Yesterday community platform vendor Lithium Technologies announced it was buying social media monitoring service provider Scout Labs, which sent the Social CRM world into overdrive with conversation... and rightfully so. The move makes a lot of sense from my perspective, as social listening, analytics and community development are a few of the hot topics in the space right now. So Lithium's purchase gives them an opportunity to integrate a few key pieces that are definitely "top of mind" at the moment - and for the foreseeable future.
Here a few links to some nice write-ups from around the web that give great insight to what this means to Lithium (and Scout Labs), and to the Social CRM space:
I recently had Lithium's VP of Product Marketing Phil Soffer as a guest on TFBS to talk about the acquisition, what it means to Lithium's customers, and how the two technologies will be brought together. You can check out the conversation by clicking the by using the player below, or by clicking here to download the mp3 file.
The social customer is everywhere - leaving their footprints as a roadmap to what they think, how they feel, who they trust and what the like...and love...and hate.... and detest. And they're leaving these social footprints at an exponentially accelerating rate as new sites and services are making it easy for them to do so. And as friction is being removed from connecting and content creation, the amount of sentiment/behavioral information social customers will create for us about themselves will make it easier for us to understand what drives them. But we will only be able to reach that level of understanding (that mythical 360 degree view...) if we are able to collect it in ways that make it easy for us to analyze it.
The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania has taken up the challenge to help companies take this challenge on as part of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI). According to the Steve Ennen, the managing director of the initiative, it is the world's first research center, focusing specifically on individual level data, generated off all emerging technology platforms, and analog platforms. The initiative's goal is to influence decision-making across several industries, and to help companies understand how to monetize interactive data that they and others have collected.
Started in August 2008, WIMI was launched with the support of a $1 million gift from alumnus Arthur Bilger, and brings together a global network of researchers to work with their corporate partners to uncover the real insights about individual customers - and customer segments.
I recently had Steve on my show to talk about WIMI and the need for companies to take a hard look at social footprints being left behind by their customers. We also discuss the importance of exposing Wharton students to this process, and the impact it will have on the future of businesses to embrace the social customer.
In fact WIMI was brought to the attention of my colleague and Barack 2.0 co-author David Bullock. David was contacted (via Twitter) by Wharton MBA students who were working on a research paper on how the Obama campaign leveraged technology and social media to win the presidency. The interaction between David and the students led to our book being a trusted, referenced source for their research paper. It also led to us including that research paper in an updated edition of our Barack 2.0 book.
I recently had a briefing from the folks at Helpstream. And while I didn't get hands-on with it, what I saw of it I liked. The integration of community functionality, social marketing and traditional CRM looks to be on target. But I'll reserve final thoughts on the service until I've had a chance to really check it out.
I don't have to reserve my opinion of Helpstream CEO Bob Warfield. I recently had a chance to speak with Bob and enjoyed getting his take on where social CRM is going. Bob shared his vision of what social CRM is, and the importance for companies to develop and implement social business processes. He also talks about the social CRM manifesto Helpstream put out on the company blog.
I totally agree with Bob on the social business process front. It's what differentiates social CRM from just hanging out on social sites and seeing how many followers you can accumulate. I like what Bob had to say, and the direction Helpstream seems to be headed in. So check out my conversation with Bob below, or download the mp3 here.
I just checked the forecast for Colorado Springs. Lows in the 20s.... I mean I hear it's beautiful out there and I'm looking forward to it, but lows in the 20s? Really?
I'm headed out to Colorado Springs to check out the RightNow Technologies user conference. It's my first time going to a RightNow event so I'm curious to see what takes place there. I'm also curious to see what they've done with HiveLive in terms of integrating the social network platform with their core CRM functionality.
One of the folks I hope to catch up to is Dave Vap - RightNow's VP of Products. I had an opportunity to talk with Dave just after the HiveLive acquisition was announced. He gave me his take on why RightNow made the move, what it will mean to their customers, and how they will help customers implement social crm strategies. You can check the conversation out below, or download the mp3.
When you think of hot spots for social media activity Atlanta usually doesn't jump immediately to most people's minds. But there really is a lot going on down here. And while there have some good social media events in the ATL, we still don't have that signature event that really puts Atlanta on the social media map.
That all might be changing with New Media Atlanta, taking place on September 25th at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. NMATL will be an all day event very heavily focused on professional folks looking at social media from a business perspective. And to show how serious they are about making this a signature event, Chris Brogan is coming to town to speak!
In addition to Chris there will be a number of knowledgeable speakers to round out the day, including my buddy Desiree Scales of Bella Web Design. Desiree and Matt Fagioli - one of the event organizers - came down to the studios to record a conversation about the conference. They do a great job of giving me the scoop on what to expect for the day. All I can say is that I'm excited to be one of the speakers at what I think will be the first of many years for this cool event. And I'm not just saying this because the after party is going to be at a bowling alley. Did I mention my bowling prowess from back in the day? Time for me to get the old "soup bone" ready cuz I'm about to throw-down like I did back in the day!
