• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 30, 2011

Marketers looking for a direct connection to Facebook Fans and Twitter Followers now have an option through a suite of tools powered by Salesforce Radian6. The Social Marketing Cloud's five modules support campaigns through Social Monitoring, Social Insights, Social Engagements, Social Hub, and Social Web sites -- connecting companies to social media users and their posts.

The cloud-supported suite built on Radian6 technology allows marketers to tune in to millions of social conversations about their products, brand and services. The tools allow marketers to build processes to identify Fans and Followers and directly connect with them.

Some modules are dependent on others. For example, companies can't add Social Insights without Social Monitoring, the foundation of the suite. It provides real-time listening tools.

SalesForce has rolled some existing modules into the suite, adding new ones to directly connect with consumers, such as Social Insights. Another new module, Social Hub, enables marketers to choose from preset conditions or keywords to monitor, such as trading fee and Ameritrade. It also searches for positive or negative sentiment, identifying public posts from specific people. Marketers can add their name to a variety of campaign offers, such as retirement funds or specials on trading.

The technology claims it can identify words -- and the meaning behind them. And similar to the module structure that built Salesforce.com, Social Insights offers a variety of technology from Klout, OpenAmplify and OpenCalais that companies can tie into the Social Marketing Cloud.

While some of the tools in the suite automate the process to find posts related to specific company goods and services, Marcel LeBrun, senior vice president, GM of Salesforce Radian6, believes it's best to use tailored responses that talk directly to consumers. While the Social Engagement module lets teams respond, Social Hub can take conversations and push them into other platforms, such as CRM systems.

Evidently, it's legal to identify consumers by name when self-publishing posts because they expect a response, according to LeBrun. "You're looking for a type of conversation that includes an invitation for a response," he said. "When someone expresses a point of need, such as 'what should I do -- they're looking for help. They expect a response. Without that response. no one knows brands are listening."