Brent's Social CRM Blog

Salesforce-to-Salesforce: Community Comes to CRM, But Not To The Small Business Customer

Back in October when I was interviewed by Marshall Lager for the CRM magazine story on what's coming in 2008, I said:

"Social networking will continue to be big. It is absolutely critical for CRM vendors to reach out and roll their own social network and trackbacks, or to work with Facebook, LinkedIn, and the rest."

I can't believe I just lifted a my own quote. But hey, why not - after all I did say it. Anyways it really didn't take Negrodamus, to figure that one out. (SIDEBAR: that was the last time you will ever hear me refer to myself as the Negrodamus of CRM).

Well this week Salesforce.com announced Salesforce-to-Salesforce, a service that allows Salesforce.com customers to share information like leads and other data in social network. Once again Salesforce remains a few steps ahead of the CRM pack, issuing in the Social CRM era. Needless to say I think this is a good move. I would have said it to be a great move, except for one thing - the $1,200 annual price tag it comes with. Not to mention that you have to be at the Enterprise, Unlimited or Platinum edition to even be able to fork your $1,200 over. Which I think will effectively limit the adoption of this to mid-size and enterprise level companies. I echo ZD Net's Phil Wainewright when he asks "has everyone at Salesforce.com forgotten about network effects? Or is it just the mechanics of viral adoption that they don't get?"

Hey Salesforce, what about the little guys? We need social crm just as much as the big guys do...actually we need it more. So it's a real shame that we won't be getting it from you, at least not right now. But hey this is an easy fix if you just make it more accessible to the masses. At least it's not a big social misstep like Facebook Beacon.

Technorati : crm, facebook, salesforce.com, social crm, social networking

Me, Diane D. and Anil Dash Talk Blogging

Webex community leader Diane Davidson and her folks have posted the third part of a series of podcasts on how small businesses and how they can use Web 2.0 and social media to be found by those looking for what they provide. This is the last in the series and we were fortunate to have Six Apart's VP of Evangelism Anil Dash join us. The conversation is about 15 minutes but it seemed more like 5. We had too much fun talking about this stuff!

Check it out and let me know what you think. And if you like it there's more content like this at http://community.webex.com/user. Thanks again Diane for allowing me to be apart of this, and thanks to Anil for joining us on this one.

Technorati : anil dash, blogging, six apart, small business, webex

I Have My iTV,,,Yes America Its Come To This

A few weeks back BusinessWeek had a cover story on the rise of internet tv. Yesterday was the debut of my new Internet tv show on The Profitability Channel. It's called Tech Talk and its definitely still in its formative stages. It won't take you long to figure that one out if you check it out, as I fumble all over the place at the beginning trying to talk, flip powerpoint slides, listen to my guest (we'll get to him in a minute) and listen to the production folks in my ear piece.

Since I've been interviewing folks every week for the past year I didn't think I would have any issues with that, and I didn't for the most part. My initial downfall was trying to work the slides while interviewing somebody. I couldn't do it....which really irks me as I'm a pretty good multitasker. But my biggest mistake was thinking that flipping the slides would be as easy as it is with powerpoint, but the software we're using to present the slides for the tv show isn't quite as easy, and I just couldn't do it while trying to talk and listen. Thank goodness the production folks bailed me out and took that over. In fact we had to work out a system for me to let them know when to flip the slides, so I started giving them a "thumbs up" while off camera to let them know to move to the next slide.

The next trick was being able to listen and "conversate" with my guest, while listening and communicating with the production folks. That was tougher than I thought, because I was really trying to listen to my guest so I could ask relevant questions. But I also didn't want to look distracted or like I was bored, because I wasn't.

With all that said, I think the first edition of Tech Talk was successful. And I credit my guest, Jeff Stibel, for helping me make it through the maiden voyage. Jeff is the president of Website Pros, and he was the perfect guest for the topic of the first show, Building an Effective Presence on the Web. I knew Jeff would be great because he knows his stuff and is a really engaging speaker, which I learned of when I had him on my radio show earlier this year. So I needed at least one certainty going into the show and Jeff didn't let me down. Thanks Jeff!

