Page 264 - Social Media Marketing

c h a p t e r 9 : ╇ S ocial C R M╇ ■Social CRM Objectives

The kick off for a Social CRM program is like that of any other marketing or business
program: You start with your business objectives, combine them with the behaviors
and interests of your expected participants, and use this to plan and implement your
program.

One of the easiest ways to sort out which types of Social CRM solutions are
right for your applications is by posing and answering questions like the following:
Are your primary business objectives related to addressing an existing condition,
improving margins through the work of brand advocates or through expense reduc-
tions, or focused on innovating and creating something new? Formulate your own
additional questions like these for your specific situation as well.

If the answer is “addressing an existing condition,” then at the top of your list
might be tools like a listening platform and influencer identification, combined with a
participative channel such as Twitter or similar. Gather and analyze relevant conver-
242 sations, and then use a simple conversational channel to keep that dialog going. This
combination provides the intelligence and precise targeting that you’ll need. You can
use “do it yourself” listening platforms like Alterian’s SM2, Sysmos, or Scout Labs,
along with an influencer identification tool like BuzzStream or Rapleaf to gather the
background information you’ll need to develop a conversational baseline and then
track your progress.

For example, you can use listening tools to prioritize influencers as you identify
the specific sources. You can then connect, through workflow processes, this listening
data into your organization—into customer service, for example. You can use Twitter
combined with a tool like TweetDeck, HootSuite, or CoTweet to look for specific issues
and efficiently respond to them in the channel where the issues are being discussed.
Even better, you can do this in real time or near real time, depending on your staffing
levels, and you can use what you learn to inform your corporate blogging program or
other aspects of your social-media-based marketing efforts. When creating your Social
CRM program, look for the ways in which one activity (listening, for example) informs
another (like internal product review meetings and product design efforts).

Alternatively, if you are looking for margin improvement through cost savings,
then your focus might be the Web 2.0 tools and technologies that enable delegation of
work to your customers. Dell’s support forums exemplify this: Relatively few modera-
tors and community managers acting together manage literally millions of customers
(translation: Cost Savings) while the customers themselves bear the real load—much
to their liking—in addressing the actual technical support issues that are the subject of
the support community.

From influencer identification and relationship development to margin improve-
ment to direct cost avoidance, Social CRM has applications across a range of busi-
ness and marketplace challenges. The first order of business is, therefore, to sort out