Want to know what customers think about a company? Try Googling the company’s name along with the word “sucks.” Or create a Google alert that will notify you when it’s being mentioned online. Better yet, make use of the scads of social Customer Relationship Management (CRM) analytic tools on the market today that can give detailed insight into consumer sentiment toward a brand depending on specific demographics, suggests Todd Weiss for CIO. READ MORE
Over the past 12-18 months, major customer relationship management (CRM) players like Salesforce.com, Sage, SAP and others have been adding “social” abilities to traditional CRM applications — like viewing social profile information from Twitter and Facebook. Additionally, newer services such as BatchBook, BantamLive, and others are creating CRM applications on a social foundation aimed at the small and mid-sized business market. And with every passing day, social technologies are merging with traditional CRM functionality, giving companies more efficient ways of transforming clicks into valuable customer relationships. A little over two years ago I wrote about the Three A’s of Social CRM. Back then most people were focused on social media, but not so much on its impact on customer relationship management tools and strategies. Even a year ago when I compared traditional CRM with Social CRM the interest was pretty much limited to industry insiders. That’s not the case today, as the topic of Social CRM has become the focus of many in business. Having focused on CRM for almost two decades — as an application developer, early Salesforce.com certified implementation partner, and finally as an industry watcher — this may be the most important development I’ve seen. I say this because technology has amplified the voice of the customer, and given them greater control over who they engage with, when they do, and how they do so. This in turn is forcing those charged with engaging them to change their approach: in order to connect with customers who Tweet to thousands of followers, watch videos on mobile phones, and form their own online communities. This also is forcing CRM vendors to provide services that do more than just store customer information and track activities. But there’s one company that looks to be creating a platform small businesses can use to turn a variety of online interactions into stronger customer relationships — and it’s not even a CRM company, in the traditional sense. Keeping with the AAA theme from a couple of years back, below are a few reasons why Google is becoming the onramp to Social CRM success for small and mid-sized businesses. Apps — Internal Even with Facebook hitting the 500 million member mark — with billions of interactions taking place weekly — the majority of people in business-to-business (B2B) organizations I’ve come across say no more than 15-20 percent of their total interactions on Facebook are business related. Conversely, about 80-90 percent of e-mail interactions these same folks have are business related, and with much higher frequency. And in many cases, the e-mail exchanges are more intimate in nature, from a business perspective. This may be because the conversations are more direct and focused, and the people engaged in the conversations are more focused on each other — not the overall community — during these interaction. So even today, a large percentage of customer relationship building takes place in our inboxes. Just as Microsoft Outlook was (and still is) key to increasing CRM user adoption over the past decade, Gmail is looking to be that key in the Social Age. More small companies are using Google’s low-cost e-mail hosting services — making Gmail the fastest growing of the big online e-mail providers, closing in on 180 million accounts. But the choice to use Gmail goes well beyond price. Google has turned the inbox into a relationship-building platform enabling multiple points of contact, and increased opportunities for meaningful interactions. When you exchange e-mails with other Gmail users, Google can (based on your security settings) connect you with them if you both use Google Reader — giving you the ability to see what kind of information they are interested in, and start feeding them more of it. And when you go to YouTube, Google lists the YouTube channels of those you interact with via Gmail at the top of the page — giving you a chance to subscribe to them. So Google is building an interaction-based platform on the bedrock of Gmail. And as you exchange emails, you can grow the relationship wider by engaging across apps like Reader and Youtube. You can also deepen the engagement with real-time collaborative interactions via Google Docs, Sheets and Sites. Apps – External Not only has Google created a business interaction-based platform with their dizzying array of applications, but they’ve invited third-party application developers to extend that foundation through the Google Apps Marketplace. And according to a recent post on the Official Google Apps blog, the top search term for installable apps in the marketplace is CRM. Of the thirteen CRM apps in the marketplace, five of them are under the Social CRM umbrella, including Gist, BatchBook, and BantamLive. Vendors like Zoho and Tactile add more traditional CRM functionality to Google’s interaction platform. These and a growing group of application developers will continue building the CRM functionality Google doesn’t build itself. Android While everyone has been captivated by the developments surrounding the iPhone4 release, worldwide sales of phones with Google’s Android operating system crossed over the five million unit mark, according to Gartner. Google recently announced that 160,000 Android units get activated every day, and it expects Android to eventually be a $10 billion business. No doubt the same apps being used on Web browsers are also driving up Android activations, as people are able to work from wherever they need to. But Android tablet devices haven’t even