As vendor in the brand and reputation monitoring industry, I thought I might share some observations that you might find pertinent to this discussion.

In the last year, I have seen more vendor selection tools that are requesting information and details that seem to be drawing from only a handful of preset categories.

The other thing I have noticed is that many social media reports are being performed without an interview, and are performed instead via email and/or by way of a checklist or matrix.

The absence of a person-to-person interview means it is less likely that any topic of differentiation can properly be expanded and or explained. Without an interview, I just cannot see how anyone is capable of discovering the differentiators, let alone report in a manner that is meaningful to buyers.

While I don’t want to come across impolite or be non-responsive to requests, lately I have been suggesting a demo for a handful of inquiries that seem more intent on finding commonality than difference. I sometimes find that this is the best way to explain in plain English, what makes us different from the rest.

Joseph

My gut feel is that the market is about to cross the chasm. I agree with KD that indeed it’s what you do with the data but I also like what Nathan is saying. A lot of the focus with monitoring has been around monitoring for crises and reputation. I’ve posted a list of my 10 top reasons in the past [ http://www.radian6.com/blog/80/top-10-reasons-brands-should-listen-to-social-media/ ] and I can think of at least 10 more. I believe that monitoring social media is something that can and should be integrated into more than just the PR or marketing function. Sales, customer support, HR, legal, market research, CI, can also take advantage of monitoring social media. I personally believe that we are just at the very beginning of a much larger industry with monitoring as most know it today being just a fraction of it.

Pete, you are right. The services are what help these companies get beyond the “so what” factor that happens after a company engages monitoring for a while. I would think they’d be smart to put that forward as the way to avoid that conversation entirely. Data isn’t really valuable without the analysis and strategic insight, and most companies don’t have the necessary internal analysts to make sense of it.

KD, the technology isn’t all the same, which is why you will get different results from different vendors. I agree it is what you do with it that matters.

At the end of the day, we want to know what the potential impact might be, particularly with respect to influence (audience reached), chain reaction (viral strength) and shift in sentiment (overall tone). Points of service distinction that hit on these factors are important and frame a less generic offering.