8 Ways Businesses Can Use Facebook and Customer Relationship Management

CRM + Social = Power. Social media is the latest and greatest tool for customer relationship management, learn how to use it to your advantage.

Believe it or not, there are still naysayers out there who believe that social media and social media marketing are fads. Obviously I disagree. Companies like Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and LinkedIn, and even Reddit, have changed — forever — the ways that people communicate with one another and the ways they share all kinds of information, including advertising.

Of course we are still in the early days of this revolution so social media companies will come and go, just like technologies do. But one thing is certain:

The bottom line: businesses can use Facebook and other social media efforts in the context of customer relationship management so that they can nurture relationships over the long haul. CRM + Social = Power. Here are a few ways businesses can leverage it.

1. Make your marketing relevant (and you’ll increase your conversion rate).

One of the reasons you want to learn about your clients and customers is so that you can better target your products and services. This helps you put them into the “correct” channels so they receive more accurate messages and less spam. Ultimately this makes customers and prospective customers more receptive to your outreach.

Let’s say you have a user who fills out a form to sign up for your company newsletter. Perhaps in the form there is a field asking the user if she has small children at home, or is expecting a baby. If she answers yes to either, you have the opportunity to send her coupons for diapers a few months down the road, or send her housecleaning services or information about college savings plans. She appreciates the focus of your efforts — and that you’re not sending her ads for online dating services!

2. Whenever possible, target your ads.

I’m just going to come right out and say it: I love Facebook ads. I think the way Facebook serves me ads that are totally relevant to my interests is super cool. Let me give you an example.

I’m really into triathlons right now. I participated in a few over the summer — triathlon relays are great team-building exercises, by the way — and they were all within about 30 miles of where I live.

Now that I’ve Liked the events I participated in, Facebook “knows” that I am ripe for information about this type of event. So I expect that I might soon be seeing some ads for triathlons, or maybe bike races and marathons, that are a little bit farther away.

In all likelihood these are events that I might not know about, but I’m still interested in. What’s more, it’s unlikely that Facebook will be bombarding me with ads that are not relevant to me.

3. Make your social efforts another collection point.

Your business’ website is no longer the only place to collect data about your customers. In the past, the verbiage went something like: “If you want to download our whitepaper, fill out this form” or “If you want to know about my newsletter, sign up here.” But thanks to Facebook and other social channels, you can make it more fun. You can use apps (more on this later) to create games or contests for users to enter in exchange for a little bit of information.

In the past it was very expensive to create contests and custom apps but thanks to third party apps, these options are within reach of virtually any small business.

You can also use Facebook questions to gather data beyond your existing fanbase. When your “Likes” answer a question, their friends (even the ones who don’t Like you) have the opportunity to answer the question — this is a good way to expand your data sample size.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Scaling Social: The Future of B2B Social Marketing

The days of being happy with mentions and followers on social media are over. To take your social marketing to the next level, it's time to build relationships.

The Social Media Ecosystem Report "Rise of Users, Intelligence, and Operating Systems" (pdf) was put together by the folks at Jordan Edmiston Group, an investment bank focused on media and marketing services, with support from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Before I go further, a quick shout-out to the Salorix team for getting lots of great coverage in the recent report. They were talked about, quoted and got to submit a chart, too … all in the section: Big Data Enables Enhanced Business Intelligence.

But why did this early-stage company get covered in this report — alongside IBM, Google and Adobe no less?

Well, it turns out the “big data meets social media” thing is hard. Or as the report says:

“Scaling social with intelligence is extremely challenging”

And this is what Salorix is looking to solve with their technology platform.

Brand Mentions are no Longer Enough

You see, we can no longer be happy simply responding to brand mentions and boasting about our likes, retweets and followers.

We need to also:

• Identify relevant and influential brand-related conversations
• Engage the consumers doing the talking
• Get them to amplify our brand message to their social network.

That does sound hard, especially since 90 percent of those conversations are happening outside of brand-controlled properties (this is what Salorix says). Makes me long for the days when ad banners still worked. (When was that exactly?)

Future of B2B Social Marketing

As B2B marketers, we've done a good job embracing the role of influencers as a way to sway the moods and minds of our prospects. Well that's no longer enough, either.

Instead, we now need to engage our prospects directly, using what we learn from finding and listening to them on the social web. What platforms they use, how active they are and what they're talking about, sharing and creating. This then informs our content marketing strategy and how we look to convert these prospects into leads.

Remember, it's not about quantity and growing audience, it's about quality and building relationships. Why? Because we're B2B not B2C.

With this in mind, here's what you should focus your social media activities on:

• Developing detailed buyer personas that take into account how your prospects behave on social media.
• Creating content based on what your prospects are saying and sharing across the social web.
• Optimizing your content for social engagement and social distribution.
• Tracking and measuring how your social content converts into shares, clicks and leads.

This is the future of B2B social marketing, and how you'll scale social with intelligence.

So, how are you adapting your social media practices to connect with prospects, customers and influencers? Let us know in the comments section below, let’s keep the conversation going!

Image courtesy of Cienpies Design (Shutterstock)

Editor's Note: To read more of Carter's B2B marketing advice, check out Struggling with B2B Social Marketing? Here's What to Do Now

About the Author

Carter is the Founder and CEO of Leadtail, a marketing agency that focuses on online marketing and social media for B2B companies. Carter and his team have developed and implemented social marketing programs and campaigns for leading consumer and business brands including Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, British Telecom, Symantec, and TiVo. Continue the conversation @Leadtail.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Fighting Spam with Trusted Emails + DMARC Compliance Standards

Email remains the powerhouse work tool in our connected, social media enhanced lives, and that is why so many dishonest people attempt every day to trick us with seemingly legit sounding email messages.

