So accidents happen and will continue to happen but companies have to implement a proactive approach to damage control and information dissemination.

So the approach Campbell Soup Brand has currently is the norm, give the Establishment Number “EST 4k” and a “Use By date between June 2010 and December 2011” manufactured between 2008 and June 2010? Uh-Oh! That literally opens up a lot of speculation in my mind. Good to know that it was discovered through a routine but is that like a random drug test? Gulp!

There is also a (866)495-3774 Campbell’s Hotline and a number to the company’s Director of Corporate Communications, really? Good luck with that!

Companies today have to anticipate and implement a Social Media plan to deal with this type of issue, not just when something like this happens but as an ongoing strategy. Look at the latest online buzz and trending today to understand how fast this moves. I can assure you that it will move much faster than a toll free line interactions. Online is “TOLL FREE” and not controlled by the company.

Here are a couple of ways situations like this can be addressed in Social Media Channels.

• The fastest and most effective method of communication is online, know where your industry, brand and competition conversations are happening through social media monitoring.
• Implement ways to listen and engage this audience on an ongoing basis just not in crisis mode.
• Have a strategy and crisis team ready to address incidents fueled by knowing where to place information online and the channels of distribution.
• Leverage Twitter, YouTube and other Social Media Channels to educate, distribute and mitigate the brushfire mentality ASAP.
• Integrate into your website and all channels of marketing, sales and support.
• Be prepared to listen and learn from the good, bad and indifferent response to regain trust and subsequent communication with your audience.

Again, accidents happen but in this online age we are firmly implanted in having a plan to know your online presence, using the intelligence to reach out to this audience during the good and bad times will further extend their trust, loyalty and advocacy.

Beanie Weenie are you listening?

My latest escapade drew several lines to what is constantly being discussed in the definitions of Social CRM. This is not about defining it but more of my personal experience and how it depicts how the Social Audience (prospects, leads, customers, partners suppliers) interact with brands. Actually, I will put the Social Audience this context; anyone along the lines of a “stakeholder” that a company depends on for its success.

In the Social Audience, it is about me and my actions are a true depiction of what  2006 Time Magazine’s Person of the Year: You or in this particular case me and my experience relates to “Social CRM.” The point to remember is just because the audience has a perceived ownership of the a conversation it does not me companies cannot be a part of it but they have to constantly listen and know when to engage. There still has to be a solid foundation of traditional CRM as Paul Greenberg’s post a few weeks back expressed in Blocking and Tackling: Not Football, CRM.

So here is my experience and process of Social CRM shared with you in the CRM foundational manner based on a Garmin Forerunner 110 GPS watch ( Black with Red Stripe) I received this week.

My intent it to follow along the traditional CRM approach with a “Social CRM” point of view to explain ways companies can leverage multiple channels and integrate into their own People, Process and Technology Strategy.

Follow me ok?

Marketing:

1. I saw the watch in an ad in Runner’s World magazine several weeks ago on the latest Garmin GPS running watch and there was a link given for more information.
2. I went to site where I learned about the features and images of the watch; the only hitch for me was it would not be released for purchase until the end of this month.
3. I set up a Google Alert to track all that was being discussed about the watch pre, during and post launch in anxious anticipation of owning one.
4. I received a number of daily alerts that I had to sift through on articles, blogs, and comparisons to their current line and competitor watches.

Sales:

1. Through the alerts I went through the process of determining my own “Sentiment” which came out to be a positive one.
2. The opportunity to view multiple images and the ability to read blog posts from writers who were given early access to the watch and forum chatter further enticed my intent to purchase.
3. There were also several videos explaining the use, set up and functionality which steadily added to my confidence in the choice to purchase. I was also able to download a pdf of the user manual.
4. My next step was to find who would carry it, how reputable the dealer would be and what was the best price on it I could find.
5. I went through all of the due diligence and purchased it through a site RoadRunner Sports that I had been a sporadic customer of for a number of years which also gave me a nice VIP discount.

Support:

1. Initial support that I needed was more of how to set up the watch and synch it with a My Garmin Connect website that allowed me to upload via USB all of my workouts for a visual map and graph of my route and time, pace, distance as well as heart rate.
2. At the site Garmin also pointed me to a Plug-in that would allow me to use the online tracking.
3. I signed up, and synchronized without any problems and I reviewed the FAQ about the device and set-up.

I took my first run with the watch and I must say that it exceeded all of my expectations. It had unbelievable accuracy and ease of use.

I have described my experience but wanted to also share with you some ideas or lessons learned that companies can instill in their strategies to extend their traditional CRM strategy in the Social Realm.

