Social CRM is a Beautiful Emerging Thing

We're starting to see Social CRM starting to become an important emerging category outside of our incestuous circles. And, we're starting to see more consultants and 'experts' emerge as the need for CRM gets stronger and the use of social tools explodes.

A great read is the report that Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang from the Altimeter Group published earlier this month on the "18 Use Cases of Social CRM and the New Rules of Relationship Management."

Dr. Harish Kotadia writes a recent post 'defining Social CRM' as "the business strategy of engaging customers through Social Media with the goal of building trust and brand loyalty."

I would add here that brand loyalty doesn't necessarily mean a product or service. It could also mean an individual branding themselves as a thought leader, speaker, consultant, author or industry celebrity. I use the descriptor 'industry' before celebrity to remind us that many celebs in our own industry are absolute unknowns in another. Certainly, my industry needs reminding of that from time-to-time. :-)

He defines loyalty as "attitude towards a brand that inclines a customer to repurchase it and/or recommend it to others." On the human side of the brand creation, Social CRM and Social Media are used to establish relationships, engage regularly with a fan base and build not just trust over time, but a following based on some level of admiration and respect. Leaders achieve this by doing the same thing in the offline world.

He breaks down the definition into what's behind its meaning, down to the individual components of Business Strategy, Engaging Customers, and how Social CRM augments traditional CRM.

He writes: "Social CRM is the business strategy, NOT technology, tools or platform.

I'd add an important piece that I discuss with many entrepreneurs I work with regularly. Regardless of what tools you have or thought leaders you know, you need to have a well-defined strategy, messaging and a value proposition that resonates with the audience you're going after, or it will fall on deaf ears. Social tools are merely facilitators that enable the conversation to happen more personally and in more places than ever before.

He also talks about how Social CRM will augment traditional CRM. "Engaging Customers through Social Media: Engagement through Social Media - any CRM related activity through existing channels like the telephone, email, snail mail and so on, will continue to be part of 'traditional' CRM and will not be replaced by Social CRM (unless the Customer prefers to use Social Media instead of “traditional” channels)."

Here, I'll remind that it goes back to these social tools acting as facilitators. I remember ten years ago (and Steve Wildstrom even encountered it in the last six months), some clients who still wanted communication via fax. A few years ago, there were more people who preferred phone over email or Facebook than there are today (in my world).

Each industry will implement new social tools depending on their comfort level, how quickly they 'feel' they need to receive updates and how often they need to engage. Clearly what works for lawyers may not be the same tool that will work for designers. Or, perhaps the reason why they use a particular tool will be entirely different.

Each 'influencer' or customer will prefer a different way of connecting and it's up to us to figure out what it is and how they want to be engaged. Social Media makes communication and engagement prolific and now we have more immediate ways to let customers know about bugs, software updates or amusing industry anecdotes you want to share from time-to-time.

Now, not only do we get to be more direct and communicate with a personal 'human' voice to thousands of people with a quick button click, but we create a new persona for ourselves in our online world. I find myself amused or intrigued by things online that I may choose to tweet about or comment on that may not be a topic I want to have an in-depth discussion about over dinner with someone. The medium is different and so is my attention span.

In the land of the social media purists who want to tear down the walls of traditional marketers, lets remember that some marketers have always made their CUSTOMER KING and valued what they had to say. They established strong relationships, sought to understand what they wanted and worked to deliver it, responding to need after need one at a time.

While a rookie in one of my first marketing jobs now twenty years ago, I was inspired by the Marketing VP at the time, who not only had CUSTOMER IS KING on his office door, but lived it. And, we learn from our mentors, our peers and from throwing ourselves out there into the world of 'customers' to listen and learn.

I grew up with a grandfather who ran a small business in a relatively small "all American town." He also felt that CUSTOMER WAS KING. The old fashioned dial up phone sat on our 1950s retro kitchen table at dinner and when it rang, he took the call and listened: really listened. If there was an emergency, down went the fork and out he went, a foot of snow on his truck or not -- to SERVE his customer.

