Marketing Technology Blog

Most modern websites utilize a CMS (Content Management System) to allow the website administrators to make changes, post content, and manage the website. This is in contrast the old days of calling your design agency to get changes made, which could get very expensive and caused delays in updates. While website management was previously the realm only of highly skilled individuals (sometimes called “webmasters”), a CMS opens up control to non-technical members of an organization, such as the marketing director, administrative assistant, or even the CEO.

At SpinWeb, we create sites on the Accrisoft Freedom platform. Freedom is a CMS that is a bit unique and has some very nice benefits over some of the other players. Indianapolis seems to be a Wordpress town and I see a lot of companies using it as a website platform. There is nothing wrong with Wordpress and in fact my own personal blog and speaking site is built on Wordpress. However, Freedom has some distinct advantages when it comes to usability, depth of features, and support. I enjoy the fact that we are unique and utilize Freedom as our platform of choice, especially for larger organizations that demand more than the open-source platforms can typically provide.

A Content Management System with Support

One nice thing about Freedom is that it is fully supported and maintained by Accrisoft. There is a dedicated development team that is getting paid to create new features, extend existing modules. and turn customer feedback into a platform that empowers organizations to communicate online. Accrisoft is a great company and I have had many great conversations with CEO Jeff Kline about the future of the platform and about online business in general.

Freedom’s codebase is pushed out from a central server that ensures that every install is consistent. With many open source platforms, the typical model is to set up 50+ different websites that are all using different plug-ins, versions, and hacks which then becomes a nightmare to maintain as an agency. Freedom allows SpinWeb to support and maintain an indefinite number of websites without worrying about inconsistencies between them. Because all the software is hosted in the cloud, our clients have no need to worry about installing software on their computers. They can simply log in and go to work. Additionally, we can upgrade our clients’ websites in a matter of minutes when new versions of Freedom are released.

Outstanding User Interface

Freedom also has an excellent user interface. While some of the open source platforms can be confusing to end users, Freedom presents a clean, simple interface that makes it very easy for non-technical people to manage their websites.

Extensible Modules for Email, Forms, E-commerce and More

Freedom provides a number of powerful modules that integrate seamlessly into other parts of the website. For example, Freedom includes a built-in Email Marketing module, which gives website owners a complete private Email Marketing solution built right into the website. It includes templates, scheduling, subscriber management, and delivery statistics built right in. It also pulls data from other modules so that marketers can send campaigns to lists generated from other parts of the site, such as event registrations.

The Forms module in Freedom is extremely powerful and rivals many of the standalone form builders available today. With Freedom, non-technical website administrators can build complex (or simple) forms for applications, event registrations, donations, and lead capture all with a few clicks. That form data can then be processed and exported in a variety of ways or even integrated into the shopping cart for advanced e-commerce applications.

The built in shopping cart in Freedom also allows businesses to deploy an integrated e-commerce solution on their websites and sell products with minimal effort. This can also extend to event registrations, allowing organizations to sell registrations to events and accept credit card or e-check payments online.

Freedom has built-in modules for Blogs, Event Calendars, Press Releases, Podcasts, Forums, Directories, RSS, Affiliate Programs, Billing, and Polls, to name just a few of the other options in the system. Additionally, most modules can integrate with the leading social networks, which means that website updates can automatically get pushed directly to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Freedom is a very secure system. Not only is it a well-tested and hardened application, but it also has an excellent multi-user management feature, which allows multiple website managers to have different roles and levels of access. It also has a Workflow module, which allows editors to approve or reject changes before they go live.

Membership Organization Sites

I would be remiss if I did not also highlight Freedom’s excellent solution for member-based organizations, such as associations. Freedom’s Membership module allows member-based groups to manage a complete database of members and allow those members to maintain their accounts and make updates via the web. The module also allows member billing, CRM, marketing, and communication. Businesses can also use it as a customer database and in fact SpinWeb’s entire client database and billing system is managed via Freedom, complete with email invoicing, recurring billing, and online payments.

As you can see, one huge advantage to using Freedom is that everything is in one place. Before working with us, many of our clients were using different tools for email marketing, e-commerce, blogging, event registration, web content, and membership management. After switching to Freedom, they love the ease of use and efficiency (not to mention the cost savings) of having everything in one place.