Spam filters are a huge help, but phishing scams that come to us from what looks like trusted senders are real problems companies like Message Bus are founded on solving.

DMARC Compliance Standard

Message Bus, along with every major email service provider, has been hard at work on a framework for providing enhanced protection capabilities that increase sender validation. It's called DMARC, short for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. This is a voluntary standard meant, in part, to improve operational feedback from receivers back to senders.


DMARC works with tools like the Sender Policy Framework and Domainkeys Identified Mail to protect email recipients.

DMARC is the framework that email and text messaging infrastructure provider Message Bus has folded into its new trusted email system. The Global Delivery Network is a service for sending emails and texts at scale without triggering DMARC and spam filters so companies can get their messages through.

Additionally, Message Bus has launched a tool for email recipients to block untrusted senders. It's free and it's called Discover. It's a report generated by looking at who is sending emails from your domain. Anyone using your domain fraudulently can then be blocked before doing any more reputation damage.

Enforce compliance controls and stop message waste with Message Bus Discover

Email Innovation

Google really changed the email scene with Gmail, and its spam filter is among the best. There hasn't been a ton of email innovation since, however. Message Bus thinks it has a great new tool in its Global Delivery Network. Pricing starts at volumes of one million emails per month, and it costs US $439. For 10 million emails per month, the price is US $3,780. 

This includes DMARC reporting and policy enforcement, bounce processing, analytics, support, unsubscribe management and campaign management. Tell us in the comments if your company uses an email provider like Message Bus or if you think the Discover tool is particularly useful. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

The Current State of Social CRM [Infographic]

Just as companies are getting more comfortable with social media, they are still learning how to capture and take advantage of all the information they're gleaning from their fans and followers.

This month we'll be exploring the role of Social CRM and how it can impact and improve the customer experience.  Many of us already have customer relations management systems in place, but they aren't necessarily connected to the places customers are. By plugging social media networks into your customer database, companies can begin to add relevant and useful information about their current and prospective customers so they can deliver better customer experiences.

Social + CRM

Now that more brands are using social media to engage with their customers, more and more are learning interesting things about them. How can you effectively manage your customer lifecycle so that you can make sure you can deliver the right information to the right people? Additionally, as users start using social media to ask questions or seek customer support, companies not only need to be actively responding and listening to customers, they need to be documenting these communications within their CRM so they can ensure that all call center agents can know what conversations are taking place and where.

However, just because you have a Social CRM in place, doesn't mean the hard work is over. There is more pressure than ever to convert social media engagement into leads and conversions. It's essential that the right people, from marketing to sales team members are plugged into the Social CRM so they can take advantage of the valuable information being funneled into it.

A Social CRM provides many opportunities to create a full perspective of each customer and prospective customer. What would you do differently if you knew not only where they were and what they were saying, but having it update in your CRM system?

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

This Week: The ROI on Collaboration + Social Media for Customer Support

Selling & Supporting Via Social Media
Social Media can be used by more than the marketing team. Social is a key avenue for customer service and it is an important tool for sales representatives.

Incorporating built-in customer support in your mobile apps can turn negative reviews and comments into positive ones, leading to happier customers and broader adoption.

Patterns for Successful Collaboration
Check out these 12 strategies for successful collaboration and dive into how to best determine ROI on your collaborative technologies.

Strategic SharePoint
In preparation for the SharePoint 2012 Conference this month, we bring you Work, Play, Tablet, PC: Welcome to the New Microsoft and SharePoint Deployments Increase Despite Rising Costs, Staff Shortages. Watch for our special coverage of the event.

Analyst Report: Why Customer Experience is the New Marketing
Understand the present imperatives of Customer Experience Management and the new role of Web Content Management.
> Download the Report Here

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Cisco Sees and Hears Social Media at New Listening Center

Networking technology provider Cisco has opened a Social Media Listening Center where interactive touchscreens offer visual data about the social media conversations Cisco “listens” to in real time.

See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me

The center, which Cisco says will be open to employees, partners, customers and visitors, features six large interactive touchscreens displaying a wide variety of data about social media conversations around Cisco and its brands, services and products. The Linux- and cloud-based proprietary Cisco Interactive Experience Solution creates the data visualizations and loads them onto the screens via an enterprise-grade browser. The data itself is generated by Cisco SocialMiner and Radian6 analytical solutions.

Specific visualizations include social conversations and engagement developing around various CiscoLive events, a global heat map displaying geographic dispersal of tweets about Cisco in real time, tracking of tweets about Cisco by identified “social influencers,” social conversations about Cisco products and services, and a social media word cloud that shows how popular certain relevant topics are in social media at any given moment.

The Tip of the Iceberg

The new center, which is located in the Cisco Executive Briefing Center in San Jose, CA, serves as a customer-facing example of Cisco’s ability to track relevant social media conversations in real-time. Behind the scenes, Cisco operates a center to monitor Cisco and competitor social conversations and identify opportunities for customer engagement such as answering product questions and offering live support. Cisco has also deployed targeted social media listening centers for clients such as the London Olympics. 

Breaking Down the Dedicated Social Media Listening Center

In an August 2012 blog post, noted technology analyst and commentator Jeremiah Owyang offered a breakdown of what he sees as the increasingly popular trend of major brands and consulting firms opening dedicated social media listening centers. He defines a social media listening center as “a physical space where companies coordinate to listen and engage their market in social channels to achieve business use cases in marketing engagement, customer care, risk management, or operational efficiency of coordination and contact center deflection.”