hit the market yet. And with multiple vendors like Cisco, LG, and others committing to running Android on their upcoming tablets, Google will effectively be extending their business interaction platform to new areas. Cisco’s tablet — The Cius — is a key piece in the company’s push to enable the social enterprise. The device will be optimized for collaboration via video chat, Webex meetings, and conference calls. So the device will be optimized for video interactions, while other vendors may optimize their devices for different kinds of interactions. But the bottom line is Android will be extended to cover more ground, while still offering Apps people can run across vendor-specific tablet devices. Analytics Google Analytics has become of staple of many businesses to track their Web traffic. And Google’s ability to turn text into context to serve up ads when we do searches and read emails has driven targeted traffic via Google Adwords. And with this ability to analyze text for ads, Google should also be able to analyze text for sentiment. Just imagine if Google (or a third party developer) could analyze the interactions we’ve had with someone across all the Google channels we engage them over so we can know what’s on their mind, and also what is their state of mind — and how they feel about us. Or even being able to take a group of people we communicate with on Google channels, say VP’s of marketing in the retail industry, to find out what those interactions can reveal. This could lead to more targeted, efficient and meaningful interactions with those we’re trying to create relationships with — based on a business interaction lifecycle taking place across Google’s services. Social CRM is about meaningful interaction as well as information management. And while business interactions are taking place all over, Google — with search, e-mail, Web traffic, and collaborations via Docs, Sheets, etc. — has created an inexpensive platform for building relationships with customers in the Social Age. Through Apps (including third party apps), Android, and Analytics, Google is as much a Social CRM player as anyone else. And for small businesses it may be the most important player. Brent Leary is a small-business technology analyst, adviser, and award-winning blogger. He is the co-author of Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business. His blog can be found at http://brentleary.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/brentleary .
When Edelman came out with their annual Trust Barometer report in January of 2008, “a person like me” was viewed as the most trusted source of company information by 58 percent of respondents. Industry experts and analysts were right behind them with 57 percent and 56 percent respectively, and coming way behind with only 40 percent of respondents trusting them to provide company information were corporate CEOs. With these numbers in mind, it was surprising to see the 2010 Trust Barometer report recently released. Industry experts/academics charged way in front of the pack with 64 percent of those surveyed looking to them for trusted company information. Industry/financial analysts were a distant second at 52 percent. Surprisingly, “a person like me” dropped to fourth place (directly behind Non Government Officials) with 44 percent. Maybe even more surprising is that corporate CEOs are nipping at their heels with 40 percent of respondents looking to them for company information. So what’s up? Why did “people like me” become 25 percent less trustworthy in two years? In fact “people like me” were the only group of people who lost ground from last year’s study. This loss of trust, and the accompanying turn towards experts and authorities, seems to be coinciding with the rise of social media and networks. Brand building on Facebook and Twitter Back in January 2008, Facebook had recently crossed over the 40 million user mark. In 2010 they crossed over the 400 million mark. Twitter was basically unknown to everyone but the early adopter crowd — now there are 50 million tweets flowing back and forth each day. And the tools for creating and distributing content has made it unbelievably easy for “people like me” to crank out an incredible amount of stuff. On the business side of the social Web, there’s been a great deal of attention on brand building — and understandably so. More relationships are started from online interactions, and these interactions are less expensive to create. And blogs and social networks allow you to get the word out about who you are and what you have to offer. With the economy being in the shape it’s in, business “people like me” are trying to find every way possible to survive. This may be why there seems to be an overabundance of self promotion and branding. Many out there may feel a sense of desperation to be viewed as an expert in order to survive.Even when it’s unintentional, an overemphasis on branding and self promotion can really turn off prospective clients, which in turn may send them in to others when in need of advice and information. And one thing that may be harder to overcome than anonymity is a bad reputation in a given industry. More interest in trusted authority sites All the information being created and distributed is overloading most of us, which may be why there is a return to trusting authority sites, and recognized experts. So, as the trust study is indicating, it’s becoming increasingly important to be viewed as an expert — more than ever before. But I think that there’s a unique opportunity for “people like me” to leverage social tools to also be viewed as trustworthy experts, while keeping the values that made them most trustworthy a few short years ago. I think the reason why “people like me” were viewed as being more trustworthy in 2008 centered on us being more focused on shared experiences than on branding. Branding is very important, but it should never overshadow the most important part of business — understanding what’s important to