Too many companies look at Social Media as being a separate entity but as I always say you cannot have a conversation or strategy pertaining to traditional CRM that does not have a Social angle.

If you look closer you will also see that the Marketing, Sales and Support lanes are all intertwined and lean on each other in sort of a full circle process. There is a large amount of crossover in those lanes can point and speak to the Social Audience.

While I had a very good experience I wanted to add some feedback to help companies further extend as well as connect their Social Strategy.

Lessons that can further enhance the experience:

• Garmin could benefit by adding a specific lead source code, or Mobile Text component to further connect, engage and segment their audience because the Social Audience is also a Mobile Audience. I see so many magazine ads that only give a website, usually in small print. Audiences have the ability, desire and tools to engage instantly.
• By adding the above it the effectiveness and ROI of the ad as well as instantly engagement for current and subsequent campaigns and communications.
• Do not force your audience to drink all of the online data through a fire hose of information; provide them a straw through precise Social Media Monitoring tools and practices.
• As you can see I have become an advocate and potential influencer, will Garmin find me? How do you find your brand influencers? Because of my satisfaction I will want to share my thoughts and ideas with others.
• I tweeted about ordering my watch and used the wording Garmin Forerunner 110 looking for an early engagement and did not receive any response. Companies need to leverage the power of Twitter, if someone has a problem which could be instant frustration or questions most will express it via Twitter. Are you monitoring this chatter? Can you engage?
• Integrate your marketing, sales and support channels through Twitter to engage your audience and invoke an early alert process to Marketing, Sales and Support inquiries.

If you are not looking at your current strategy and drawing Social CRM lines to all people, processes and technology you are not being effective in the conversations and engagements required to grow and maintain your Social Audience.

It is now time for me to run and feed my addiction.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

I had the opportunity last year to facilitate some sessions with The Wharton School of Business BA and MBA classes on the topic of Social Media meet CRM. This lead to an invite to be a panelist at The Wharton Interactive Media Initiative sharing the stage with Eric Bradlow, Co-Director of Wharton Interactive Media Initiative and Professor of Marketing, Statistics, and Education at Wharton and Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics.

It was at that event that I was introduced to Mike Lewis, graduate of Wharton and ILD Corp Chairman and Dennis Stoutenburgh,  ILD Corp President. We sat down and expanded the panel discussion on the impact of Social Media and the leveraging of the collective voices of the social audience to align a company’s Social CRM strategy and online reputation through monitoring these conversations. ILD Corp. had spent quite a bit of time and resources on this type of initiative and had experienced a great deal of success as well as a solid case study on improving their online reputation and engagement policies.

Armed with this experience I have been working with ILD Corp. on taking their case study and creating a managed Social Media monitoring and strategy solution as a service. The purpose was to combine ILD Corps’ expertise and strategy to other companies wanting to have real-time social media monitoring with Online Reputation Management.

Social Strategy1 was launched this week to provide this service. It provides experienced Social Media Listening Analysts (SMLA) to work with your Marketing, Sales and Support staff to monitor keywords and phrases on your brand to listen, learn and engage in online conversations on behalf of a company’s engagement strategy.

Partnering with Radian6, a leading platform for social media listening and engagement solution coupled with Social Strategy1 managed services can be a valued and much needed solution for companies managing and engaging their online voice.

Econsultancy’s piece on Reputation management to grow in popularity, further expresses the need for companies to implement this type service for their online strategy.

“No man ever listened himself out of a job”  Calvin Coolidge

I am constantly speaking as well as writing about community, how technology has enabled us to expand our reach by finding, creating and staying in touch with people all over the world. My last blog post was about someone in Australia I had never met that taught all that followed her how to live while dying of cancer.

Yesterday I attended the memorial service of a neighbor,  physically around the corner from my house that passed away last week from a lingering heart condition.

I saw Ron a lot driving through the neighborhood in his MGB-GT or his van with the SCUBA stickers on the back. I always waved and smiled as I did yardwork or hung out at the pool with the kids.

I read on the memorial program that he was a private person. For those who know me would not come close to thinking I am just as private. While my smiles are genuine I tend to keep to myself at home. It is even sort of a joke that my wife called me a “closet introvert” because overall I am a very engaging guy but do prefer my solitude.

With that said I wish I had gotten to know Ron Kent Galon more. Yes, he was older than me but I learned yesterday we both shared a passion for water, SCUBA diving, sport cars, reading history and jazz music. We had so much we could have discussed.

For some reason I think he knew the common interest we shared was solitude and our smiles and waves were enough. I do not think either of us could fake any of those gestures.

Technology is nice, Social Networking is nice and it has opened up so many different ways of meeting, sharing and experiences to most of us but not at the expense of the physical community that we can truly reach out and touch.

