Marketing Technology Blog

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?

What do the Washington Post, BBC News, and New York Times have in common? They’re enriching the content presentation for links on their websites, using a tool called Apture. Rather than a simple static text link, Apture links trigger a pop-up window on mouse over that can display a wide variety of contextually related content.

On the publishing side, Apture makes it very easy for authors to find, link to, and display related content in their blog posts. Simply highlight the text you want to link, and with one click, the Apture plugin – which is available on just about any popular online publishing platform – searches the internet for a variety of different forms of contextually related content, and turns your text into a slick, helpful rich media link.

One of the benefits to your readers is quick access to additional bits of information. Mousing over links will display a little pop-up window that shows content directly related to the term. This could be a YouTube video, a Wikipedia entry, or even real-time Twitter search results.

Ordinarily, these links might take users away from your post, even if they just wanted to find a quick bit of information. Instead of potentially sending your user to another site, Apture quickly and efficiently displays the content the user might be interested in exploring, and in effect, tries to address their interest or their inquiry within your post itself.

The idea behind Apture is to make your posts more sticky, and should, theoretically, increase time on site – a critical engagement metric for many brand marketers.

And for all the analytics junkies out there, you can track the links through Apture’s analytics service in the paid version. Note that while the publishing platform plugins for Apture generate links that Google sees as regular old links, the browser plugin does not produce links that are recognizable by search engines.

We are using the WordPress version of Apture on the current iteration of our blog, and as a company that just makes content – all day, every day – so far, we really like it.  All of our content producers have had positive things to say. It helps make for interesting and relevant posts, and helps out quite a bit with generating new content ideas – and making the ideas we already have more engaging to the user.

Try out a demo of Apture on their site – it makes making the content fun, and your blog more effective.

Overwhelmed with the amount of information, apps, and new solutions coming at you?  I know I am!  Call me silly, but some of the items I mention today may be old news to many, but with so much information out there, who can really keep up.  Unless you are Douglas Karr or Kyle Lacy – which by the way, I am convinced they don’t sleep!

I’ve started using some new organizational tools to keep all of the details in check.  Here are just a few that I find helpful:

1. Delicious: Okay, okay, I know many of you reading this may already know about Delicious.  I’ve known about too, but until the world of social sharing evolved, it never had as much impact.  I love that I can bookmark and tag away and no matter what computer I am on, where I am at, I always have my favorites right there.  Not to mention a quick and easy place to find all of those links I want to remember.  Like a recent blog post, a webinar invite, or even an article.
2. Picnik: Again, marketers are creative people and we have to be able to design in a pinch.  I can design when needed, but when I want something quick, simple, and easy…I choose picnik!  Especially for those projects you want to spice up a bit without a lot of brain power.  Their interface is very easy to use and again like any web-based app….you can access your pics anywhere.
3. Feedburner: By now I am sure you are thinking, what rock has she been under?  Not so much….remember, I am a busy marketer juggling it all A-Z!  I need quick, I need simple, and I need to get back to it when in a pinch.  While I have always known and loved feedburner for the RSS capabilities, but I just recently learned of the ability to embed an email form in your blog as well.  And then the metrics, very cool that I will have all of these tools all within my Google platform everyday.
4. Google Apps: I don’t want to sound like a Google devotee because like so many other marketers I have always been bewildered by them just trying to improve my search.  However, at Delivra, we all work from Google Apps for everything and while I’m sure the cost savings are huge compared to any desktop software, I am impressed with the various applications from mail, calendar, sites (which we love!), Documents, you name it.  Now I know it isn’t perfect, but the accessibility and the fact that it doesn’t crash once a day has me sold.
5. SmartSheet: This is probably the only app that many of you may not know about.  I love SmartSheet as I am a constant list maker.  How else do I keep track of the thousands of things I do everyday?  In any event, the application helps me manage multiple to-do’s where I can rank them by priority, share with others, make edits anywhere, print or access wherever I might be.