customers, and then delivering solutions that speak to those issues. If we’re able to keep that in mind it will show through in everything we do. The best brand we can build for ourselves is that of people (and businesses) who care about our customers. Couple that with more strategic, thoughtful, intellectually-infused content, and our brands will grow in a more consumable, trustworthy manner. Building trust takes more than constant tweets about what we’re doing or what we think. It takes understanding where our customers need help. It takes doing real analysis and research to create the kind of content that will show deep knowledge of their challenges, and how to solve them. That’s the work experts do to be branded as such. It also shows a real interest in that comes from being a person like them. That’s the kind of brand building that will work for us in the long run and keep us in business. People like me can learn a lot from that approach. Brent Leary is a small-business technology analyst, adviser, and award-winning blogger. Leary is also host of a weekly radio program heard on www.BusinessTechnologyRadio.com. He is the co-author of Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business. His blog can be found at www.brentleary.com.
I recently attended a conference where one of the speakers relayed an astonishing statistic — for every person alive today there are one billion electrical components. It sounds unbelievable, but when you think of all the televisions, computers, mobile phones, and other devices these components go into making, I can begin to see it. I also can see how we’re using many of these components to effortlessly create and share huge amounts of information or knowledge — potentially with huge amounts of people. In fact, at another recent conference a speaker stated that every day we create eight times the amount of information stored in the world’s libraries. And every day we have easier tools at our disposal to create more content. The development of social tools and technologies has led us into an idea-driven economy. We’ve always had a ton of ideas running through our heads, but many of them get trapped up there because it was difficult to release them in ways that would allow them to inform people and grow into something real. But now it’s easier than ever to showcase our ideas or knowledge in blogs, videos, and tweets. So the knowledge economy continues to grow exponentially as we’re better equipped to stream our thoughts into social channels for public consumption. This is great for all of us looking to turn our ideas into customer relationships. But the challenge of a thriving idea economy is the impact it is having on another important economy — the Attention Economy. The sheer number of ideas we’re able to move into the Attention Economy is stunning… and stifling. The speed at which we can transfer thoughts from Knowledge to Attention is breathtaking, and mind-numbing. In other words the Knowledge Economy — which is in a bull market — is stampeding all over the Attention Economy. The Attention Economy just can’t keep up because it’s running at full capacity already. This means that many of our ideas will never get the attention we want them to have — or need them to have in order for our businesses to meaningfully connect with the right people. Because penetrating the Attention Economy is important to growing a business in the era of social media, we have to focus on having better ideas, and/or more interesting ways to deliver them. With technology tools making it easier to push ideas out, the focus has to go from the mechanics of creation to the quality of what we create. While it’s cool to be able to push out a blog post in a second, or make a YouTube video with a click of a button, you have to remember that you are one of billions adding to the overwhelmed Attention Economy. There are over 200 million blogs and who knows how many digital videos. Sometimes we need help in generating the kind of ideas that can rise above the noise and grab the attention of the right people. And that help should come from them. The same tools we’re using to deposit our ideas into the Attention Economy can help us understand what’s important to our target audience — in a sense creating a listening economy (with lots of room to grow). Using social tools to listen and understand what’s important to the people we’re trying to engage can help us generate ideas that speak more directly to their needs — improving our chances to captivate them. Even when we do include listening into our idea-generating process that doesn’t me we can rely on traditional formats and social outlets to get them the attention they need. It may call for more than a blog post to hit the mark, or even a bunch of tweets on Twitter. In all likelihood it will call for expanding the way you view content. A company that has an expanded view of content and ideation is Hupspot. Hubspot creates Internet marketing software that thousands of businesses use to run their websites. And while they have a very popular blog as well as their own Internet TV show, a big reason for bringing on so many customers in three and half years is because of their other content — their grader tools. Website Grader is a free tool that analyzes a website’s marketing effectiveness and grades it on a scale of 1-100, from low to highly effective. Not only does it give a grade, but it creates a report that offers tips for improving your site’s score. And I’m thinking this information is why more than one million domains have used Website Grader. That’s a lot of attention. And a lot of attention also has been paid to other Grader tools, like Twitter Grader, Press Release Grader, and Facebook Grader. Hubspot listened to what was on the minds of their target audience, incorporated those needs into their ideation process and came up with some cool, meaningful ways to capture attention. They used blogs and social media to share their expertise, but also threw in this other form