So folks if you do get a chance to check out the show, Building an Effective Presence on the Web, let me know what you think. Eventually this will be an call-in/ instant messaging show, so I need all the constructive criticism I can get my hands on.

FYI... you will be asked to enter your name and email address to view the program. The folks at the station don't spam you, they just want to get a sense for who's crazy enough to watch me.

Thanks!

Technorati : internet tv, jeff stibel, tech talk, website pros

Podcast Series Conversation with Webex's Diane Davidson - Part One

It's been a long time in between posts.....not good.....I know. But I wasn't just being lazier than usual. I just got back from a great trip to Silicon Valley and plan to do a series of blogs on what I did, who I visited and what I think some of the things I found out will mean to small businesses in the near and short term.

One of the main reasons for heading west was to join Diane Davidson, who leads the customer community development efforts for Webex, in a three part series on how small business folks can build "web cred" and have potential customers find them when they're looking for products and services they provide. I had an absolutely great time with Diane and her team member Holly Valdez, discussing a whole bunch of stuff around Web 2.0 and how small businesses can jump in and put it to use. I also pulled in Anil Dash of Six Apart to join us on the last podcast.

Webex is a great example of how businesses of any size can embrace Web 2.0 to create an atmosphere for collaborating and communicating with people you may want to do business with, and not just throwing Marketing 1.0 messaging at us in a fancy new way. If you get a chance and are interested in a great example of how to put together a virtual community, check out http://community.webex.com when you get a chance. There's a lot of great information, most of which is not marketing specific, but really good information about how to use SaaS to reach more people, and reach them in a more comfortable, collaborative way.

Below is the first in the series. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Google Test, slideshare.net, small business, web 2.0, webex

Technorati :

Will OpenSocial Do Better Than GoogleTalk?

I'm a member of the Social Network Portability Google group for about a month now and there has been a pretty steady flow of exchanges that whole time. But the focus over the last two days has been nothing but OpenSocial, Google's new set of APIs that will let developers create applications that will work with social network sites like MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster, Ning and a host of others. Also joining the cause is Salesforce.com, Oracle, Six Apart...and a host of others.

The promise behind this move, besides slowing the Facebook freight train that Microsoft just jumped on board, is to allow members of different networks to communicate and collaborate without having to join a new network. Allowing developers to create apps that can work with multiple networks could really make it easier to "come together", and Google has reached out to some powerful partners to increase the chances of success. It all sounds good at the moment, but....

I just remember there was a good amount of buzz when Google announced Google Talk, the instant messenger they built on open standards. The hope was that Google would force the major players to cooperate and make their instant message apps talk to each other so that you wouldn't have to have an account for each service so that you can talk to all your buddies. There has been some movement here but not the radical change I was hoping for...at least not yet.

I think OpenSocial has a chance to change things a lot quicker than Google Talk has. For one Google has reached out and got a number of major players on board right from the beginning. And these guys are different than the monsters of the instant messaging game - AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft. At the time Google Talk came out these guys were trying to be THE winner and force people to choose one...in other words no playing together, they each wanted to be THE CHOSEN.

But in this new age of Web 2.0 and collaboration, maybe there's hope that Google and its many partners will pull this off. Maybe Facebook (and their new buds at Microsoft) will open it up a bit as well. I hope so because I really don't need to join another social network just because a few folks I know are on it, or because it has a nice function but no one I know is on it. I'd just like to reach the people I want to reach regardless of the networks we belong to. Could you imagine if a Verizon customer couldn't call a Sprint customer? How about a Microsoft Outlook user not being able to email someone with Lotus Notes? Let's just hope we're on the right path here.

Technorati : facebook, google, google talk, opensocial

Why Small Businesses Aren't Feeling Web 2.0 - Part Two

My second blog post over at Small Business Trends was published today and I was pleasantly surprised by the discussion it kicked up. It was based on a recent study by Bredin Business Information on how small and mid-size businesses have not adopted Web 2.0 in large numbers as of yet. I admit to being surprised to a certain extent by their results, as a good number of my business associates are into this stuff in a big way. But I can see many small business people, over the age of 40 with businesses outside of high tech and marketing, have been slow to adopt the Web 2.0 philosophy....and tools.