The beauty of Social CRM is that we can engage regularly and in the environments where our customers spend their time. We can actively listen and sometimes choose to learn from what he/she says and say nothing at all and another time, reach out and offer something of value whether it's a tip, a discount or an introduction to someone who could help them.

Loyalty indeed comes from having a "Customer-Centric” mindset, but it doesn't stop there. That mindset needs to lead to engagement and action, showing you care again and again and again.

Below is a Pearltree I started on CRM.

  

Sarah Palin: the Dangerous Airhead

This past week in the Huffington Post, Mona Gable writes an amusing but scary account of Palin's most recent examples of her ongoing hunger to become a celebrity and folksy hero, regardless what it takes.

Her first example is Palin's documentary deal on Alaska she struck with The Discovery Channel.

Gable writes: "beyond semantics, what were the folks at Discovery Channel thinking? Did anyone there consider the irony of hiring a woman to host a "nature" show who disdains nature? I mean, before she fleeced you for more than $1 million an episode, (for that matter, John McPhee would have been excellent, and I'm sure he'd have done it for much less), that maybe it wasn't the smartest choice given her strange relationship to the truth and her polarizing politics? Did you forget that in her brief and erratic tenure as governor, Palin had a dreadful environmental record, championing such animal-friendly policies as the aerial shooting of wolves? Or refusing to give protected status to such endangered species as the beluga whale? Even now, Palin proudly and avidly flaunts her ignorance about climate change."

The essence of Gable's piece however is about her "refusal to take responsibility for stirring up violence on the right with her incendiary rhetoric."

She writes about Palin's suggestion that Obama was "paling around with terrorists" when she was running for vice president. Mona also reminds us of her other vocal assertions, when she "claimed that the president had inserted "death panels" in the health care bill, precisely so they could kill her Down syndrome infant and her aging parents."

Read more, including her final plea for someone to hold Palin accountable and set things straight.

Economist Innovation Event: Financial Models, Broken or Not?

Team breakout sessions from this week's Economist & Berkeley Haas School of Business presented on-stage: innovative ideas around the areas of finance, new business models, education, healthcare, energy and sustainability.

Below is the idea presented on the new Innovative Financial Models that can also improve sustainability within organizations. Also refer to the more extensive summary of the event.

Out of Hospitals & Into Your Health

Team breakout sessions from this week's Economist & Berkeley Haas School of Business presented on-stage: innovative ideas around the areas of finance, new business models, education, healthcare, energy and sustainability.

Below is the idea presented on healthcare entitled: Out of Hospitals and Into Your Health, which won the audience sentiment at the end of the event. Also refer to the more extensive summary of the event.

Economist Innovation Event: Declaration of Interdependence

Team breakout sessions from this week's Economist & Berkeley Haas School of Business presented on-stage: innovative ideas around the areas of finance, new business models, education, healthcare, energy and sustainability.

Below is the idea presented on the new Declaration of Interdependence. Also refer to the more extensive summary of the event.

Economist Innovation Event: On Education

The team breakout sessions from this week's Economist & Berkeley Haas School of Business presented on-stage: innovative ideas around the areas of finance, new business models, education, healthcare, energy and sustainability. Below is the idea presented for education. Also refer to the more extensive summary of the event.

The Economist's Innovation & Ideas Economy Event at Berkeley

I attended The Economist's Innovation event at Berkeley's Haas School of Business this week, a new format and style for them.

The discussion that was both compelling and controversial was on day one between Nathan Wolfe of Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, Juan Enriquez of Excel Venture ManagementLife and death in a techno-utopia and Ray Kurzweil who came in via live video stream. Topic? Can technology save you—and the planet? In other words, how much can we count on technology to fix issues and how much do we need to rely on ourselves? Humanity?