of content that really moved the needle. And they continue using this formula with Book Grader. Book Grader caught my attention for a variety of reasons. Having co-authored a self-published book, I’m always on Amazon.com looking to see what our sales rank is, and to see if new reviews were left. I’m not alone in this as self-publishing is exploding. Book Grader is a free tool that allows you to create a list of books you can track. It taps into Amazon so you can see what each book’s sales rank is (and a nice historical graph of sales rank). But it also notifies you when a book hits a new Amazon sales rank, and sends you an e-mail when a new review of the book is added. It also shows you other books referring to a book. And this is the kind of information that can give you insight into better ways to market your books, as well as keep up with the information in real time. Hubspot’s grader tools are not only helpful to those that use them, but they’re also great pieces of content that grab the attention of those looking for solutions to challenges. These tools serve as Hubspot’s entries into the Attention Economy, along with their blogs, videos, and tweets. They listen, they learn, and then they create ideas with those thoughts in mind. They use what’s available from Amazon, Twitter, and Facebook and create something unique out of it. So unique that their voice is distinctive from the majority of others screaming for attention. So put those social tools (and billions of components) to use to help your ideas stand out. Listen and explore how you can get your share of attention. Figure out what you may be able to create from the data and tools available from the likes of Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. You don’t have to build it yourself, but understand what can be done and have someone else do it for you — that’s what sites like Elance and Odesk are for. Whatever you do, make sure you create ideas that are in synch with the people you want to connect with, and then find a way to captivate them with it. That’s how you create effective economies of scale for your business.Brent Leary is a small-business technology analyst, adviser, and award-winning blogger. He is the co-author of Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business. His blog can be found at http://brentleary.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/brentleary.
A recent survey commissioned by e-mail marketing provider Campaigner found the top challenge facing small business owners today is customer acquisition and retention — by a landslide. The 2009 State of Small Business Online Marketing Survey questioned over 250 North American small business owners with 20 employees or less. And customer acquisition/retention was the top business challenge of 50 percent of those surveyed. Growing revenue was a distant second with 15 percent, followed by improving cash flow and maintaining profitability — at 9 percent and 8 percent respectively. The numbers in this survey seems to be on point with other studies I’ve seen over the past year. While revenue growth, cash flow, and profitability are extremely important to any business, they are all driven by the most important asset businesses can have — good customers. And many small businesses do not have enough of those good customers to fuel the other three top challenges they’re faced with. Small businesses are looking for ways to build better, stronger relationships with customers. And many need to bring on new customers before they can even worry about retaining them. But with the rise of the social customer, this mean it’s critical to connect with them in a way that builds trust. A recent EdelmanTrust survey found that trust is key to building and extending business relationships. But the most trusted people customers and prospects turn to for product information are not company employees or management — in fact, these are among the least likely people tend they’ll turn to at first. Instead, people tend to trust academic researchers, industry experts, and people like them. They are also relying more and more on their social networks, industry bloggers, and opinion sites to determine what vendors to engage. And these interactions with trusted entities are creating organic communities that can help companies create good customers, and business longevity. Below are some ways for companies to communitize their efforts to engage socially-empowered customers. Participate Before we can really expect communities to form around our companies, we need to add value to the communities that have already formed around our customers and prospects. This means finding out what social networks they hang out on, what subjects interest them, which bloggers they listen to, and anything else that will help us understand what makes them tick. This calls for a lot of listening. Listening is a form of participating that gets overlooked by many, but is the most important step in engagement. Without listening and understanding what’s important to your target, your attempts to add value to the communities important to them will not be as successful, which in turn will sabotage your trust-building efforts. Facilitate Listening and participating in trusted communities can show customers and prospects that you are sincerely interested in them — beyond the transaction. Showing a genuine interest in what’s important to these current or potential customers can help you facilitate activities that will help them find solutions to what’s currently on their minds. You may be able to help connect them to trusted resources — and it’s okay if these resources are not necessarily directly related to your business. A great example of this is BatchBlue, a small business that provides an online customer relationship management (CRM) solution aimed at the small business market. They started facilitating a weekly Twitter chat called the SBBUZZ, which discusses topics of importance to startups and entrepreneurs. They bring in experts