According to Owyang, a properly deployed social media listening center serves as a tactic in a larger social media strategy, rather than as a strategy in and of itself. Unless there are clear business goals and measurable key performance indicators (KPIs) in place, the center will simply serve as a “shiny Twitter room.” In addition, the center must be properly staffed, fully integrated with other parts of the business, have support from key executives and use leading-edge social listening and analytical technologies. Without all these factors in place, Owyang warns the social media listening center will likely wind up being a case of “cart before horse.”

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Preparing for Social Media Collection and Preservation in e-Discovery

Recently the eDJ Group, a leading e-Discovery research and analyst firm released a report about social media as it relates to legal discovery. In it, they make it very clear to companies of all sizes that there’s no excuse for not managing and preserving social media content for compliance and litigation purposes.

Keeping Up with Social Media

Seven years after social media became mainstream, more and more businesses have adopted, embraced or otherwise accepted its presence into their marketing strategies. But many more companies haven’t begun to address it as part of a holistic e-Discovery strategy.

For some, they waited to see how others addressed it; for others, social media was a fad that didn’t warrant additional concern. However, as social media has become an accepted marketing and customer service channel, organizations are struggling to get caught up thanks to regulatory standards put into place by FINRA and the SEC.

Elements of a Social Media Governance Policy

There are many ways companies can effectively integrate social media governance policies. Previously we’ve outlined 9 Steps to Developing a Repeatable Social Media Litigation Readiness Plan. In the eDJ Group report, they encourage companies to be specific when designing their policy. It’s simply not enough to advise employees not to post company information on social media sites; rather it’s more important to outline particular types of information that cannot be shared or posted, like trade secrets, earning reports and other sensitive and proprietary information.

The report also recommends including the following elements in your organization’s social media policy:

• Guidance on acceptable use of company social media profiles for personal reasons
• Clear rules on whether and how employees can use company intellectual property in personal usage of social media
• Prohibition of disclosure of confidential information
• Ramifications for policy violations

There's No Such Thing as Privacy

While having a social media policy tailored specifically for your organization, its employees and socially acceptable behaviors is important, it’s also necessary to understand the legal implications of the privacy expectations of the major social media networks. The report cautions that many of these sites have “crafted policies in such a way as to allow discovery of information to happen should law enforcement or the Courts require.”

The report outlines the policies of some of the major social media publishers as they relate to eDiscovery:

What does this mean exactly for your organization? It means that information is not as private as users might think it is and it can be much easier to collect as well. It means that if a company does not proactively retain social media content, it can still be accessible.

Define, Collect, & Preserve

Ultimately, the report serves to remind us that there is much more to social media than sharing of information. The preservation of information shared is also a key component that companies must also prepare for. Much like anything for which a company must develop a strategy, it’s critical to define requirements based on what’s relevant to its culture and the regulatory standards of the industry. In order to determine what method to use for social media collection and preservation, companies must first answer several questions so as to define requirements, such as: 

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

HootSuite Teams Up with Compendium for Added Content Marketing Muscle

Managing social media teams with HootSuite just got a jolt of marketing juice, thanks to the integration of Compendium's content marketing tools.

Compendium helps companies create content for customized distribution, and its partnership with HootSuite now allows for that content to be saved as a HootSuite draft. Once the Compendium material is saved as a draft, it can then be scheduled and sent out to selected social networks.

Both Companies Growing

HootSuite and Compendium are both growing, and the list of their respective new integrations is proof of that. Because they are both involved in sharing the same or similar content to different networks and channels, this partnership is fairly intuitive.

Compendium has recently teamed up with marketing automation big shot Eloqua, and with cross-channel marketer ExactTarget. Both of those partnerships kicked off this summer, but more recently,

On the other side, HootSuite announced  Webtrends analytics integration, a new chat feature and a centralized Command Center tool in October.

Social Media Strategy

Compendium and HootSuite both can help companies build and deploy social media strategies, and Compendium even compiled some specific tactics it gathered from 200 companies into a little how-to infographic. It shows the best times to publish to each channel — Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter — how long the posts should be and a few do's and don'ts we never thought of.

LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook have different peak visit times for B2C and B2B companies.

While this is hardly a controlled, comprehensive study, it does give insight into what many marketers are thinking when it comes to social media. We think the main takeaway here is that reusing original content is extremely valuable.

HootSuite and Compendium are hoping businesses will use their tools to help spread those messages to the right people at the right time. The free integration is available to all HootSutie Enterprise customers and is located in account settings.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Source Metrics Offers Social Marketing Optimization and Analytics Platform

So much social media, so little ROI. That’s the idea behind a variety of tools that try to measure the ROI of social campaigns, such as a new social marketing optimization platform from Source Metrics. 

Started in 2008, Source Metrics focuses on the metrics of leads, sales, click-throughs and conversions, presented in real-time by property. The aim, the Ottawa-based company said, is to answer the question "what works and how well?" Source Metrics had previously provided analytics and marketing campaign management tools, which are now included in the new platform, and it joins other social media management platforms, including HootSuite, Alinean, Google’s Wildfire Interactive and Salesforce’s Buddy Media.

ROI Measurement

Targeted at advertisers, digital agencies, PR agencies and chief marketing officers, the Source Metrics platform enables marketing campaigns to be adjusted as metrics indicate. Users can publish, promote, monitor and analyze their social marketing efforts across channels, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs and email campaigns.

In Source Metrics, ROI is measured through such end results as online revenue or inducing people to respond to a call-to-action, such as a download or a signup.