I am thankful that our path’s did cross because it has been another lesson learned that reminds me as I preach that “People” are the biggest component and while technology can enable, empower and extend nothing can over power the process from human connection and the genuine power of a wave and smile.

I will miss you Ron Kent Galon.

When I see you again I will surely sit down and chat.

I think it was Stephanie Roberts, a fantastic person, photographer with a super moral conscious that introduced Jen’s blog about her courageous battle with colon cancer called The Comfy Place. I followed Jen’s blog for close to 2 years reading about her life, her struggles but mostly her courage and love for people. I knew this day was coming and everyday I visited her site to read about what was going on in her life. I learned about her fears, her love for her young son Jack as well as how her ex husband David gave her key assurances that Jack would be well taken care of when it would be her time to go.

I never met Jen because she lived in Australia but I witnessed the power of the internet and Social Media by connecting hundreds of readers and supporters who share with me the common bond of caring. I left several comments and felt comfort in knowing she would read all of them or have someone read them reassuring her that she was never alone.

I know in my industry we get so caught up in the business side of Social Media and the ROI that we sometimes forget the ROC (Return on Caring) that it can present.

The ability to thrive on the strength of many, the love and care of the multitude is evident that we are connected by more than technology.

RIP Jen, you have touched and taught many what is truly important as well how valuable the gift of life really can be.

I will miss you and thank you for reminding us all what true living is all about.

M

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I found this interesting and clever as I also ventured to their website to see other types of engagements via social media channels.

I closed the loop by ordering a Dragon Berry lemonade drink at a restaurant this past weekend. I will happily admit that it was delicious and Bacardi also ties in their outreach with highlighted drink selections at the restaurant.

I was sold from that point on and purchased a bottle the next night and used the text recipe suggestion which also did not disappoint.

I guess an advocate has been created by the fact I talking about it in a favorable way, I must  also add I am a responsible advocate.

There are important lessons that companies can learn to get more of a return on their ad spend. Engaging your audience by giving them the practical avenue to engage with you will make it easy, practical and effective.

Demand more from your ad spend and make is easy to measure the effectiveness of it.

I talk about engaging customers quite a bit and made a point to check out all of the ads in this particular magazine to see how they interacted with the reader. Out of all of the ads I came across there was one that really did grab my interest and lured me in.

It was a Bacardi Dragon Berry ad that right there at the top was a Text Dragon to 65579 for more recipes. I found that interesting for a number of reasons.

1. I could engage immediately (while I wait)
2. I could engage with my mobile phone which I most definitely had with me
3. I could see the Text instructions without reading glasses or a magnifying glass

How cool was that? Also the suggestion on the ad was to “Enjoy it with Ginger Ale” which also caused me to salivate and want one. I mean it had to be 5pm somewhere right?

When I got home I went online to check out if they were tying this into their whole Social Media strategy and I was very impressed to see on the Bacardi Dragon Berry page a section to send a weekly drink recipe to my mobile phone, Dragon Berry Downloads and a mention of a Free iPhone App by Bacardi with favorite recipes. How cool is that again?

Bacardi is definitely on the right track of Social Engagement by getting the most out of their ad spend and the ability to tie it into their website. I am sure they can also track the effectiveness of the ad through the mobile responses as well as holding on to the mobile number for subsequent campaigns.

Now, the other ads in the magazine I came across were nice photos of the product but in small print the website causing me to write it down IF I could even read it (without reading glasses or a magnifying glass) and check it out later if I remembered. I did not see a way of engaging me or a way of capturing the effectiveness of the ad considering the perceived high cost associated.

Companies need to understand Bacardi’s plan of action and reach out and engage the eyeballs on their ads and demand a ROI.

Lessons learned:

• Gather interest to your product
• Engage the reader on THEIR terms
• Tie it into their interests and lifestyle
• Nurture the relationship with ongoing interaction
• ALWAYS be able to measure the ROI

“I do not always drink, but when I do I will ask for a Bacardi Dragon Berry with my Ginger Ale with a lime.”

Cheers!