Search Engine Optimized Content Management System

Freedom is also very search engine friendly. Freedom-based websites use “HURLs” (Human-readable URLs) which means that content can be indexed by search engines much more easily. HURLs help boost a website’s rankings in search engines and also look much better to humans than the typical database-driven URLs in many other systems. The HURLs in Freedom are completely customizable.

As an authorized Accrisoft Solution Provider, SpinWeb is able to deploy websites extremely quickly and with consistent quality every time due to our standardization on Freedom. Our clients love the ease of use, powerful integration, and level of control that they now have when managing their websites.

If you haven’t seen Freedom in action before, let me know and I would be happy to provide you with a demo.

According to Dr. Ivan Misner, the father of BNI, “The best CRM application is the one you will use”. This is a great way of saying that all the fancy CRM programs and features in the world will not make a difference if your software is too complex or no fun to use. For that reason, I know many people who get by just fine with an Excel spreadsheet. It works for them because it’s simple and it makes sense.

However, what about using social networks for CRM? Sure, social media is all the buzz right now and sometimes very effectively used as a marketing medium but how about using it more systematically and tracking your customer relationships using these networks? I’ve presented some ways here that you can use the “big three” networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) for CRM.

1. LinkedIn has a feature called the Profile Organizer. This tool lets you categorize your contacts into folders, add notes and additional contact information, and even search for references to find people who worked with a particular contact. The Profile Organizer is part of the LinkedIn Business account, which costs $24.95 per month. With the Profile Organizer, you can categorize your contacts into clients, prospects, suspects, etc., and communicate with them via LinkedIn as well as track major updates in their professionals lives.

2. Facebook offer a pretty simple way of categorizing your contacts, as well. Simply create a friend list and place your clients in that list. You can then set privacy options for that list, as well. You can create lists for different industries, or separate them into prospects and clients. The nice thing about Facebook is that it gives you a rich window into the lives of your contacts, which lets you start conversations more easily. It also makes it easier to share valuable information with your clients and keeps you visible to them.

3. Twitter recently added a lists feature that allows you to create unlimited lists in which to categorize people (and companies) you are following. This is a great opportunity to create a list of your clients and then periodically track what they are posting so that you can comment, re-tweet for them, and stay aware of the goings-on in their lives and companies. Less information is passed through Twitter but it offers another nice real-time view into personal and professional events. Of course your clients actually have to be using Twitter for this to be useful

Can social networks replace standard CRM software? Maybe in some cases, but more often I can see them supplementing your core database. Social networks give us an extended, organic database that updates in real time with information that can be very valuable to account managers and sales professionals. Why not take advantage of this and use social networks to stay more connected to your customers and provide better service?

If you have been following social media trends at all, you’ve probably heard a lot about joining “the conversation” and how to participate. You may have also heard the warning: “people are talking about your company whether you are there or not”. This is absolutely true and is a great reason to jump into social media and start participating. If you are part of the conversation, you can respond to inquiries, do damage control, and offer better customer service.

So how do we keep up with all the conversations? Here are three things you can set up in a matter of minutes to start monitoring conversations about your brand.

1. Utilize Google Alerts. This is probably one of simplest but most effective tools available for brand monitoring. Google Alerts allows you to create keyword specific alerts that will email you each time content appears on the web that contains those keywords. Since my company name is SpinWeb, I have an alert set up to monitor the word “SpinWeb”, which means I get emails every time my company is mentioned on the web.
2. Set up alerts on TweetBeep. TweetBeep is a free service (for up to 10 alerts) that monitors conversations on Twitter and then sends you emails listing all the tweets containing your keyword. An alert set up for “SpinWeb” sends me a daily (or hourly, if I prefer) email containing all tweets talking about my company. This makes it easy for me to selectively jump into conversations that interest me.
3. Scan social networks with SocialMention. This service tracks over 80 social networks for your keyword, including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc. SocialMention also has some nice additional features that monitor strength and influence of conversations.

If you’re looking for a super-easy way to get started with brand monitoring via social media, spending a few minutes setting up these three tools is a great place to start. It will automate your efforts and keep you alerted to what’s being said about your company. You will also find that it strengthens your online relationships because you are able to actively participate whenever anyone is talking about you, and that’s great customer service.