in different areas to interact with the people who participate in these two-hour weekly sessions. And they post the transcripts of these chats up on a blog for people who weren’t able to attend to access the content. They do not promote their product or service. Instead, they facilitate the opportunity for small businesses to share information, connect with experts, and to engage each other. So what started at the beginning of the year with no followers on Twitter, now has over 13,000 followers — with hundreds of active participants each week. And this community of small businesses continues to sing the praises of BatchBlue for understanding their need for this type of interaction. It has helped the company become a trusted, valued company to small businesses looking for CRM services. If customer acquisition and retention is important to you, than using online channels to build trust is key to the survival of your business. Customers are looking for much more than a transaction from vendors today. The customer experience has to touch them in ways that may not have mattered before, but are crucial in the Social Era we’re now in. It’s too easy to switch vendors because your competitor is just a click away. So take the time to thoroughly understand what is important to the customers. And it’s growing more apparent that interacting with each other, influential experts, and other trusted entities are an important component to the customer experience. So improving the community experience should go a long way towards improving the customer experience, which should help with the biggest challenge facing small businesses. Community can raise customers, and your business. Brent Leary is a small-business technology analyst, adviser, and award-winning blogger. He is the co-author of Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business. His blog can be found at http://brentleary.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/brentleary.
In his immortal speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream for this country. In one of the most quoted parts of the speech, he spoke of his wish to see his children judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Those words will live on forever to inspire generations of people to come. Because the content of our character is what tells people who we are, what we believe in and what we stand for. And through this speech we understood the content of this remarkable man’s character. So if we’re to be judged, we’d like to be judged by our accomplishments, capabilities, and by what we’re made of. And from a business perspective, we not only should want to be judged in this manner, we need to be judged as so. However, the people we seek judgment from do not preside over courtrooms and pound gavels, but rule over social networks and comment on blogs. But shrinking attention spans coupled with an exponentially-increasing supply of online information is making it harder for us to plead our case to the judge. One thing we do know — the only way we stand a chance of having the content of our character judged in the age of social media is by creating content that is full of character. Some may confuse character-filled content with colorful content. Others may feel images, pictures, and videos will turn heads and focus eyeballs. And they absolutely can, but only for a minute if there’s no real substance accompanying the color. Because substance is what our online judges are looking for to allow them to make important decisions. And while it is important to offer up content on a regular basis, the quality of it is the most important factor. Quality of content not quantity Many feel it’s too time consuming to create good content, or that it’s too daunting a task. But you don’t have to write volumes to share the content of your character. Abraham Lincoln needed less than three hundred words to express his feelings for what took place on a battlefield in Maryland during his Gettysburg Address. What many feel was the most important speech in our country’s history is shorter than the average blog post. No Flickr picture or YouTube video necessary. But even today those words move people to tears. Just as Martin Luther’s words, nailed to the door of a church in Germany, started a religious revolution that’s still being felt almost 500 years later. Using content to display our true character, as individuals as well as business entities, is not a new thing. But we have to be ready and willing to make sure the content we produce represents us in a truly meaningful way. Meaningful to us — as we need to represent ourselves and our businesses properly. More importantly, we need to make it meaningful to the judges out there who have to make the important decision on whether or not we have the expertise, experience, and character to help them answer the challenges they face. Despite the obstacles we are faced with, in terms of creating content that captures the attention of our online judges, it’s time to get over it. Don’t tell it to the judge, because they have their own issues and concerns to deal with. They are looking for help — good help. They’re willing to search for it, discuss it, and share their story in order to find it. So use pictures, videos, blogs, and whatever you need to share your story. Post once a day, once a week, or once a month. Automate, co-create, and user generate it if it can help streamline the generation process. But remember one thing: All the judges ask is that you make it as easy as possible on them to find the real you, by creating content that allows them to understand your business’ character. Now go out there and throw yourselves on the mercy of the court. Brent Leary is a small-business technology analyst, adviser, and award-winning blogger. He is the co-author of Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business (http://barack20.com). His blog can be found at http://brentleary.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/brentleary.