But as my buddy Paul Greenberg pointed out in his comment to that entry, the small business folks who have bought in to Web 2.0 are true mentors, demonstrating to the big guys as well as other small businesses how these tools along with the right mindset can be extremely successful. They are also benefiting tremendously. And although the survey says that only 14% of SMBs think blogging will be really important over the next 5 years, I'd be very surprised if that's the case. I don't know the ages of the people surveyed but I'd bet the average would have to be over 40. With the average age of first time entrepreneurs coming down, colleges teaching entrepreneurship and social media as part of their curriculum, and a whole new generation being raised with all this stuff, I think traditional small businesses will adapt, and adopt quicker. And once the big companies begin using these tools for what they were intended for, that should speed things along as well.

As a small treat for the readers of this blog, below is a clip of a conversation I had with the editorial director of Bredin Business Information, Stuart Feil. It's the first part of a two part conversation that will air this week on my radio show. It's about 9 minutes, but it's a quick 9 minutes....I think. Enjoy!

Technorati : blogging, small business, trends, web 2.0

Four Good Minutes with Jason Calacanis

I enjoy all the conversations I get to have doing my weekly radio show. We're coming up on our one year anniversary and I can honestly say that we have had no boring guests on so far. But some conversations do stick in my mind longer than some of the others. That's definitely the case with the conversation I recently had with Jason Calacanis. Those of you may know him from being one of the co-founders of Weblogs, which he and his partners sold to AOL back in 2005 for big bank.... meaning somewhere in the neighborhood of $25M-$30M. That's a neighborhood I'd love to live in some day, but I digress....

Now Jason is heading up Mahalo, a human-powered search engine site that hopes to snag a nice piece of search traffic from Google, Yahoo! Microsoft and Ask. He feels by providing better search results in a much more appealing format will suit some web searchers more than the algorithmic approach. While that remains to be seen, one thing that he can share with you from his entrepreneurial track record is what he thinks it takes to be successful. Because our show is only so long I couldn't fit our whole conversation in, but the below clip is so good I wanted to let people check out Jason's take on what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur today.

After hearing this short clip you may want to check out the full conversation by clicking here. He covers a lot of stuff, including why his definition of Web 3.0 has stirred things up. Thanks Jason for the time!

Technorati : entrepreneurship, jason calacanis, mahalo

Lessons on Building a Web 2.0 Business From Guy Kawasaki

I just received the November issue of Entrepreneur magazine. Before going any further let me thank Entrepreneur's Sr. VP and Editorial Director, Rieva Lesonsky, for hooking me up with a complimentary subscription to this must-read publication for anyone serious about going into business. I had the pleasure of interviewing Rieva for my radio show and she was a great guest. Feel free to check out the my conversation with Rieva by clicking here.

Back to business. If you don't subscribe to it, you may want pick up this issue when you get a chance. Besides the usual good stuff that comes in most issues, you should definitely check out the interview with Guy Kawasaki about building a Web 2.0 business. Guy is great about telling like it is without sugar coating anything. Now I would have enjoyed reading this under normal circumstances, but I really got a kick out this because I interviewed Guy for the show around this same subject, and it was like reading transcripts from that conversation. So if you don't get around to reading this, just check out my conversation with Guy right here!

Technorati : entrepreneur magazine, guy kawasaki, tfbs, truemors, web 2.0
Del.icio.us : entrepreneur magazine, guy kawasaki, tfbs, truemors, web 2.0

Walmart on Facebook: May Not Be Welcome But Still A Smart Move

Walmart has been catching flack from the Facebook community for creating a group aimed at generating conversations (and sales) of back-to-school needs for the dorm room. But you have to give them credit. They had to know they were going to get slammed for the most part by the community. Anything that hints of big business usually does, but that didn't stop them from doing it, which is good. It's better than the weak attempt they made before of promoting a supposedly independent blog site that ended up being funded by Walmart.

It takes guts to do what Walmart did and will take even more guts to stick it out and dialog in an open, uncontrolled forum rather than resort to trying to control the conversation through trickery, or ignoring it altogether. It may not be the easiest policy, but it's the best one if you truly want to be apart of the collaborative culture that Wikinomics is built upon.

Technorati : facebook, social networking, walmart, web 2.0
Del.icio.us : facebook, social networking, walmart, web 2.0