Social CRM Article for the Institute of Sales & Marketing Management Magazine

Effective online networking requires you to do more than simply
collect contacts.  In this article in the Institute of Sales & Marketing Management’s Winning Edge magazine, I give my views on its true potential.

Visit the ISMM’s website here.

We welcome your comments on the article below.

Corporate Attitudes to Social Media

This morning I happened on a great set of survey results from Mack Collier who shows that whilst a lot of companies recognise that there are huge benefits to be had by using social media for marketing that they are pretty unsure how to go about it.

Twitter – Social or Business?

A set of conversations happened this morning that prompted me to ask this question. I was online participating in Nick Tadd’s (@nicktadd) Twitter show, #thentshow. A great format where people pop in and undertake a Q&A session with a variety of social media people. this morning it was Steven Healey (@stevenhealey) answering the questions.

PRESS RELEASE: Free Social CRM launches to help SMEs win more business from social networking

WeCanDo.BIZ Limited, the online sales leads and business referrals network, has launched a Social CRM addition to its established website to assist small business owners to turn their social networking contacts into customers. Called WeCanDoCRM, the service is free to all businesses

Social CRM and Automated Relationship Building

I have just been reading @scorpfromhell’s blog ‘Is Social CRM about automated relationship building?’ with great interest.

The whole article reflects the authors horror that marketing departments are looking at ways of mining the social web to find better ways of targetting push marketing. Sending coupons to people who say they don’t like stuff and thanking people who say they do for example.

Social Networking – Do Numbers Matter?

So is social networking a numbers game? I suppose it depends entirely on what you want to achieve. I have never been one for measuring success by how many people hang on my every word. In fact, I would be a little worried if the rest of humanity had little better to do than listen to me.

Social CRM – what on earth is it?

Social CRM is a term that has been bandied about for some time. Do a search on the web and you will find all of the big players talking about it. Oracle, SAP, Sage etc all seem to have some sort of offering or some sort of message.

The question I would ask is, are the people who traditionally market CRM solutions the best ones to talk to us about Social CRM? Having worked during my career for large global software vendors I know all too well how easy it is for them to pluck a new cool term from the market and then to redefine an existing product set as one which neatly fits the ‘new’ paradigm. And I wonder if such is the case with Social CRM.