Connecting with potential customers is one of the biggest challenges facing small businesses today. A recent study by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland shows that marketing/innovation is the single biggest competitive disadvantage confronting small business, after access to capital. In fact, converting marketing leads into buyers and finding efficient ways to promote and advertise, are two areas small businesses say they struggle the most with. This finding is supported by a recent Microsoft small business study, which found customer acquisition and retention to be the biggest challenges facing their small business partners. To help overcome customer acquisition challenges, many small businesses are looking into customer relationship management (CRM) tools and strategies. In the past, many viewed CRM as being too complex and expensive to implement for the expected return on investment. But over the last couple of years, software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings from the likes of Salesforce.com, NetSuite, and a host of others have allowed companies of all sizes to implement CRM products and services at a fraction of the cost, time and effort needed in the past. Traditionally, CRM’s strong suit has been improved operational effectiveness, easier access to information, and improved interdepartmental collaboration. While these are critically important to the success of any business, the focal point of these areas are internal to the company. And while a more efficient company should have a positive impact on customer interaction and responsiveness, does it really help us to meaningfully connect with those potential customers empowered in a Web 2.0 world? Social media adds this missing dimension to the traditional, operational areas of CRM. And according to a recent Nielsen Company study, two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visited a social networking site or blogging site — what they refer to as “member communities.” The integration of social media into CR strategy — called Social CRM — differs in focus from traditional customer relationship management in a few key ways. Data-driven vs. content-driven Businesses began investing in CRM applications in the ‘90s mainly to store contact data. Before contact management software was available, businesses had to store their valuable customer information in Rolodexes, spreadsheets, and even filing cabinets. It was important to have a central location to store the data that was also easily accessible to communicate effectively with contacts. And with multiple people “touching” the customer for various reasons, it quickly became important to be able to track activities, appointments, potential deals, notes, and other information. Consequently, traditional CRM grew out of this need to store, track, and report on critical information about customers and prospects. Social CRM is growing out of a completely different need — the need to attract the attention of those using the Internet to find answers to business challenges they are trying to overcome. And nothing captivates the attention of searchers like relevant, compelling content. Having the right content, and enough of it, will help connect you with those needing your product or service. Creating content in formats that make it easy for your target audience to consume it increases the probability that you will move them to action — starting a conversation with you. Whether it be by developing a blog post, podcast, YouTube video, or Webinar, creating attractive content is a key pillar of social CRM strategy. Process-centric vs. conversation-centric Traditional customer relationship management is heavily focused on implementing and automating processes. Companies looking to implement processes like lead and activity management would turn to CRM. Management would turn to CRM to standardize on sales processes to increase the accuracy of sales forecasts. And customer service requests could be tracked, routed, escalated, and resolved in a uniform fashion to ensure proper handling. Traditional CRM helped make it possible to ensure the proper activities and tasks would be performed by the appropriate people, in the correct sequences. While there are processes involved in building a successful social CRM strategy, conversations are at the heart of it. Having meaningful conversations with those searching for the help you can provide is the turning point in transforming clicks into customers. The processes involved are aimed at making it easy for people to find us (through our content) and invite us into a conversation — on their terms. This may take the form of a comment left on a blog post, following your company on Twitter, or possibly embedding your PowerPoint presentation on their webpage. There are numerous ways to participate in meaningful conversations with people looking for help in solving challenges. Formalizing a strategy to increase the likelihood of engaging in these conversations is a tenant of social CRM. Operationally-focused vs. people/community-focused As mentioned above, managing customer information is a major concern to businesses of all sizes. It plays a key role in the ability of businesses to respond to customer requests, manage resources needed to close deals efficiently, and provide management with reports to keep track of sales performance. This helps executives achieve operational effectiveness, and is particularly important for businesses expanding their sales and marketing operations, needing to implement new processes to manage growth. Businesses have typically turned to CRM to improve communication between sales and marketing operations, as well as to improve data-access to positively impact decision making. Whereas traditional CRM activity focused heavily on operational effectiveness and its impact — both internally and on the customer — social CRM is all about people and community. It’s about how your company intends to participate in the ongoing conversations taking place in the industry. How you embrace non-traditional influential people like popular industry bloggers, and social sites on the Web frequented by your audience. And fully understanding the importance of contributing to discussions, in a transparent manner, will help you build the kind of reputation needed to become a valued member of the online communities important to your business. So if you’re turning to CRM to help bring on new customers, you’ll have to go beyond traditional CRM focuses by integrating social media infused tactics and strategies. But it’s important to remember social CRM is not a substitute, but a much needed complement to traditional areas of customer relationship management. It gets us close to what we’ve needed all along. Brent Leary is a small-business technology analyst, adviser, and award-winning blogger. He is the co-author of Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business. His blog can be found at http://brentleary.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/brentleary.
