Page 70 - Social Media Marketing

chapter 2: THE NEW ROLE OF THE CUSTOMER ■ Here’s why: Aside from reaching and building relationships with people who
may be influential to large groups of people important to you—a blogger with a fol-
lowing, a journalist, an industry expert, or similar—consumers are increasingly mak-
ing their purchase decisions based on information, tips, and recommendations from
“people like themselves.” Take a look at the sidebar on the Edleman Trust Barometer
and go and download that free report (a PDF file). The Trust Barometer, itself from a
trusted source, makes a very convincing case for both the need for social media listen-
ing programs and for extracting from these conversation the information and insight
you need to position your business for long-term success.

The Edelman Trust Barometer

The Edelman Trust Barometer is a measure of the relative trustworthiness of various sources
of information. Over the past 10 years there has been a significant shift, corresponding first
with the mainstream adoption of the Internet and more recently with the use of social tools. In
48 short, traditional sources of trust—people like CEOs, analysts, and news reporters—have been
replaced with “people like me,” with word-of-mouth and curated social media. It is a significant
shift that you cannot ignore.

You will find the complete 2009 report here:

http://www.edelman.com/trust/2009

Influencer Relations: A Representative Case

Following is a quick case on the use of Social CRM tools for influencer outreach. In this
case the primary challenge was assembling a cross section of influencers from a very
large and distributed set of individuals who are influencers of relatively small numbers
of people. It’s a great example of the “influencers” challenge described previously.

Grasshopper

As a B2B virtual phone services company, Grasshopper’s motivation in adopting a
Social CRM program for its business grew out of its need to understand and inter-
nalize the influencer process and customer renewal cycle. The business objective for
the company’s use of social media was simple enough: According to Jonathan Kay,
Grasshopper’s Ambassador of Buzz, “Everywhere you look, someone should be talking
about Grasshopper.” We should all want for as much.

Strong believers in social media and “PR 2.0,” the firm doesn’t have an agency,
and they’re not focused on pumping out press releases. Instead, they’re focused on
building relationships with influencers. Pay it forward, right? This includes traditional
media small business stalwarts such as Inc. Magazine and BusinessWeek, along with