Social Media Blog by Michael Brito
Insights into the social web & real
time community engagement
time community engagement
Is one that is collaborative, internally
Has an open, honest and transparent culture
Thrives with teamwork and constant communication
Looks beyond internal organizations and business titles
Equips and encourages employees to engage with customers
Is hungry for new technology that makes communication with each other and customers more efficient
Has a simple social media policy that protects the organization and empowers its people
Blends traditional CRM tools w/external social technologies to make for a more relevant consumer brand experience
Thinks beyond Twitter and Facebook
Will invite competitors to their communities
Fails with egos
Fails with organizational silos
Cannot have effective external conversations until having effective internal conversations first
I am on a quest to understand Social CRM. Not so I can be an early pundit shouting “to dos” at companies or pointing out their mistakes; but so I can really understand the value proposition it can bring to an organization, their constituents and ultimately my clients. I even joined the Social CRM Pioneers Google group to start marinating in what influencers are talking about and it’s been good, real good.
I have read several excellent definitions of social CRM but I am yet to be satisfied. I often try and put myself in my client’s shoes and evaluate whether a given definition (program or strategy) makes sense for the business. So far, a lot of what I have read is either fluff or so high level that it’s not actionable. And from my experience working in the enterprise, [...]
Thank you to my friend Jacob Morgan for this guest post.
Social CRM is a very interesting topic but since the “space” is still relatively undefined, it can be somewhat of a challenge to address. The goal of this post is to keep things simple and high level so please keep that in mind and hopefully we can dive into more in depth in the future.
Let’s put aside terminology, jargon, and abbreviations for a moment and focus on some facts to help us understand exactly what’s going on:
I got an email from a colleague at work today asking the broader team about the definition of “social popularity.” It was an excellent question and I have been thinking about it all day. I am still not sure what the right answer is but I think the term “popularity” is a little fluffy and vague. Unfortunately, I see many people today using tools like Twitter to “gain popularity” using shady tactics; and all it really amounts to is their perceived influence over others merely by their follower count or the ego they try and down play in their bio. Twitter is just one example but it happens all over the web, and even in person.
According to this report, senior marketers say that social networks and applications were their biggest priority for their 2010 marketing plans, followed closely by digital infrastructure. The others priorities included search optimization, mobile, blogger outreach, viral campaigns, digital advertising, email marketing and games. While these are all important, what’s interesting is that “community management and/or engagement” is not mentioned at all. Perhaps those marketers interviewed consider community management a part of “social networks” but I doubt it.
According to Nielsen, consumers spent more than five and half hours living in the conversational streams of Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82% increase from the same time last year when users were spending just over three hours. And, of course that was followed by an astronomical increase of unique visitors.
Ok, the title may seem a little over the top but it’s true. Over the last 5 years or so, the exponential growth of the social web has suddenly given a voice to just about anyone who wants one. I wrote about this a few years go but it’s even more true today. The emergence of technology and the fact that tools like Twitter and Facebook have become mainstream is forcing the enterprise to plan accordingly and consider something new, something they aren’t used to. Consumers. I’m not referring to audience segmentation or identifying a target audience either. I am talking about consumers’ perceptions, point of views, interests, dislikes and likes about their brand.
I had the opportunity to write a guest post for Amber Naslund that highlights some of the issues/challenges and conversations I have had with others working internally for brands. Here is a snap shot of my post, but please do continue to the conversations in the comments section of Ambers blog:
Measuring Social ROI – The question we need to start asking ourselves is “how do we go about quantifying metrics to show how they drive true business value and/or revenue?”