The meteoric rise in popularity of social networking tells us one thing — humans love to communicate with each other. We share our joy, pain and empathy, as well as our opinions, expertise and personal experiences. We do this out of basic needs we have to learn, to share, and to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. What draws most of us to sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube — and what businesses need to understand in order to better use social media — is to join conversations that are of interest to us, and to build relationships with those we are interested in. We don’t spend valuable time on these sites because they have funny names, or just to “hang out.” We talk about books, films, politics, and sports. We also talk about the latest news, industry development, or important “thing” that needs to be discussed. And so the important thing about social networking are the people, and the interaction we share on things that are mutually important to us. Twitter, Facebook, and other sites have millions of members, and millions of interactions taking place simultaneously. But like most social networkers out there, I have many friends/colleagues on Facebook that aren’t on Twitter, and others on LinkedIn that aren’t either of the two. So while social networks have tremendously increased our ability to connect with others and the ability of businesses to connect with potential customers or partners, we still have to go to the network to reach them. And in order to reach the people we want about that certain “thing,” we may need to go to several networks and participate in disconnected conversations. Additionally, there may be some people who are experts on “the thing” we’re currently interested in that are unknown to us. It would be great if our social networks followed us around, instead of us having to go to the network, which is what Glue, a Firefox browser extension from AdaptiveBlue, gets us closer to. What’s interesting about Glue is that it’s not a destination. In fact, the destination is “the thing.” So if you’re a member of Netflix and Grand Torino is recommended to you based on your viewing history, not only will you see the reviews left by strangers, but the Glue toolbar will appear with a list of friends and other Glue users who have recently showed interest in this movie. You will be able to see how many of them liked the movie, and what comments they had. Here’s what businesses need to understand about what makes Glue really compelling. One Glue member may have been on the Grand Torino page over at IMDB, another might have found it on Fandango, and others may have been on Amazon.com or Wikipedia. Glue knows regardless of the site their members are on, they are interested in “the thing” — in this instance, Grand Torino. So it doesn’t matter what Glue-enabled site you’re on when you’re trying to find out about Grand Torino, because you’ll always have access to the thoughts and opinions of your Glue friends and fellow users at your disposal. You can even reply to a comment left from your buddy while at Amazon.com while you’re on Wikipedia. Additionally, you can add Grand Torino to your Netflix queue while you’re on the Grand Torino Wikipedia page. Not only can you use Glue for this kind of interaction with movies, but also on other things we love to discuss, like books, music, restaurants, and even electronics. What I like most about Glue is that it makes it easier to use the Web in a more natural way. The most important thing for me is to be able to communicate with my friends and colleagues about what’s important to me. It’s also vital to find others I don’t know who share my passions and interests. And Glue makes that possible, by bringing the people and sites together when my mind is fixated on “the thing.” Kind of like those Verizon commercials that show the network of people following you around, making them accessible at a moment’s notice. That’s the kind of experience I want. That’s the kind of experience I’ll need in order to help me wade through all the information and people online. That’s the way businesses can better optimize using social media to help sell products. Right now Glue only has 35,000 active users, which limits the impact it can have. But the latest release of Glue allows you to grab your friends from Facebook and Twitter and interact with them. Hopefully that will help rapidly grow this network, and maybe make it “the thing” we need to make Web 2.0 an easier place to navigate. To learn more about Glue click to hear a recent conversation I had with AdaptiveBlue Alex Iskold. Brent Leary is a partner of CRM Essentials. He is co-author of Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/brentleary.