Brand mentions are ranked by reach and categorized by sentiment, so that the platform user can engage with the commenter. Various social channels are tracked for growth, engagement and performance, allowing a marketer to see trends at a glance. The platform’s API can be utilized for integrating the data with in-house applications.

Social Metrics Campaigns/Reporting
 

CEO and co-founder Scott Lake, the co-founder and former CEO of create-your-own-ecommerce site Shopify.com, noted in a statement that there is no shortage of social media monitoring services. "But what do brands do with the data?” he asked.

Is Revenue All?

He said that Source Metrics’ solution is to provide “visibility into social marketing activity, and then take it one step further with real-time intelligence that shows how campaigns are performing,” coupled with the capacity to take action. Source Metric’s solution is one of a series of efforts to help businesses determine which parts, if any, of their social media marketing budgets are worthwhile.

A recent report from the Altimeter Group surveyed approaches to determining social media ROI. The report, called the "Social Media ROI Cookbook", noted that only 30 percent of brands consider themselves effective in connecting their social media campaigns to revenue. Fifty-six percent said the disconnect was because they were not able to tie social media to business outcomes, 39 percent pointed to a lack of analytics expertise or resources, and 38 percent blamed poor tools.

But ROI, measured as revenue generated, “isn’t everything” when measuring the value of social media, the report said. The vast majority of respondents — 84 percent — said the primary business impact of social media marketing was creating “insight that helped us meet customer experience goals.” In other words, boosting the brand can be a separate and more important goal than enlarging the bank account.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

How Bill Nye the Science Guy Would Monitor Social Media

There is a scientific method that can be applied to monitoring social media. Businesses must first learn about their efforts and then fine tune them to prove their time and money is well spent.

Determining how much of an investment social media is worth is a topic that comes up again and again. I wrote recently about how, in my view, calculating social media ROI is missing much of the point of social media. I realize that not everyone agrees with my opinion that social media is more about engagement, customer service and developing brand loyalty.

I also realize that some people who invest in social media, or who must answer to a CEO or CFO about social media efforts, need certain proof that their time and money are well spent. There are companies that can do this (including Radian 6 and Eloqua), but for those who don’t have access to analytics, beyond what can be gleaned from something like Facebook Insights, YouTube or Twitter’s analytics tool (available to business accounts) I have a challenge for you: try using the scientific method — or a version of it — to see first what you can learn about your efforts and then how you might fine tune them.

Here’s my abbreviated version of the scientific method, amended for social media. I think Bill Nye the Science Guy would approve.

1. Establish a Baseline, aka a “Control”

This should be easy. What are your numbers today? How many Likes do you have on Facebook? How many do you average per day and per month? How many followers on Twitter? How many new followers do you average per day versus per month? How many subscribers to your newsletter? How long has it taken you to get to these numbers? How many hours and/or money do you spend on social media? How long did it take you to get to these numbers — or are you starting from scratch?

Set up a Google Docs spreadsheet or simply jot the numbers down on a piece of paper, and note the date. One of your goals with social media should be to increase daily numbers and reduce the amount of time it takes you to reach specific numbers.

2. Create a Hypothesis

Let’s say your gut feeling is that when you post humorous content you get the best engagement and Likes or followers go up. Your hypothesis would be, “I believe that my audience likes humor.” Or maybe you sense that your audience likes tips or other informational content. In this case your hypothesis would be, “I believe that my audience likes ‘How To’ content.”

This is sort of tangential, but when you are creating content, think outside the box. For humor, don’t just tell knock-knock jokes. If you’re a company that makes fitness or sports gear, look at what GoPro does: post funny crash videos (where no one gets hurt, of course). If you’re a bakery, post footage of kitchen disasters — and ask your users to send you theirs while you’re at it. If you’re a dentist, perhaps some dental disasters that you’ve fixed? A car dealer might post photos of cars that should be traded in. You get the idea.

3. Test

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Building a Social Media Team: The Project Manager

As the use and expectations of social media grow in the enterprise, so does the amount of work that’s necessary to realize goals. Somebody has to manage that work or it will quickly spiral into uncoordinated threads that consume time and resources. In our series, Building a Social Media Team, we have looked at the community manager and social strategist. Now we will examine a role that exists to ensure what the community manager and social strategist envision actually happens — on time and on budget.

Getting Things Done

Many businesses that decide to invest in social underestimate the amount of work required for their social programs to be successful. Even modest social efforts focused on marketing often require coordinating several people, departments, external vendors and dates. The increasing use of social media and growing realization that more than a few Facebook posts are necessary to achieve business goals has caused the number of opportunities for social media project managers to increase dramatically in the last few years.
      
Although this role may have different titles across organizations:

• Social media manager
• Social media program manager
• Social media project manager
• Social media program lead
• Social program coordinator

the responsibilities are similar. Social media program managers must understand business goals, be able to run multi-campaign and project programs, measure social media impacts against business objectives, and perhaps most importantly, effectively communicate.

Communication skills are essential for all project management, but it is especially vital for those people that manage social media teams. The very nature of social media is “social.” Project managers that don’t understand the importance of two-way communication and working collaboratively will not be successful.

This doesn't mean the technical aspects of project management are not important. A report by the Altimeter Group found that most companies lack formalized social media processes. A lack of process makes it more difficult to respond in a crisis, manage employee behavior and consistently implement social initiatives. Project managers with an ability to establish formal processes can play an important role in helping create, implement, monitor and measure the performance of social programs.

