You can’t manage social media

Social media can’t be managed, but you can participate. And Social CRM it is often a misused term – meaning using social media to sell more stuff. It will not work!

Social media is about:

• Cross functional collaboration – making people from HR, PR to sales and marketing work together in ways they have never done before.


• Integration of communication channels across all the touchpoints you use to connect customer including email, social, mobile and web.

Meaningful dialogues
Many struggle defining what Social CRM means to their organization, as well as how to get started. Clearly there is a business discipline that needs to be developed, whatever you call it, it has to do with how to participate in social settings with customers in ways that are productive for the business.

Start with being a good listener
One good advice ist to apply analytical tools to access the numbers of mentions about your brand or products and to what degree they are positive or negative.

Here are some interesting views on how to look at social media:
Morgan Johnston, Manager of Corporate Communications at JetBlue:

"Social media is like an information booth. We are there to
serve, we are listening and we are there when people reach out, when they have
questions. And sometimes those questions turn into sales."

Jesse Engle, CEO, Co Tweet by Exact Target:

"One of the most important thing companies can do is to learn how to
become adept at the art of conversation."

What is the ROI of social media?
The answer is what is the ROI of a hug? A lot of what social media is about is to embrace people and make them feel as if they are valuable wheather that is ti get increased amplification and exposure from fans or to engage people who have had a negative experience resolved and now like you. But seriously, here is what to measure:

Short term: Your ability to read and react in real time to your
customers (impact of campaigns and how they drive conversion)

Long term: Building ongoing loyalty and customer retention .

TIP! Who is in dialogue with the customer, the company or the company employee?
Humanize your brand online. Comcast found that people began to see the company as a collection of human beings rather than a faceless, monolithic organization. And saw the tenor of the conversations change when they introduced Frank.

Souce:
Co Tweet by Exact Target, the “go-to” social media platform for the worlds most admired brands