Page 67 - Social Media Marketing

For more information on Sohobiztube, see the following: 45

http://sohobiztube.com ■ OUTREACH AND INFLUENCER RELATIONS

Vendor Relationship Management

Given the rise of the Social Web, the new role of the customer and the concepts of Social CRM
have a counterpart in business supply-chain processes: Vendor Relationship Management (VRM).
Beyond employee-customer interactions and Operations-led production and delivery processes,
what are the additional points of impact in the creation of the customer experience? What about
businesses with a more complex supply chain, or whose control over the delivery experience
depends on the direct or indirect contributions of other firms and organizations? Think about
vacation and destination travel services, where a holiday package offered through American
Express may involve multiple customer-facing partners. How do the concepts of Social CRM
transform?

The Cluetrain Manifesto holds that the best marketing is conversational, built around interaction
between the business and its customer, and between customers themselves. This philosophy
underlies Social CRM in that it ties the conversation—not just the transaction—into the busi-
ness processes. Vendor Relationship Management is about the application of the social tools that
create and support collaborative conversations throughout the supply chain and delivery chan-
nels. To the extent that the Social Web is the evidence of pushback by consumers against tradi-
tional marketing in favor of a more collaborative experience with brands, products, and services,
VRM Is about extending the sought-after collaborative experiences to the entire supply chain.

Jon Lebkowsky, a cofounder of Austin, TX–based Social Web Strategies, along with Doc Searls,
a leading proponent of VRM, and others are advancing this issue. You’ll find more about Jon
Lebkowsky, Doc Searls, and VRM here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_Relationship_Management

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/projectvrm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Lebkowsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doc_Searls

Outreach and Influencer Relations

In the prior sections, I presented the new role of the customer and the impact of this
new role on business disciplines like CRM and the identification of influencers. I’ve
shown how Social CRM fits into an organization’s intelligence and relationship man-
agement program, and how it ties the response-driven foundation of traditional CRM
to the Social Web’s customer-driven engagement process. Social CRM literally ties