How Social is your CRM?

This is the question you should be asking yourself for your business – if the answer is not very social at all, then that, frankly, is a problem.

We live in world where some of the most powerful people are those with the biggest “social footprint”, and one in which recruiters now not only look at your qualifications, but also your “social currency”.  Social media platforms are not just a place to connect with your loved ones, but also a place to boost your business’s profile and better connect to your customers.

You’re probably thinking that this is nothing new. But technology has increasingly found more and more ways to centralize the way we work, and since the advent of the cloud, this is becoming ever more the case. In terms of your business, this means that you’ll increasingly be able to carry out multiple tasks for different areas of your organisation from one central piece of software.

Many providers of CRM software have kept these changing tides in mind, and have developed CRM packages that are able to integrate social media management with basic CRM functionality. Think logically about what this means – financially and in terms of efficiency – it means not having to spend endless man hours trawling through social media for new leads, as the software does that for you.

Connecting to your customers via Facebook means that you are able to enhance the relationships that you create with your customer base by fostering a more collaborative relationship with them based on the data that you are pulling using CRM, so it can actually be argued that social media is boosting the scale of what CRM is capable of providing to businesses. Using social media is a much more human approach to marketing for businesses – it’s reaching out to people within their space intelligently, rather than the intrusive approach that many advertisers adopt.

So what does Social CRM allow you to do? Intelligent CRM software that enables you to integrate social media as part of its functionality will allow you to utilize different platforms to better connect with your customers and inspire loyalty. For Facebook, a good CRM package should allow you to view specific profiles based on mentions; research prospects and save Facebook profile pages.  You’ll want a package that will allow you to do something similar for Twitter too – for example saving Tweets and using the information gathered via your CRM to plan out your Twitter feed in advance. LinkedIn is a great platform for professionals and networkers, but it is great for enabling you to participate in conversations and generate new leads when effectively integrated with CRM.

Essentially what you can gain from a socially focused CRM is the ability to better target prospects whilst also speeding up the process of uncovering leads and networking opportunities and also giving your business an insight into how your online conversations and social presence are affecting your brand. Because the social element is so important here, it’s also about building better conversations with your customers, and building your outreach strategies not solely on your targets  but on what you see and hear . Too many companies make the mistake of creating strategies based on assumption rather than engagement, overlooking the fact that human beings – even in the context of being consumers – are still primarily social creatures.

James writes for Sage CRM Software.