Jupiter Research has announced that it is launching a new service called “social marketing research service”. As Rohit points out on Influencial Interactive Marketing, Jupiter has made a poor nomenclature choice with “Social Marketing” as that term is already in wide use for socially responsible marketing. I’m surprised they didn’t research that term, seriously google it, I did, and that’s why I choose to use the term “social media marketing”.
Jupiter moving into this kind of research certainly makes sense, as companies are desperately trying to figure out all aspects of social media from networks, blogs, podcasts, wikis, vlogs etc. Unfortunately Jupiter has a rather spotty record in social media, from it’s famously bad blogger relations fiasco, or kerfuffle, to the fact that it’s analysts “blogs” or podcasts don’t have comments or trackbacks.
I have a few questions here:
- Can analysts be experts in social media if they are not fully participating in social media?
- Does the fact that their analyst blogs have no conversational tone, and no conversational functionality hurt their credibility in this area?
- Does it matter if bloggers are skeptical of their move into social media, assuming their clients know less than they do?
- When is Forrester going to move into this area, especially as Charline Li is a far more respected blogger with her finger on the pulse of social media?
- Is there an opportunity for a new business model for analyst research that is based on openness, transparency, driven by social media?
Thoughts?
I thought Forrester was already selling services and reports in this area, they just did not coin a new phrase.