There you have it, five simple tools that keep me from succumbing to information overload.  If you are a time starved marketer or simply time starved, incorporate some of these tools into your bag of tricks and you will be able to manage the load with the greatest of ease.  If not, consider them new hyperlinks to what you already know and love.

This may be a repeat post… but I really need to emphasize this. I’ve watched several companies stumble all over social media strategies. They eventually abandoned it altogether. The question I couldn’t get them to answer was why had they attempted in the first place?

I like to think of social media as an amplifier… an incredibly powerful amplifier. If you have a solid foundation of public relations and marketing, and are covering both acquisition and retention effectively, your great work will really stand out as you begin to engage and build a reputation online. If you have a mediocre PR and Marketing strategy, social media could destroy it.

My 5 Myths of Social Media Marketing

1. Social media replaces a website. You still need a place to capture leads and draw attention to your company’s products or services.
2. Social media replaces email marketing. Email is a push method that informs customers and prospects when you need them to be contacted. In fact, Social Media requires much more email communication to keep social site users coming back. Think about all the email you get from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter!
3. Social media’s high usage means it’s a great place to advertise. Social media is not something to throw ads on top of, it’s something to be communicated from within. Too many companies pour money into banner ads and textual advertising in social media sites where the users have no intent of ever purchasing.
4. Social media impact can’t be measured. Social media impact can be measured, it’s simply more difficult to measure the impact. You’ll need to employ a robust analytics package – perhaps with a social media integration, or figure out how to effectively deploy code from your current analytics package to capture leads and conversions from social media.
5. Social media is simple, you just do it. NO! Social media is not simple. Imagine being at a lunch party and speaking over your products and services with a prospect. He smiles, you smile, he asks a question, you say all the right answers… you pay for lunch… you grab his trust. Online, you never see them coming, you never know where they’ve been, you don’t know anything other than the fact that they’re probably more knowledgeable than you are.

   Social media is building trust with someone that you may have never have met. It’s difficult, it takes time… it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Social media fails many companies because they underestimate the resources and time it takes to build the momentum. They don’t realize that it’s a long-term investment, not a short-term strategy.

   With a strategy, you can explode out the gate and grow your business well beyond expectations. Without it, you may wind up throwing in the towel.

This is the reason why Southwest Airlines and Zappos can succeed with Social Media, but United Airlines and DSW aren’t doing as well. Southwest Airlines and Zappos were fantastic, customer-focused companies before social media evolved to this point. United Airlines may never be able to adopt a social media strategy given their legalize and stodgy leadership.

As a panelist today at Real Estate BarCamp Indianapolis, you could see the range of agencies and brokers right in the room. Some, like good friend and client Paula Henry (both Roundpeg and DK New Media help her), are sprinting so far ahead that they’ve actually cancelled all traditional media and are fully online. Paula’s problem isn’t how to get leads… it’s how to keep her social media strategy at the pace it is at while working all of her leads.

Others in the room were still working behind the curve… no twitter, no facebook, no online persona, no search engine optimization, no blogging, etc. It’s not too late for these folks to build an effective online marketing strategy… but it is too early to have them jump into a Social Media strategy in my humble opinion.

Newcomers need to learn how to walk before they ride. They need an effective web site that can attract traffic and provides contact information to engage with the realtor. They need to research and utilize keywords that are have impact in the region they serve – including neighborhoods, zip codes, cities, counties, school districts, etc. They need to employ an email newsletter to keep in touch with leads and previous clients. They need to deploy Real Estate mobile solutions to replace the fliers they keep stuffing in front of properties.

Social media can provide an incredible volume of leads into your sales funnel… but you must have the sales funnel in place, measuring the impact of the results, and regularly working your marketing program to nurture and capture leads and customers. Social media comes next… amplifying an incredibly effective marketing program and beginning to ripple out as authority and transparency grows.