by Barton Goldenberg, President, ISM Inc.
Social Media consists of on-line communities that allow people to get information, opinions, solutions and ratings directly from each other rather than from organizations. It’s the new way for organizations to communicate with and relate to employees, consumers, partners and other stakeholders by utilizing a set of highly interactive technology tools that leverage the fundamental human desire to interact with others.
There are two types of Social Media communities: “public” communities like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and “private” communities that an organization sets up and invites customers/prospects to participate in. The ideal way to leverage Social Media and make it a part of your overall growth strategy is to have a presence on one or more public social communities and to entice participants to move over from your public to your private community where you are able to have a much more intimate and meaningful dialog with these customers/prospects.
Here’s the beauty of Social Media/Social CRM: current technology allows you to listen to what your customers/prospects are saying in your public and private communities, filter this social information for meaningful insight, and then integrate this ‘social insight’ into your CRM customer profile. This allows your organization to have a comprehensive view of your customers inclusive of both transactional information as well as sentimental insights regarding what that customer says about your organization. This in turn helps you to sell, market and service your customers more effectively via their preferred channel (social or otherwise). In a nutshell the integration of ‘social insight’ into your CRM profile is the future of customer relationship management.
Many organizations have successfully moved down the Social Media/Social CRM path with meaningful success. I look forward to sharing their stories with you at the Sales 2.0 Conference on July 23 in Boston and explaining how you too can make “social” a productive and critical component of your overall growth strategy.
