Tagged Under: Social Networking

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions are something most customer service representatives, account managers, sales and businesses in general are familiar with. There are a wide number of systems out there for companies and business buyers to choose from. What some businesses are beginning to see is the impact of social networks on all these areas of their business. Social CRM indirectly invites the customer into the planning and feedback conversations so that they have some say in the experience. Social CRM software, or incorporating social activity into your current CRM solution, is a worthwhile investment and should be included in your online marketing efforts and analysis.

Take a step back. What ARE you protecting? The Crown Jewels? Then crank up the CAPTCHA. A random spam comment showing up once a week on your company blog? If you're running a company blog, you're going to want to be vigilant anyway. Cleaning up some spam isn't that onerous of a job. You can also make your blog comments requiring approval before posting. The danger in this approach is the honest blog commenter is robbed of the instant gratification of seeing his/her words posted immediately. If you're trying to nurture engagement, it's a good way to snuff it out.

An important lesson to learn is there can be a gap between the tacit permissions your customers think they have given you and the permissions you think you have to engage and promote. There's a very fine line between keeping users informed of critical updates and not making it seem like you're unnecessarily spamming them with fluff.

The stats are pretty hard to deny. Blogging leads to more traffic and more leads. If you blog on at least a weekly basis, you can double the number of leads. With so much buzz about Twitter and Facebook, blogging seems downright old school. Social networking has not replaced blogging, any more so than cardio exercises replace strength training. They work very different aspects.

Most of us are familiar with hashtags on Twitter. Maybe there's a chance you found this blog post from the #scrm hashtag I used in my Tweet about it. On Twitter hashtags are a way of creating ad-hoc communities or discussions organized around a certain topic, like social CRM. Or the NHL. Or some political movement. Need a quick and dirty idea how sentiments are trending on a certain topic? Follow the hashtag.

What makes Wikipedia valuable is it's a quick and dirty tool is for many topics it's a great way to quickly get up to speed on certain topics. If used with the proper nuance, Wikipedia is an invaluable source of information.

The biggest mistake people make about trying to sell online is reasoning "people who want to buy X can be found in social groups devoted to X." Yes, you and 2,000 other merchants have thought about that. And you're all in that social group waiting for some potential customer to join. And then everyone pounces on the poor guy with their pitch.

This past summer Twitter sent an ominous message about changes to its API. Twitter signaled the days of open access are over and walls are going up around it's garden. And then just this week, Twitter stopped playing nice with Instagram (owned by Facebook), the social image sharing app. As I noted in a previous blog post, using Instagram over Twitter is a brilliant way for small business to get the emotional content of its brand right.

You want people to follow you. The best way to get someone to follow you is to follow them first. Or re-tweet or favorite something they've tweeted. Or do all three. I've said it before here in the Roo blog but let me repeat: sometimes the best way for people to think you're interesting is if you find them interesting first. Following, re-tweeting, and favoriting tweets is one way to signal such interest. But that's only step one. People do not spend much time deciding who to follow back. There's a considerable body of research in both traditional marketing and online marketing about the very, very small window of opportunity you have to get someone's attention.

It started with a satire in The Onion that North Korea's Kim Jong-Un was named the Sexiest Man Alive. And it ended with a Chinese English news source reporting the story as real news. This is, of course, not the first time an Onion article gets into the Asian news and reported as actual news.

Many small businesses lend themselves to the informal, personal touch. People understand Instagram is not the product of a big media campaign. It's street level. It's a merchant's on-the-spot snapshot of the here and now. You are proud of your office, your building, your warehouse. These things don't really lend themselves to web sites or marketing materials. But Instagram lets you get out these slice-of-business-life snapshots in a way that doesn't seem crass. Keep the photo caption verbiage to a minimum and raw/authentic.

I cautioned readers of the Roo Blog not to abandon Google Plus. I'm starting to see some green shoots of Google Plus's emergence as a viable social networking platform, all thanks to Google Hangouts. Google Hangouts are a great, free way to conduct a video-based webinar or panel discussion.

The problem with putting too much stock in Klout and other influence rating systems is the desire to game the system. We figure out what it takes to get a higher Klout rating and we just do more of that. Many would counter argue and say "well, don't we do a lot to game Google's Page Rank metric via various SEO techniques?" True. But Page Rank has a direct, measurable effect on where your web page appears in search results, which in turn has a measurable effect on sales/conversions. Increasing your Klout score can have no effect, theoretically.

Following a person or following a person back is a first step. But replying to their tweets actually raises your influence with them. Raising influence is about building personal relationships and the perception of a personal relationship. It takes time. Using a robot to follow/unfollow people to build numbers is a complete waste of time.

Don't despair if you're looking to leverage wiki to increase your business's exposure. The first thing to remember is Wikipedia is the big show. Having a bat and ball doesn't mean you can join the Yankees. Or even the Blue Jays. Businesses that get their own page tend to be notable. Notable means a lot of "dead tree" press coverage, usually of the national sort. Until you're being covered by your local daily paper, CNET, and a few blogs or news websites that Wikipedia considers notable enough, don't even try to get your company written up in Wikipedia.

English is too nuanced to create a failsafe script that eliminates all false positive hits. When you find a hit, work from a collection of sure-fire pitches but tailor the message. People who employ scripts ultimately completely underestimate their potential customer's intelligence. It's simply easy to tell organic comments, reviews, tweets, etc. from prepared blocks of text.

So many social networking sites. So little time. This simple flowchart will help you decide which social network is best for you.

There are some articles I want to share on my Facebook. But I don't want every article I randomly surf to be shared. Sure, I want my Facebook friends to see I'm interested in stories about central banking but I don't want them to see for every one serious article I appear to be reading I'm reading five articles about octomoms, incontinence treatments in the pipeline, and Adam Sandler movie reviews.

Be careful about who you outsource your online reputation management to. Make sure the company has responsible track record. It's not some foaming-at-the-mouth kook operating from a laptop in a Starbucks.

Social CRM is CRM software that lets you engage customers and potential customers anywhere, including social networking. Bringing a lead into your CRM should be no different if that lead came from a phone call, a business card you got at a trade show, someone visiting your site and requesting more information, or a Twitter user.