A discussion I missed but wanted to not only watch but participate in, was the one entitled: Is America turning into a third-world country? The Economist's New York Bureau Chief Matthew Bishop has a conversation with Arianna Huffington. Every time I leave America's borders and return, I am reminded how much it is. Where you sit on this issue depends on where you sit economically and geographically. Silicon Valley should be its own country, since so many of its views and daily realities are so far removed from the rest of the country.

Social entrepreneurship was a big theme. Can free-market thinking solve the world’s most serious problems? What is the future of social entrepreneurship? What are the costs and benefits of micro-capitalism? Acumen Fund's Jacqueline Novogratz, Founder, Acumen Fund, LeapFrog Investment's Andrew Kuper, VisionSpring's Jordan Kassalow and Dan Reicher, Director of Climate Change and Energy Initatives at Google, discussed.

On day two, they had breakout sessions in several important categories including financial markets, new business models, green technology & sustainability, and healthcare.

Given that the overall programme was business school focused, Mashable's Ben Parr and I, who are so entrenched in start-up culture, were a rarity in discussions with larger entity heads of marketing and innovation at companies like Cisco, Intel and other corporates in the Valley.

We were both on the same team for the new business model team break-out, which involved building a new prototype to attract engineers for a company that looked and felt like Facebook. Creating a 'home environment' at the workplace is so automatic for Silicon Valley start-ups that the exercise, designed to keep gen-y workers, was a much more natural exercise for us.

How to influence change within the minds of more traditional older school executives is a much harder challenge, something which Charlene Li addresses in her upcoming book Open Leadership, due out in mid-April.

Innovation Court ended on day two with on-stage presentations by the break-out teams in each of their respective categories. The winner would be awarded a cover placement on the Economist, which happily went to Healthcare - "Out of Hospitals and Into Health.". In my opinion, the right choice. The recent 'win' is a step in the right direction, although clearly it's only the beginning.

I shot a series of videos towards the end of the event, of the teams presenting on stage which will follow in subsequent blog posts, all of them moderated by The Economist's Vijay Vaitheeswaran.

Joby's Gorillapods Have Some Fun Stories

Joby's CEO Forrest Baringer-Jones tells a group of 75+ lifestyle, food and technology bloggers at an event in San Francisco a number of compelling stories of how photographers around the world use Joby's Gorillapods, one of the coolest travel accessories I've come across in awhile.

The bloggers left with a "pod" in hand and while I can't deny I'm a happy camper, I did put in my request for purple ones. The entire team is fabulous and went above and beyond answering questions and their passion for their products were addictive.

Kawasaki Tips Young Entrepreneurs Who Show Off Consumer STUFF

Guy Kawasaki was once again in true form last night during a very amusing keynote at the San Francisco Swagapalooza consumer brands event at the DNA Lounge in SOMA. He gave a number of useful pointers to the young entrepreneurs in the room who were touting their latest products as well as advice on how to get through the ugly with the fun, in other words, how to deal with bozos and goes on to describe the various bozos you're likely to come across. The question is did Guy coin the term bozocity?, which he describes is "like the flu."

He says of partnerships, it is when you are describing a relationship where neither party makes money.

Click on play for a laugh. (I decided to tag this Education in YouTube; if only you could check more than one category, I'd include Leadership or Entrepreneurship and Comedy. Tom Foremski over at Silicon Valley Watcher wrote a much more comprehensive blog post about the experience and mood of the evening.

Fotobabble's Talking Photos Admidst Major Consumer Brands at DNA Lounge

Below is Fotobabble's CEO Kamal Shah on the Swagapalooza stage demoing the various use cases of talking photos, which can be created within seconds directly from your web browser or from your iPhone -- and then quickly email to a friend, or upload to your Facebook or Twitter stream. In addition to using it for consumer use, Fotobabble can be used as a new social media marketing tool for brands.

Some of the tweeters I hung out with on-site included @baconhotsauce, @fogday, @lickmyspoon, @triplepundit, @maryvincent, @organicjar, @mfauscette, @Jeters, @cookingwithamy, @tomforemski, @scobelizer, @kshah, @fotobabble and the Swedes from Bambuser, who tout a streaming video product.