Posts for "Social CRM"

Whether you’re a small or large agency, you know that the possibility of a social media flub is real. Usually, it is the result of someone being careless or frivolous with their social media use. Playing fast and loose with clients’ social channels is not encouraged by anyone. Here are five tips for avoiding social media flubs for even the most veteran community manager: 1. Separate logins This one is probably the simplest to implement. Create a separate login for all clients. Perhaps that means having one professional-use-only Facebook account with all the pages linked to it. Perhaps it is literally having ... READ MORE

When you started your business, you may have had visions of customers beating down your door to buy from you. Unfortunately, growing a new business takes a lot of hard work. Luckily, there are a bunch of tools that will help you grow. Here are four essentials: 1. Social CRM A social CRM, such as Batchbook, will help you organize your contacts and build better relationships with them. When you are just getting started, you likely won’t have a ton of customers or contacts. Leverage the relationships you do have by staying in touch and providing great service for every sale. Social CRM ... READ MORE

In a society where social media (especially Twitter) is bursting with our every thought and (literal) status, it’s no surprise that social media start-up Sickweather was able to leverage social conversation into predicting something like flu season. In fact, Sickweather proclaimed that flu season began in October, over a month prior to the Centers for Disease Control. How were they able to do this? By social listening. By monitoring conversation about flu symptoms, the company was able to see a 30% increase of flu chatter in October, which lead them to predict flu season earlier. Besides this specific start-up, how might social listening help a ... READ MORE

It used to be a lot simpler. Customers entered your site, filled out their information and purchased their item. It looked a bit like a funnel. With the onslaught of social media, however, the funnel is looking a little bit more like a big circle, or a few circles. Social CRM, as defined by Paul Greenberg is “the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.” That’s right. It’s no longer about you. There are several ways to use social CRM tools in the new consumer experience. Here is a high-level overview of the ways to utilize social CRM that ... READ MORE

Is gamification a fleeting trend or a lasting CRM innovation? Companies of all shapes and sizes are taking the method of increasing customer engagement to heart, and gamification providers are looking to make the practice a critical part of building customer relationships. Seattle-based BigDoor may be one of the leaders in the gamification field, but they want to make it clear that they're not just another gamification vendor. Rather, they focus on building loyalty and engagement in a meaningful way.VP of Sales Gavin Hewitt talked to us recently about what sets BigDoor apart from the competition, and how the company ... READ MORE

Why am I talking about a software that is so obviously "yesterday?" With all the improvements that it has had in its desktop version, it is clearly not a software that will draw more than a yawn in a crowd. I have not used MS-Outlook since early 2008 and the version I used then was Outlook 2003. We run our office mail on Google Apps and we do it exclusively on the web. Google did have the fleeting experiment a while back with Gears (?) for making it possible to download and check mail offline; I never used it and I doubt ... READ MORE

As businesses needs evolve, software companies must constantly reinvent their products and services to stay on the cutting edge. The most innovative companies in IT in 2013 are those that are changing up the way companies interact with their customers and their data. We're taking a look at game-changing companies in four segments that are striving to reinvent IT software as more mobile, socially-oriented and data-driven than ever before.   Mobile Device Management: MobileIron The BYOD movement is on the rise, but bringing your own devices also brings concerns with making sure your data access is seamless and your security is sound.  Mountain View-based MobileIron has ... READ MORE

For how ubiquitous CRM systems have become at most any sales or contact-oriented business, it's amazing how many ways the average system can (and does) fail. Granted, much of time the blame for this falls on companies who didn't do their homework to figure out which system is the best fit for their team and its specific needs, but poor design decisions, rudderless development and inscrutable interfaces don't help either. Most people who use a particular CRM system aren't using it out of any great affection for the service. They're using it because the decisions on software adoption are made at ... READ MORE

Dreamforce 2012 has come and gone, and just in time for Oracle's own Open World event, hosted in the exact same location in downtown San Francisco. As part of the 80,000-odd attendees of Salesforce.com's annual event this year, we had the chance to see the latest from Salesforce, but a whole collection of other vendors and developers who were in attendance. We put together two of our biggest takeaway's from this year's event to share with you here. Social's Gone Mainstream To be fair, we didn't really need the announcement of Social as the theme for Dreamforce '12 to know about this one. ... READ MORE

Known primarily for its link building tool, BuzzStream develops online software and tools for marketers and PR so as to extend an organization's reach online, thereby increasing traffic to a company website, as well as increasing leads and cultivating relationships with potential customers. Leveraging the vast amount of contact information available through Twitter, blogs, and just websites in general, BuzzStream for Social Media & PR is a contact management tool that's meant to help you more effectively track and manage outreach opportunities across various social media channels. Founded in 2008, BuzzStream has been working mostly in the world of link building, ... READ MORE