Brent's Social CRM Blog

Social CRM, Superstar?

Who could have seen this coming? I know I didn't back in 2007. I mean, it hasn't been that long ago when CRM was still considered a 4-letter word. But here I am sitting in Boston about to go on stage with the likes of Chris Brogan, Paul Greenberg, Michael Thomas and Frank Eliason? To talk about Social CRM? And we're being called.... Rock Stars???

I can't speak for anybody else here, but I'm no Prince. Who am I kidding, I'm not even Milli Vanilli. But it's true, thanks to the fine folks at Radian6. Social CRM has come a LONG way in a relatively short time. Don't get me wrong, we're still in the infancy stages, but it's really on the map and interest in this area seems to be growing exponentially. Which is why it was kind of ironic that I only heard CRM mentioned once during the first day of the Enterprise 2.0 conference also going on here this week. But the one who mentioned it was Jascha Franklin-Hodge of Blue State Digital, the technology folks behind BarackObama.com and MyBarackObama.com. In fact he said that CRM was the foundation for much of their social media success... not to mention the success of a little project I (and my colleague David Bullock) like to call Barack 2.0.

The campaign's success not only raised the interest in social media that drove Oprah (and others) to Twitter, but I think it's also a key driver in the interest in social CRM. And if you are even just a little curious about this stuff, maybe you should join me and the other Rockstars of Social CRM tonight at 8pm ET for a fun conversation with a great group of people.

To join in the festivities use this link: http://radian6rockstars.eventbrite.com/.

I'm still prepping for tonight's event. Check out my preparation materials:

Technorati : chris brogan, frank eliason, michael thomas, paul greenberg, prince, radian6, run dmc, rush, social crm
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How to Use Social Media to Attract Customers - A Hubspot Joint

I'm pretty psyched for a number of reasons. I'm doing small business technology bootcamp at next month's Black Enterprise Entrepreneur's Conference. I did the same last year, when 1500 entrepreneurs attended. This year, even with all of the economic challenges they're expecting the same kind of crowd. And I just heard Spike Lee will be a keynote, so it would be very cool if I had a chance to meet him.

I'm also psyched because Paul Greenberg and I just "cut" the latest installment of the CRM Playaz. You can check it out over on Paul's ZDNet blog. We riff on a report that finds social media does not help B2B salespeople close deals. We also talk (badly) about celebrities on Twitter. But one thing we were happy to announce is our first sponsor - Hubspot.com. I've known these guys pretty much since their inception, which makes it special to see what they've accomplished over the past 2+ years creating their internet marketing platform. I've used Hubspot for Technology For Business Sake, and shortly we'll be putting up the CRM Playaz site on Hubspot as well. Thanks guys!

Speaking of Hubspot, they've invited me to participate in one of their free webinars tomorrow - How to Use Social Media to Attract Customers. I'll talk about how I've used social media, as well as how you can integrate it into a more traditional CRM strategy - in other words I'm talking Social CRM!

They have put on some great webinars in the past. You don't even have to take my word for it, just check out the Twitter stream of folks who signed up for this one:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=hubspot+webinar

This has nothing to do with me, but everything to do with the kind of content these guys crank out on a consistent basis. So a big thanks to the Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, Mike Volpe and "the crew" for inviting me to join them.

Here are the details:

Title: How to Use Social Media to Attract Customers

Date: Tuesday April 14th

Time: 2pm ET

Cost: Nada

Registration Link: http://bit.ly/hubreg

Hope to see you there!

Technorati : hubspot, social crm, social media, spike lee
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CRM Playaz Preview - Cuil...Isn't

As me and Paul "The Dean of CRM" Greenberg get ramped up to do our show (The CRM Playaz) he comes on Technology For Business Sake to help me out. We use his appearances as test runs to work things out. Today we recorded a segment for an upcoming show that was way to much fun to wait until that's ready. So here's a 5-minute clip for you to check. We "riff" on the new search engine Cuil. To put it mildly, Cuil, pronounced like cool, isn't really. Just check out the results that came back on a search i did on my name:

Yeah, you're seeing this right. The links are all about me, but look at these pictures. Phillip Michael Thomas? They got a picture of Ricardo "F." Tubbs next to a link about me. NOTE: for all of you under 30, there was a show in the 80s where cops ran around in pastel colored zoot suits, "roughing" people up, called Miami Vice. Just be thankful you weren't around to see this.

Now I know why they have this picture there, because my CRM Essentials co-founder's name is Michael Thomas. With all that said, Ricardo "F." Tubbs??? And it looks like a picture from his days on Miami Vice at that. Honestly, is this guy still with us? If he is he must be in the witness protection program or something, because I haven't seen him since he and Crockett split up.