I often say the “Holy Grail” of Social CRM effectiveness is the ability to “make sense of the noise,” by identifying important conversations and pushing the right message to the right people at the right time and Radian6 listening platform is poised to lead the charge.
Their announcement of their salesforce.com integration at the Enterprise 2.0 conference raised the bar in effective Social CRM strategies.
I was invited this past week to participate on a panel called the “Rockstars of Social CRM” with the likes of Chris Brogan, Paul Greenberg, Brent Leary and Frank Eliason, Comcast’s Director of Digital Care moderated by Radian6 CEO, Marcel LeBrun.
Radian6 did an incredible job creating a “Rockstar” look and feel from the stage set up to the Guitar Hero equipment for the after party.
As for Social CRM, it is extremely hard to have the conversation about CRM today without a social aspect due to the fact that customers are now social entities interacting in a number of social focused channels. The ability to monitor those conversations and the analytical piece to properly address, respond, route or ignore has to be timely. Integrating the vital conversations into the standard Marketing, Sales and Service processes will allow the right response at the right time to the right individual. CRM systems are known for harboring large amounts of data and the thought of dumping all interactions into a CRM database can be overwhelming. Radian6 has added some structure to this process geared to working along with CRM processes. When I was asked my opinion on what today’s CRM vernacular should be I answered with CEM, Customer Engagement Management but call it what you like, just address it and soon; your customers are there and they will not wait for you.
The panel was a blast, the conversations were thought provoking and insightful, those guys can throw a party!
Click here for footage of the event.
The SocialCRM Rock Event made a lot of sense from all of the noise.

• Foundation
• Mission
• Growth
• Plan
• Assessment

Step 3 Growth is where Social CRM integration can assist the most in getting your community off the ground by integration of your CRM database with the community:

Growth
How are we going to get this community off the ground?

• Assets- What resources can you tap into to build your community?
• Seeding- How will you initially draw prospects and customers to your community?
• Membership- What recruitment and retention tactics will be used to keep the community active?

Leveraging your CRM database in the Growth Stage is an effective use of information you currently have and hope to obtain. Using your CRM database will allow you to send a segmented invite to your current customer base offering up a multitude of incentives and benefits for joining and participation. By knowing your ideal customer target you can then use your CRM database for the purpose of sending out invites for prospects that fit your ideal customer pointing them to areas of interest focusing on earning their business such as ratings on your product, case studies and future enhancements. By offering invitees pertinent information and offers based on interest, demographics or geographic locations you can entice them to give more profile data such as interests, mobile phone numbers (for mobile campaigns), Twitter updates and other key information. When they join your community the information in their profile is updated to your CRM database. Their interests can be gauged by Lead Scoring and initiation of CRM workflow and processes to target marketing in future campaigns.

This is just a sampling of what can be done with a Phase I approach to Social CRM integration.
First let’s take a look at a diagram of Phase 1 of this integration to see exactly what is happening today and then we can understand the CRM mix of People, Processes and Technology. The Social Community in the diagram is Neighborhood America’s Reveal and the CRM solution is Microsoft Dynamics. The diagram references Social CRM in a Public Sector setting but can apply to commercial as well. In this Public Sector On Demand the scenarios are:

1. Citizen (Any individual) joins the Reveal Community filling in the basic profile fields and is added to the community
2. The profile information is simultaneously added to the CRM database at the least with name, e-mail address, appropriate alerts and processes can be kicked off internally.
3. The CRM database can now interact with the individual with updates offers to get more profile information from the individual. Segmentation benefits, offers based on geographic information can be leveraged as trust builds.
4. Any additional updates to their profile by the individual can be made
5. These updates will be subsequently added to the CRM database

While this first Phase was created in a Public Sector environment let’s take a look at it in a general sense utilizing the concepts of Social Media and Social CRM. Companies are now taking a hard look at Social Media solutions and trying to map them to their Strategic Initiatives. This same mapping is done with CRM so why should it be addressed as separate entities?
I will start with the most common analogy utilizing CRM and Social Media:

• Customer Service- Forums and discussions, two common forms of Social Media has been around for as long as the internet (Ask Al Gore). The ability for customers to address issues with product, service as well as product enhancements are not new in Social Media but technology has enhanced that ability. I think this is one of the most frequented places for product and service support.
• Marketing- One of the key points in Social Media around marketing is “making sense of the noise”, harnessing the buzz, getting people to talk favorably about your product and company as well as knowing when they are not speaking positively about you. The weapons of social media are rampant and in the hands of everyone, owned by no one. It is kind of like the wild, Wild West! Not to mention the SEO benefits of your company and product being found when people are looking for a solution.
• Sales- The placing of this component predicates the above because what happens in Customer Service and Marketing definitely impacts sales in a positive and negative way. As in the above Customer Service reference people researching a particular item they are looking to purchase will visit the forum area to get an idea of what is being said about the product as well as how service issues are addressed. The one question I am constantly being asked is how does the utilization of Social Media leverage lead scoring strategies. This first phase of profile collection into the CRM system may serve as the first step in identification if handled in a non intrusive manner.

Keep in mind that this first Phase of Social CRM Integration is a big step in leveraging current CRM database to extend your reach to your Social audience.