Salesforce Puts Social Marketing In The Cloud With Radian6

when Salesforce would extend the Radian6

A lynchpin of Salesforce's overall social enterprise vision, a drum on which Salesforce has banged since Dreamforce 2011, the Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud gives companies insight and analysis into what's being said about them and their products across various social networking properties, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and a host of others. The Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud is a product of Salesforce's acquisition of Radian6 in March.

Billed as a tool for social monitoring, insights, engagement, workflow and Web sites, the Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud will help companies cut through the social conversation clutter that often includes millions of updates around their products, brands and industries and ultimately tighten customer relationships, Salesforce said.

"Social media is the single biggest change in marketing in the last decade," Salesforce Radian6 Senior Vice President and General Manger Marcel LeBrun said in a statement. "Social enterprises recognize that social media provides real-time opportunities to delight customers and prospects. The Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud will enable every company to be at the forefront of this exciting industry shift."

The goal, Salesforce said, is for companies to turn social media conversations into engagements through five key pieces of the Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud.

First, via Social Monitoring, the new social cloud offering can capture 150 million sources of social media conversations from the Web, including updates and posts from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs, online communities and other areas. And with support of 17 languages, Salesforce said the Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud breaks down international and language barriers.

The Social Insights component offers dashboards and analytics that filter through social media noise and pinpoint which conversations and mentions are relevant. Social Insights presents demographics, influence, geolocation, sentiment and topic categorization around conversations to let marketers understand the impact of campaigns and respond to customers.

Meanwhile, the Social Engagement Console lets companies engage directly with customers on whichever social media service the conversation is taking place, while also bringing in third-party data to provide a view of conversations. The addition of visibility into Twitter trending topics and Bit.ly statistics offers a deeper dive into reach, and integration with Salesforce gives Radian6 native reach across Salesforce's full suite of apps and platforms.

Another new component of the Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud is Social Workflow, which through the new Radian6 Social Hub, lets companies organize social media conversations by applying analysis and rules which can route relevant content for rapid response. Social Hub also populates social customer profiles to aid in campaign relevance based on customer preferences.

Lastly, Social Websites via Siteforce give organizations the ability to build socially-focused Web sites to engage with customers. Siteforce uses a drag and drop studio to let marketers build, edit and publish Web sites and through its content management system companies can engage with customers by adding social features like Twitter streams, Facebook likes and more.

According to Salesforce, Radian6 is available now starting at $600 per deployment per month. Radian6 Social Hub is in limited release today and will be generally available early next year starting at $1,200 per deployment per month. Radian6 Social Insight is scheduled for general availability in December and the API is available today. Partner solutions are priced individually and the API starts at $5,000 per deployment per year. Siteforce is also generally available today and is charged on a per site and per site developer user. Through the end of the year, companies can get one site, two contributor users and two publisher users for $9,900 annually. Siteforce can also be purchased as a stand-alone or Salesforce addition.