Besides the pictures, and not one of them are even close, the results are terrible, with most of these links being old. I mean I had forgotten about the stuff Cuil returned on me. And I wasn't alone, as my friend Jeff Brathwaite found out early this morning. Paul. take it away:

Cuil, this really ain't cool. I guess I'll just have to be happy being Google's King of Social CRM!

Technorati : crm playaz, cuil, google, miami vice, ricardo f tubbs
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Social CRM: Google Says I'm #1... For Now

I've gotta make this quick because I literally don't know how long this is going to last. Thanks to all of you who've been linking, commenting, digging and stumbling, my blog ranks #1 on Google's result list for the term social crm. I made it to the top for the most part on the post I did about Social CRM in Pictures and Words.

But who knows, by the time you actually read this and do the search I could be knocked out of top 1000. But, thanks to my friend David Bullock's great suggestion, I have the screen shot to prove that I did stand at the top of the mountain for one brief shining moment:

In fact my article on social CRM for SmallBizTrends.com is holding down the #4 slot as well. This is very cool, but I really don't expect this to last, as the term is gaining in popularity, which will drive a lot more content on this topic than there is at the moment. And, although I will probably lose my title to the big guys, I actually welcome this because it will mean social CRM will be taking hold in the "socialprise", as the folks from InsideView would say - more on them in the very near future.

So thanks to all of you who helped me to the top of the heap! Oh yeah, if you prefer the term CRM 2.0, my buddy Paul Greenberg is holding down the top spot for that. I guess that means The CRM Playaz rule! Not bad since we haven't even done a show yet. Damn... I'm not #1 anymore. That didn't take long.

Technorati : crm 2.0, crm playaz, google, social crm
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CRM Playaz Preview - CRM Is Not Dead

Last week was something else in the CRM world. Salesforce for Google Apps, the interesting response from Zoho as the announced their new Zoho CRM Enterprise product (will have something on that later) and Microsoft coming out with CRM Online. I know the official announcement hit today but I found out about it last week. One of the other announcements that may have been overlooked by the masses was Infusion Software name change to InfusionSoft. And along with the name change, InfusionSoft now is positioning themselves as an eMarketing tools provider. And they also came out with a new marketing slogan.... CRM is Dead.

I like the products InfusionSoft put out. I liked the products when the company was still called Infusion Software. I like the people even more than the products they create. And I really like their passion for small business that was on display when I had the opportunity to speak at the Infusion user conference last month. But I have to say that the whole CRM is Dead thing sort of sounds like a ripoff of Salesforce.com's Software is Dead campaign.

We all know that CRM has not been as successful as it should be. But it's been getting closer because the products are easier to use, more accessible, more affordable and faster to get up and running with. But the biggest reason why CRM is doing better is that people finally see that it's not about technology. It's always been about people (customers, employees, partners, mgmt, etc.), but technology was the most obvious scapegoat. And as CRM seeps more and more into the business culture of companies, and the technology moves into its proper place (the background), CRM will grow in acceptance and success.

Now I'll be the first to say the term CRM is dated and comes with a checkered past. But it's a term that entered rehab and has made it back from the brink. And people seem to understand the basics of CRM - finding, catching and keeping good customers. Marketing, whether there's an "e" on the front or not, is definitely a huge part of the CRM equation. And, truth be told, marketing automation has typically been the weak link in CRM suites, particularly at the small business product levels. So I applaud InfusionSoft for creating a compelling suite of tools that include a robust marketing automation component. Along with other components like affiliate tracking and ecommerce capabilities, InfusionSoft has made good contributions to helping CRM live on. That's why it's a bit confusing to hear them pronounce it's dead.

My buddy Paul Greenberg had an even stronger take on this which you can read on his blog. InfusionSoft's CEO Clate Mask has a good response in the comments section you should check out as well. And as we get closer to breaking out The CRM Playaz show, here's a clip of Paul and I discussing InfusionSoft's move on my show:

Technorati : crm, crm playaz, emarketing, infusionsoft, paul greenberg, small business
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Barack and the Audacity of CRM

You gotta love Google alerts. I'm assuming most of you have them set up on your name, company name and keywords you're interested in. How else would I have known that I would be included in an article about how Barack Obama could make the history books if he becomes our next president. And no, not because he's black, but because he could become the nation's first CRM president according to CRM Buyer's Ericka Morphy. We've all heard about how well run his campaign is, and that may have something to do with how his organization is using RightNow Technology's applications to reach out and engage people. Check this article out if you get a chance.

Where do I fit in to all this? Ericka included a blurb from my blog entry on The CRM Playaz at the bottom of the Obama piece. Hmmm, maybe the first CRM president would make a good guest for the show. Then again, given the still-tarnished image CRM has with some businesses he may not want to run on that platform.

Technorati : barack obama, crm, crm playaz, rightnow technoogies
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