What organizations want to accomplish when it comes to social media can vary and so can their needs. However, social media project managers should possess several core characteristics:

• A passion for social media — If a candidate believes the term tweet is just a sound birds make, look elsewhere for someone to manage your social media program.
• Friendly, patient and responsive.
• Detail oriented and timely.
• Comfortable working with creative and technical personalities that may be neither detail oriented or timely.
• Not overly confident in his or her social media skills — This can lead to the project manager attempting to control the shape of social media programs instead of managing them.
• Excellent team builder — Listens to team member concerns, resolves conflicts, encourages feedback.

Great social media project managers may possess many additional qualities, but having this core set of attributes provide a solid foundation for success.

The Circle of Success

No matter what type of social program an organization is pursuing, a strong, competent social media program manager is critical.

It is interesting to note that the relationship between social media and project management is not just one-way. Social media can also make it easier to manage projects. Vendors have introduced a new breed of social project management platforms that leverage social mechanisms to improve project communication, information sharing and collaboration. These tools allow team members to interact more naturally and provide more visibility into the actual work that’s occurring in the project. 

Does your organization have a social media project manager? What did you learn filling the role? We would love to hear your feedback.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

You Say You Want to be a Media Company

Many companies say they are different because they are a true media company on the Internet or that they aspire to be a true media company. But what does that really mean?

Content Suggestions

• Understand that we are in a 2+ screen world, where people are watching their TV or a Netflix video, while texting with their iPhone (and in some cases, even working with their laptop).
• Relinquish control, which means join your fans on other social networks and platforms (this sounds obvious, but most people still want to bring their fans home to their site).
• Identify your relevant fans and tribes: Where they spend their time? How they speak about your products and your competitors’ products? Who are the leaders? How do they help each other out?
• Know that your work is never done, meaning that once you post something it is part of an ongoing story (you can add more later on).
• Go beyond text and incorporate video, photos and more.
• Wear multiple hats: Curator, Editor, Organizer (inviting guests to participate) and Host (invite your users to contribute to your site and find out what they need for their own site).
• Establish brand, tone, etc. consistency across multiple channels (iPad, Web, etc.)
• Interact face-to-face, such as in Google Hangout’s NFL Fantasy Football forum!
• Turn each commenter into editor by encouraging them to contribute to the discussion.
• Concentrate editorial content on “people” — their stories, their lives, etc.

Questions to Keep in Mind

Paid Content came out with a list of the most successful media companies that included Twitter, Amazon, Gawker, BuzzFeed and the Guardian, but here are some questions I have:

• Is Amazon creating any of its own content or successfully curating third party content (yet)? I know they are working on this.
• Is Twitter doing real “content programming” or generating real ad revenue?
• Is the Guardian turning a profit? (This would be important for a successful company : )

Organizational Requirements

Finally, companies need to have the kind of organization that:

• Makes quick decisions and does not get bogged down in office politics or in over analyzing the right approach (I always liked it when my former boss said, if you are 65 percent sure something is the right decision, then go for it and implement it).
• Scores their decisions and determine how well they make them, how fast they make them and what’s entailed (What resources are involved?).
• Provide clarity on whom they are targeting, what the offer is and why you are offering it (and continue to refine over time).
• Building a learning environment which is one of the key things people are looking for these days. I always believe in the “Learn, Teach, Learn” approach which requires an individual to teach something they recently learned to others.

What does it mean to you to be a media company? What is entailed? Which businesses qualify?

For me, the definition would have to be a company that produces or curates content and distributes that information on two or more screens. It also entails thinking holistically about your content strategy, knowing that it is not just words on a page, but rather the look and feel, the taxonomy of the site, the tone and voice of the site and how all of this is shared via multiple channels and platforms.

Oh yeah, you are probably asking, “OK, Wilder, who is a successful media company?"

One company that comes to mind is Bloomberg LP (and I am not just saying this because I am a native New Yorker : ).  It meets all the criteria I list above. For a great article on Bloomberg, check out what the New York Magazine recently had to say about them.

Editor's Note: Interested in reading more by Scott? Then check out Don't Learn Social Media on the Fly

About the Author

Scott K. Wilder is a founding partner and digital strategist at Human 1.0, a customer focused business consulting firm. Before Human 1.0, he created the award winning Intuit Small Business Community. Scott has been using interactive media since the early 1980s and on the Internet since 1991.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

UserVoice CEO Richard White: Users Expect 'Luxury' Customer Experience #UserConf

Businesses are growing up on the Internet, and more and more, customers are used to self-service online. Businesses increasingly handle customer service via chat and social media channels. It's changing how we do business, Richard White, CEO of UserVoice said at the inaugural UserConf this week.

All Your Customer Support Belongs to Us

White pointed out that exceptional customer service is not new — we just call those companies luxury brands. But the majority of companies — who aren't luxury brands — have also seen their customers' expectations of service change.

"43 percent of people we surveyed said they could have solved a problem if they had the tools," White said. 

White's company, UserVoice is a startup that provides online forums and support systems for companies to better understand their customers. White founded the UserConf to gather people — not from the sales management or IT departments — who are focused on customer experience and let them share their ideas.

Traditional customer service is painful, and poor customer service is the #1 cause of customer attrition.

When we call our airlines or wireless companies, we expect to have to enter in our 10-digit account number, wait on hold and then have to give the number again to an agent, White said. In the future, agents will be better equipped to handle multiple channels, nearly all will respond to tweets and it will all be done in less than one day, he said. 

"As companies move to subscription-based models (Saas), customer support begins to look more like sales," White said.

