VIDEO: CRM Tutorial for Beginners: Social CRM

Hey technology advice viewers, thanks for joining me today. We're going to be talking about social customer relationship management, which I'll refer to as social CRM to make this video manageable. So, traditionally CRM refers to collecting data on your prospects to better target them and so you can move them down the funnel and basically stay organized. Social CRM takes a bit of a different approach. On social media, the customer controls the conversation.

So, social CRM is about customer service more. Someone tweets at you, someone talks to you on Facebook, they have a question, they have a problem, they expect you to respond. It's a more customer-centric approach. So, that's why Paul Greenberg, a notable CRM expert, refers to social CRM as a company's response to the customer's control of the conversation. So, why should you care about social CRM? Because your customers do. 90% of Americans expect brands to have a social media profile.

So, if you don't, it's uh it's kind of strange. 60% of Americans plan on interacting with brands on social media. So, again, if you have a social media profile, it's not just about filling up with marketing content and pushing it to people. They're going to ask you questions and they expect you to be able to answer them and not be weird. So, social CRM is also a combination of methodology and technology. So, we've talked a bit about the methodology, customercentric approach, one-on-one conversations, less marketing.

Technology-wise, there's a couple of different features that come along with CRM platforms that feature social CRM capabilities. One is text analytics or social media monitoring. So, you put in a couple different keywords and the CRM can actually track the keywords throughout your social media profiles. So, whether that's mentions of your brand name or mentions of different things in your industry, it gives you an opportunity to in real time see what people are talking about and engage in those conversations. position yourself as a knowledgeable expert or just a friendly resource.

The next is more of an old school CRM tactic. It's paid media. So, using the data you have in your CRM already about your different prospects, you can pay Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to put these different ads in front of your prospects news feeds. Lastly, there's just the opportunity to record more granular data based on social media interactions. So when you find those conversations with social media monitoring tools and you interact with people, you can track that data in your CRM.

So know now it's not just okay well I emailed this person, here's the conversation we had on email, I called this person, here's the conversation on the phone. It's interactions from social media as well. So like we said at the beginning, social CRM is a methodology and technology. So the strategy is what's important though. Just because you get a CRM product that has social media capabilities doesn't mean you're practicing social CRM. Social CRM is about putting your customer first on social media and using your social media account as a way to connect with them one-on-one, not just to push marketing materials to them. So, that's it for today. Thanks for joining me. Until next time.

This transcript was generated automatically from the video's captions and may contain errors.