Hosting an Internet radio program over the past few years has allowed me to speak with some of the most successful social media communicators in the space. People like Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Liz Strauss, and Brian Clark are synonymous with social media. They’ve each amassed huge followings on their blogs and on sites like Twitter. They are recognized experts in the social media community for their ability to connect with people on a personal level, even when they’re speaking to thousands of people at a time through social channels. So if you’re looking to successfully leverage the power of social tools to reach people on behalf of your business and “move the crowd,” here are a few things successful people like those above have in common. They read One thing all the successful social media types I know do is read. In fact they are ravenous when it comes to reading, devouring up to 100 magazines a month. This includes national business publications, regional business magazines, industry trade journals, and specialty newsletters from professional organizations. Mixed in with the magazines are the handfuls of books they are reading. This typically means they are in the middle of four or five books, on an off subject with respect to their profession. I won’t even bring up the online perusing of blogs, white papers, and e-books they also take in. They do this because of their passion to know as much as they can about their chosen area of expertise, not necessarily just to blog. But the knowledge they accumulate allows them to create valuable content that attracts people to them. They listen The fastest way to get people to listen to you is to listen to them. Not just put up with the sounds coming out of their mouths, but to listen. And listening to others is at the heart of what successful social media communicators do. Listening and observing what people were talking about on Twitter was key to the success of Guy Kawasaki’s latest venture Alltop.com. Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who got his start with Apple many moons ago. Through his site, billed as “the online magazine rack,” Kawasaki finds out what people are talking about on Twitter in order to create a resource page of great content on the Web on the hottest topics. Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, has a huge following on Twitter, but always seems to be directly communicating with people when they ask him a question. And he asks people for their thoughts and opinions on a regular basis because he’s genuinely interested in what others have to say. They share What really strikes me about successful social media folks is their willingness to share the spotlight with others. Many of these folks have spent years writing to build audiences. This includes not only writing blog posts, but also answering numerous comments and Twitter “tweets” from their readers. The successful social media communicators also take time to help others by critiquing their writing to help them find their voice. They also use their blogs and podcasts as platforms to bring attention to people who are doing things they feel are noteworthy. And, in many cases, these popular bloggers will offer a few of their readers the opportunity to be a guest author. Liz Strauss, a social Web strategist and community builder who founded the business blogger conference SOBCon, gives out her SOB award (Successful Outstanding Blogger) each week to bloggers she thinks people should be reading. This might not seem like a big deal, but it is a huge honor if you think about it. It’s like an unknown getting a chance to be the opening act for a superstar, in front of a crowd you would never get on your own, but are interested in hearing you just because you’ve received a huge endorsement from someone they trust. They have fun Brian Clark is well known for his highly respected Copyblogger.com website, which helps people up their copywriting skills to better connect with audiences. The site is full of great information, but what makes Clark someone to listen to goes beyond his considerable expertise. I look forward to what Clark has to say because he’s also funny, and because he quotes lyrics from 80’s rappers Eric B. and Rakim. And while Kawasaki is a best-selling author, sought-after speaker and serial entrepreneur, he’s got a great sense of humor. And this is readily apparent if you follow his tweets on Twitter. Sure Liz Strauss and Chris Brogan are social media strategists and people look to them for understanding how this stuff works. They’re also great fun to talk to. Strauss shares her sense of humor on her blog and on Twitter to the delight of her thousands of followers. And Brogan’s self-deprecating humor is appreciated by anyone who has a chance to interact with him. So if you want to be successful with your social media endeavors, do what the experts do. Read, listen, share, and go out there and have fun! Brent Leary is a small-business technology analyst, adviser, and award-winning blogger. Leary is also host of a weekly radio program heard on Business Technology Radio. He is the co-author of Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business. His blog can be found at www.brentleary.com.