Those customer support people aren't just solving problems but working with current customers to keep them coming back. The sales funnel indeed looks more like a loop in this scenario, but the kinds of problems being solved changes as well. In the subscription model, the more common problems are automated, so customer support is focused on dealing with more complex problems — even if they have fewer to handle overall.

The Digital Marketing Land Rush is Over

Companies can't simply build a Facebook app that tricks 10,000 people into handing over their contact info, and then raise a ton of money based on a gimmick, White said. Google AdWords bring in less money while the keywords cost more, he pointed out. In other words, as the Internet has grown up, it's become harder to bring in new customers in ways no one else has thought of. According to White, that means companies have to go back to old school tactics — like giving great customer service.

Editor's Note: For more insight into customer support strategies, read 5 Ways to Integrate Social Media Into Your Contact Center.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Interview: Michael Orbach from Cascadia Capital on the Evolving Customer Experience Market

The rise of social media has radically altered the state of customer communications. Organizations now have unparalleled insight into customer wants, needs  and — more importantly — into their perspectives. But consumers have gained a tremendous amount of influence, with social networks literally giving a global voice to every customer. This means that delivering a positive customer experience — tailored to individual expectations — is now a critical part of marketing and customer service.

Thus, the market for customer experience management (CXM) technology has grown significantly in importance in the past few years. CMSWire recently had the chance to discuss CXM technology and market trends with Michael Orbach, Managing Director of Cascadia Capital, a boutique investment bank specializing in private and public growth companies in the social and digital media sectors, among other markets. 

CXM — What Is It?

Orbach began his commentary by briefly providing a firm definition of CXM, which can be a somewhat nebulous term.

“CXM fits into the marketing automation sector,” he said. “In this broader sector, you have solutions that perform functions like marketing surveys, customer polling and web content management. But CXM focuses on how businesses interact with consumers at the point of product.”

Although CXM solutions can be used in virtually any industry, Orbach used the successful coffee retail chain Starbucks as an example to illustrate how CXM actually works.

“Starbucks interacts directly with consumers at the store level and uses feedback to improve corporate performance," he said. "The segment is extremely dynamic, and it all starts with customer interaction.”

However, Orbach cautioned that customer feedback must be meaningful. “You need something more than, ‘The girl behind the counter is pretty’ or ‘This place is dirty,’” he stated. “That doesn’t really tell you much.”

How Does CXM Work?

CXM technology helps companies ensure they collect meaningful customer feedback in a timely manner. “Surveys often have a gamification aspect to create an initiative to participate,” said Orbach. In the case of a retailer like Starbucks, gamification might extend to the back end so local store personnel are also incentivized to encourage customer participation. Technologies such as mobile devices — along with social networks such as Facebook and Twitter — can also help organizations obtain instant feedback, which allows for faster response to any customer issues or concerns.

In addition to providing an adequate and timely customer feedback mechanism, CXM solutions also must provide a means of interpreting feedback once it is collected. “There is a complex analytics problem,” said Orbach. “You get a lot of data in a short time. In the case of Starbucks, they need to analyze feedback and then deliver results to the store manager and regional manager, as well as to the corporate entity.”

Orbach said the potential for high volumes of immediate data created by the ubiquity of mobile devices and social media also necessitates a strong analytics component to any CXM solution.

What Is the Market Like?

Considering how important CXM has become in an era of consumer empowerment and instant global communication, it’s not surprising that Orbach sees a very healthy market for CXM

“There is a lot of CXM activity in terms of mergers and acquisitions and financing,” said Orbach. “Oracle acquired RightNow, TPG invested $1 billion in SurveyMonkey, Fizzback was bought by Nice.”

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Smarsh Launches Compliance Archiving for Salesforce Chatter

How can the explosion in social media communications conform to compliance requirements? Compliance solution provider Smarsh has launched Archiving & Compliance for Salesforce Chatter, that might just make it a little easier for companies to meet those standards.

The service, offered on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange marketplace, allows organizations to capture, preserve or search Chatter files, so that they can be used for compliance, recordkeeping and e-Discovery initiatives.

Uses Salesforce Platform

The Portland, Oregon-based Smarsh offers hosted solutions for archiving electronic communications for compliance and record retention. The archived communications include email, IMs and such social media platforms as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and now Chatter. Founded in 2001, the company was originally a financial technology solutions and consulting company that turned to email archiving as financial firms had to meet regulatory mandates from federal agencies.

The Archiving & Compliance service for Chatter is built on Salesforce’s cloud-based app platform. All data can be captured in real-time, thus minimizing the risk of lost data from the communication streams, and the service also archives Chatter attachments. Customers are not charged for storage or disk space.

Communication is stored in non-erasable, non-rewriteable media (write once, read many optical storage) in the native format, it’s available worldwide through the Web-based Smarsh Management Console, and it’s redundantly preserved in geographically-dispersed data centers.

Review Hierarchy

Search can be conducted across all objects in the Chatter communities, and results allow searchers to review communication threads. Repeated searches can be saved, and searches can be customized with company-approved lexicons of keywords or phrases — or Smarsh’s default list can be used.

There’s also a permission-based review hierarchy, which can be structured so that it emulates the review structure of a given organization. Message supervision roles can be assigned to specific users and groups with appropriate access and functionalities, and temporary permissions or access can be granted, such as for outside legal counsel. Every administrator session and action is documented.

Messages can be annotated, flagged or escalated, and those actions themselves become searchable. A Reporting Center provides analytics reports on usage, system audit history and message archive data, and message data can be exported in the EDRM XML Interchange Format Schema or other popular e-Discovery vendor “load file” formats.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Facebook Passes the Billion User Mark, But Where Will Revenue Growth Come From?