Ok... let me calm down - bowling always gets to me... So check out the short conversation here (or download the mp3):
To learn more about the New Media Atlanta go here:
I hope to see you there... with bowling shoes on! Oh and if you need even more reason to go to NMATL, check out Desiree singing about why you should go:
Short and sweet on this one, just like Honest Abe did.
For my monthly column over at Inc.'s technology site I wrote something a little different than usual - The Character of Our Content. I thought of this because I get asked quite a bit about how much content is required to catch people's attention on the web. Or how long should posts be, how many times should I post, do I need funny pictures and videos? Many people focus on the mechanics of content automation and distribution. Others on worry more about the icing than they do the cake. Still others get discouraged because they perceive the investment in time will be too great.
But I really believe that the #1 most important thing in building your web cred, winning friends and influencing today's social customer is quality. It can be long or short, video or audio, daily or monthly, just make it good. And make it true to who you are and what you do.
And one of the absolute best examples of quality having an immeasurable impact in a few words is Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Here it is below in its entirety, all 269 words:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition thatall men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate...we can not consecrate...we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Short, sweet, powerful and everlasting... in under 300 words. Quality will outlast quantity every time. It helps those looking to find the content of our true character. So take a lesson from Abe the next time you're thinking about this stuff.
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 CRMtonight at 8pm ET for a fun conversation with a great group of people.
Alex and I had a really interesting conversation where he shared his take on what the semantic web is and what it means to us. He also talks about how Glue brings the network(s) to the individual, allowing us to congregate, collaborate and communicate around things we're interested in - be it a movie, book, restaurant or anything else we're interested in.
As the amount of information (and people) continues to grow exponentially, the ramifications for this kind approach to social networking has the potential of presenting us with information in a much more efficient way. So check out the conversation with Alex below, or feel free to download the mp3 by clicking here.
The social CRM conversation has gone to an all-new level over the last couple of weeks. It seems to have caught the attention over everyone lately, which is a far cry from 2007 when I started writing about it.
But now we're starting to see some real movement in terms of actual products and services aimed at helping businesses strategically use "social stuff" to create meaningful relationships with those turning to the web for help. Oracle has created several social CRM products to enable sales organizations within the enterprise to more effectively collaborate with each other - and with external partners - to improve the sales process. And other CRM vendors, along with third party developers, are beginning to create links to their apps/services from some of the popular social sites.
But deep integration between CRM applications and public/private social networks is beginning to take shape. A few weeks back at Microsoft Convergence, Microsoft and social network platform provider Neighborhood America (NA) announced the integration between Dynamics CRM and Elevate - NA's enterprise social network platform. This partnership is a part of Microsoft's Gov 2.0 public sector initiatives.
As Paul Greenberg said over on his ZDNet blog, this integration isn't the only one, but it is a compelling one. It's compelling because new community members creating a user profile on the Elevate platform side will have a new contact record automatically created on the Dynamics CRM side. And any update a community member makes to to their profile will also carryover to the contact record.
Having this kind of connection allows you to associate activities performed by community members on the social networking side with their contact records in the CRM database. But this is not part of the integration,as contact-level information flows into Dynamics CRM from NA, while activity level data does not. Right now that would mean pulling this information from two separate data sources - NA's social networking data store and the Dynamics CRM data store. It probably also means needing a data-append service on the CRM side to fill out the missing pieces of information needed to really understand who these individuals are. This is because you're not likely to get all the profile info you'll need from folks creating a profile on your community site, who'll typically fill out the least amount of info required of them - at least until they reach a certain level of comfort.
So we're moving slowly but surely in the right direction. But we're still in the very early stages of this whole social CRM thing. So check out a conversation I had with Microsoft Strategic Alliances Manager Amir Capriles, and my good friend Michael Thomas - Neighborhood America's Director of CRM/Social Media, as we discuss this partnership. We talk about why both sides thought it was time for this kind of integration, how it works, and what it means to the end users - in this case citizens receiving services from different levels of government. They also talk about the public sector idea bank Microsoft is rolling out built with NA's "idea-floating" product - Reveal. Click on the player below to hear the conversation or download the mp3 file.
David Bullock and I are really appreciative to those who attended are somewhat impromptu (put together in a few days) webinar on how Barack Obama's social moves can be a guide for small businesses. The feedback we've received has truly been overwhelming.
Many people who couldn't make, as well as many who did, have been asking if there is a recording that we can make public. Below are links to the full webinar, broken up into two parts:
We'd like to emphasize the focus of the webinar is not on politics, but on the impact that social media can have, if used strategically. We think there are some nice nuggets small business folks can take away from the tools and strategies the Obama campaign employed to build a grassroots initiative that engaged millions of people - many of which who had never participated before.
Thanks again. And be on the lookout for a follow-up!
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