (like Innocentive and the like) is pretty exciting. To me challenges are balancing broad participation with structure, trust models (related to IP point I guess), and finding beachhead applications to show value. Also I agree with Gavin's point that it's just not about tools - but rather culture and incentives...and recognition: e.g., who gets the patent? the team lead, or the community ;-) Allen http://twitter.com/abonde

Thanks for the read and comment! I totally agree that technology is PART of the solution, but that the old people and process parts are equally if not more important to move the views of the group into actionable (approved) chunks that can be digested by the business. My view, formed from a number of years doing work in the KM space is that you have to "think globally, act locally" - and define very specific tasks/processes/metrics where you aim to gather and apply knowledge (CI). Interestingly, I think what you are saying about CI also applies to applying social media models in general in the enterprise, esp. for core processes. Part of this is managing finer-grained trust models. But as I'm sure you agree, it is just hard to handle and apply diverse, structured and unstructured information at scale - especially when you run into established processes, systems, culture etc.

Thanks for the read and comment Esteban! Per your question about users, in general "consumers" = passive users, and "contributors" = super-users. Mostly. Where I think I am departing from the traditional view is that connectors are more than lurkers, and play a more active role recruiting members and bridging the other two camps. Also, in a couple recent engagements we saw a much different ratio than the 90-9-1 breakdown. Yes, the relative order of p > l > s held true, but there were a lot more connectors than we thought we'd find. And actually a lot more contributors as well. All perhaps a good sign and indication of the "health" of the specific communities we were studying. Allen

Hi Phil - thanks for the read and comments! I agree Twitter is easy to set up, and in *theory* it should be easy for big companies to get a lot of followers - but there are some pretty big companies in my analysis that haven't be able to (or haven't tried to) do just that - Pega, Chordiant and CDC come to mind. I also agree/noted that individuals from these companies may be tweeting on their own - we both know lots of them! - but as an x-CMO and "brand guy" this may be where the action is but I wouldn't want those activities to be at the expense of the corporate brand/Twitter channel. Ideally the company has a strong corporate Twitter presence AND individuals who are also engaged, like SugarCRM for example. Allen