 User growth will come from new territories as the social media giant continues to eat up users' time and Likes, with almost half of all North Americans using the Facebook service to keep in touch online. But where will it see new revenue growth?

All Around the World

While the stock price might be on the way down, the user numbers are going up and up for Facebook. With almost 45% of North Americans and Australasians now on board, a third of South America, nearly as many in Europe with only Africa and Asia lagging behind in single figures. That led the company over the 1 billion mark, which he discussed in an interview on NBC. 

They are the key growth markets for the company, and it will be aiming aggressively at signing them up. Of the existing users, over 600 million now use Facebook on a smartphone or other mobile device, up from 552 million users measured in June this year.

Mobile will be key in emerging markets where they are more common than computers. Facebook is trying to adapt the service to the feature phones prevalent in Africa but will need to use marketing muscle in China and Russia where local services dominate. 

On the Face Of It

Facebook recently broke into the physical gifts market in an attempt to move on from the virtual gifts that helped boost its early growth. With long-time revenue partner Zynga also suffering, it will also be looking for the next big thing in revenue generation, with better targeted advertising already on the radar.

Gambling could  become one natural focus, with real money gambling having started in the United Kingdom via a Bingo game, and virtual sports betting being trialled in America. These and other initiatives should see revenue rising to keep the stock holders happy.

However, it may face more defections from users over the latest claim on weak privacy with private messages claimed to be publicly visible. Similarly, further attempts to monetize the service's vast user database could lead to collisions with irate users suffering growing "intrusion" into their News Feeds. 

While still in a very strong position, and dominating the social media scene, Facebook still has plenty of time to find its feet as a traded company, but every move and misstep will come under increasing focus and scrutiny. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

NewBrandAnalytics Targets Hospitality Industry with Social Monitering Tool nBA 3.0

Social media monitoring has become social listening — which has, in turn, become social market intelligence. There is so much being said online and in the cloud about restaurants and hotels that companies like newBrandAnalytics are sweeping in with digital tools to help businesses make sense (and cents) of it all.

The company's nBA 3.0 social monitoring tool listens to what people are saying (or complaining) about restaurants. The software boils this information down into mission-critical insights that help managers and marketers make decisions to improve the customer experience.

Hospitality Industry Benefits

While newBrandAnalytics nBA 3.0 could be used for any type of business, the company is pushing it as a way to help service industry types get a handle on social media. Making data-driven decisions is hard when your main focus is on the customers sitting at your tables. 

NBA 3.0 lets businesses to see what people are saying on review sites and social media. This lets them figure out what their customers like and — most often — what they're complaining about. (We all know how easy it is for people to go off on Yelp or Twitter about their lunch.) The company says that by using nBA 3.0, restaurant groups and hospitality managers would be able to:

• Uncover and fix product, pricing and value issues
• Measure service effectiveness and identify training opportunities
• Pinpoint trouble spots with equipment, suppliers, internal processes and delivery
• Understand competitive benchmarks and discover ways to win new customers
• Connect directly with reviewers to increase customer loyalty

Now that this level of social media saturation is getting down to the restaurant level, it provides a good opportunity for service establishments not only to connect with their customers — but also to see what the competition is up to.

Track engagement, get feedback, and make decisions based on location or brand.

The Importance of Customer Experience

In the retail and hospitality industries, those companies focused on repeat business need to get busy finding their biggest fans online. Whatever value people may put into online reviews, there's no harm in reaching out to those influencers and connecting with them. It shouldn't be difficult to see what complaints people are posting on Facebook and Twitter, and then measure which areas those complaints are focused on.

Using an nBA 3.0 tool called Instant, companies can set up alerts to notify managers about problems as they come up. That way, the right person can contact that person in real time. NBA Advantage is a tool that can lay out metrics like sentiment for understanding what makes customers happy. Let us know in the comments what businesses have ever contacted you because of something you tweeted or wrote on their Facebook.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Technology to Solve the Problems of Technology #DEMO2012

We're all familiar with the pitfalls of the proliferation of information. Massive quantities of competing programs and platforms leads to an overwhelming over-saturation of media. Battling operating systems and hardware lead to endless issues with connectivity and compatibility. The majority of the new technology being presented at DEMO Conference present themselves as a solution to those woes.  

From data aggregation to seamless functionality across devices, a sophisticated software patch (to over-simplify) may be the only thing we need to eliminate all the hassles that have us pulling our hair out. This is particularly relevant in the social media landscape, where inundation of content is only going to increase until all of our heads explode simultaneously.

Problem Solved?

First off, I'm thankful that brilliant minds are working hard to capitalize on the issues I've described. Secondly, I'm always skeptical that their innovations will be useful enough to justify another download, password and endless series of mandatory updates. Strike that, reverse it.

Among the most promising problem-solvers presented here in the real of social data aggregation are Lifebeat and Zeppelin.

Lifebeat attacks one very common problem head-on: the issue of building multiple contacts across a growing number of methods-to-contact-them. With every able-fingered individual possessing an account or two in email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify, SoundCloud, Flickr and more, you may think you're connected to your friends, but really, you're not. Lifebeat intuitively pulls contact information across every medium into one smart portal on your smart phone. It can give you updates, figures out your preferred method of contact for each individual and portends to have no limits on the data it can aggregate.  

Zeppelin exists in a slightly more B2B space (for now), providing one simple, elegant portal of aggregated communication. With smart square gateways resembling floating widgets, you can organize any feed any way you like it and react to any of them across any medium. You can even create internal chats to discuss urgent issues (like, for example, if there's any beer left in the kegerator). The slick, clean, easy-style interface and intuitive control that has been a winner for internet heavies so far may push Zeppelin to the forefront.

