• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 10, 2014

What makes a good social-listening tool? It all “starts with people who want to listen, and who are curious,” said Ian Fitzpatrick, founding partner and Chief Strategy Officer at Boston-based agency Almighty. On a deeper level, a good social listener is one who can “accept multiple, conflicting truths,” rather than those who insist on forcing contradictory data into oversimplified packages, Fitzpatrick told attendees of MediaPost’s Content Marketing Insider Summit on Tuesday. Having recently sat through what felt like “50 million demos,” Marisa Guerrero, Social Media Specialist at Nautilus, got a good feel for the social listening marketplace. As far as she’s concerned, deciding on one vendor all came down to one word: “accountability.” And, you had add the word “transparency,” said Nicole Bohorad, Senior Manager of Social Media Marketing at Capital One. Too often, for instance, vendors fail to inform potential clients of particular API restrictions, which can seriously distort client expectations going into a partnership. Looking ahead, Zach Barkus, Manager of Mobile & Emerging at the Campbell Soup Company, said he wants to see more “predictive” capabilities from vendors. “That’s the game changer,” he said.