Who Will Win?

There's a social element to everything now. 4Sync is a cloud storage company attempting to give Dropbox and Google Drive a run for their (infinite) moneys by providing cheaper storage and, you guessed, integrating a social element. This is exactly why the aggregation of social content is essential. Each outlet has its value and its hardcore users, and we deserve to get every bit of it. But there's only so many hours in the day. While many new companies are attempting to tackle the problem in many new ways, I have to figure there will eventually be a clear winner.  

It should be one that feels like home. It should be friendly, familiar and fresh. It should be intuitive and intelligent. Most importantly, it should be adaptable. It should make room for any new social media fad that comes along. Both of these programs make sure to do that. They may become the singular resource to rule all the resources or they may be arbitrarily trumped by something with a cute picture of a kitten to lure us in. Only time will tell.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Hootsuite Conversation: Real-Time Chat for Community Managers

Enterprise social media management technology provider HootSuite is launching Conversations, an internal communications tool.

HootSuite Conversations is designed to allow real-time internal communications among individuals and teams from the HootSuite social media dashboard. Users can also rebroadcast Conversations comments and threads across other social networks, as well as import commentary from other social networks into Conversations.

Contacts can be imported from Gmail and Yahoo accounts, and the application automatically recognizes when a contact is online. In addition, anyone with an email account can be invited to join a conversation — HootSuite membership is not required.

Community Management Eased

According to BetaBeat, the new Conversations tool is a “community manager’s dream.” BetaBeat notes that Conversations will be “useful for corporate communications teams who collaborate on building content for various social channels on Hootsuite … [it] can streamline a lot of the work that happens on other platforms into one dedicated place.”

BetaBeat mentions specific community management benefits such giving community and brand managers the ability to collaborate and provide feedback on content (like tweets and status updates) before publishing it. In addition, BetaBeat says customer service reps handling social media accounts can benefit from having “conversations surrounding specific tweets or updates.”

HootSuite Makes Team Effort for Business Users

Conversations gives HootSuite users an extension of the enterprise collaborative capabilities provided by the Teams tool. With Teams, HootSuite Pro users can integrate with Conversations to enable real-time communication among members of a specific internal group. This will allow organizations to govern content and manage access to social networks.

Administrators can configure the platform with their organizational structure and assign permissions at organization, team or social profile levels to ensure only appropriate users can post messages or respond to comments. HootSuite Teams also supports review-and-approval workflows.

In addition to the governance features, Teams users can perform group-focused tasks such as:

• Assigning messages for follow-up
• Adding multiple social networks to a team
• Connecting team members to multiple teams

As businesses continue to migrate to social media for both internal and external communication, HootSuite continues to add new features and applications that make it easier for enterprises to connect their members. HootSuite Conversations is currently available in free beta. Basic HootSuite users can engage any individual in conversation, while HootSuite Pro users can engage in specific team conversations.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Discussion Point: From Data to Decisions - Real-Time Analytics Support the Customer Experience

Every organization captures data — social media analytics, customer interactions, website traffic and other metrics, the list goes on. That the amount of data collected is growing exponentially is no surprise, that technologies are emerging every day to help us capture and analyze this data is also no surprise. But how are these analytics and data support tools changing to help better support the customer experience and what can we expect from these technologies in the next few years? That's the question we asked our esteemed panel in today's Discussion Point.

 The Question

How are analytics and decision support tools changing to meet CXM/WEM demands today & what key changes do you foresee in the next two to three years?

The Responses

Cathy McKnight — Digital Clarity Group

A founding partner and Principal Analyst with Digital Clarity Group, Cathy has a passion for working with clients to maximize their potential for success and profitability by helping them find the right-fit digital content management technology that will increase employee engagement and efficiencies. As an analyst, consultant, strategist, speaker and writer on topics related to digital content technology, employee engagement, and social media, Cathy is a strong advocate of the concepts of communities both within and around the enterprise.

Until quite recently, "analytics" in the context of WCM was almost exclusively about what was happening with the website itself: How many visitors arrived? What pages were viewed? For how long? This data was rarely available immediately nor did it need to be, since it influenced decisions and changes that would be implemented over days, weeks, or months. With the shift to CXM/WEM, analytics need to deliver insights — rapid and actionable insights — into the profiles and behavior of the visitors to the web and the performance of the content assets. So, in the first instance, it is very important for end users to understand this significant transformation in the way vendors talk about "analytics."

That said, collecting large amounts of data on behavior and performance is relatively easy. And analyzing that data, with the right tool, shouldn’t be difficult. Mining the insight and value from the data is the hard part. CXM/WEM data is now largely a real-time commodity and real-time data must be analyzed with extraordinary speed to create maximum value. The analytics and decision support tools have to become better at finding and identifying the useful nuggets almost a quickly as the data is being generated and captured, and then being able to integrate and merge that real-time data with historical and supplemental data from across the organization to provide the full value it has to offer.

Different emerging channels require different types of analysis, so analytics tools will have to adapt to accommodate, understand and integrate new channels as they evolve, appear and are adopted by the consumer. As the value of analytics ultimately lies in its ability to inform correct decisions that produce business value, feedback and verification features will become increasingly important. For example, the ability to define key performance indicators (KPIs) within the tools and base both real time content deployment decisions as well as strategic customer engagement strategies on the measurements across various channels and audience segments, will be an important functional feature. 

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com