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Guest post: Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM

Made Social on 10 August 2010 | View Comments

In advance of Social Collective, we have been inviting select people to guest blog and join the SoCol debate, hopefully offering a fresh point of view. We have been asking a range of people to contribute, including those working in social, client side, techies, journos etc with a view of building a wider picture. Any questions raised during this process will be addressed during a panel at SoCol in September.

The latest in the series is from Eric Swain, aka @ericswain.

Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM
By Eric Swain

Social Media is a crap term. Always has been. Certainly for the purposes of business and certainly increasingly as we understand the social landscape better.

The term “Social Media” is a mere label that is too focused on the tools. And because of that it is imprecise and insufficient for our purposes in the world of business. It doesn’t really fit what we are trying to achieve. What does it mean for us? Community management? Facebook marketing? Twitter offers? YouTube videos? Social PR? Content marketing? More? All of them?

It’s too broad and fails to get to the heart of the matter.

Businesses are out of the loop.

In today’s commercial landscape we need to recognise that our customers have adopted (at astonishing rates) social networking practices and are carrying on conversations about us, our products, competitors and industries. Without us. Happily without us, actually. In fact, after years of being fed a load of marketing crap (who believes that that soap powder really is “new and improved” anyway?), consumers are disinclined even to trust us. We need to pay better attention.

Today we as businesses are presented with an opportunity to use the social networks to help us truly service our customers; to truly follow the old cliché adage that “the customer is number one”. We have an opportunity to actually put the customer at the centre of the business; to give them the involvement that they increasingly demand.

Social CRM

Customers control the conversation. How does the company respond? Social CRM (or becoming a social business) means moving beyond listening and engaging with customers to gleaning real, actionable insights that will help a business make their customers’ experiences better – better customer service, better communication, better support, better marketing, better products.

Social CRM is about creating organisation-wide processes and structures to:
1. take in all the data (unstructured, raw, semi-structured) from our listening and interaction
2. analyse that data for what’s important and meaningful from the customer’s point of view
3. feed those insights into the organisation to create better outcomes (or to enhance the successful existing outcomes)
4. and then deliver those better outcomes.

It’s a cyclical process that demonstrates to customers that we value them and are paying attention.

The best marketing strategy is to deliver a remarkable customer experience. Why not let our customers tell us what that is?

About Eric Swain

Eric is Managing Director and Co-Founder at the agency Spice, where he helps companies make sense of a brave new world where the customer controls the business ecosystem and the conversation.

He’s been knocking about the place for the past 20 years as a consultant, director, or head of sales, or marketing (or both) for companies from tech start-ups and mobile app developers to vending machine brokers.

Once described as “smart, good looking, athletic, persuasive and brilliant” on the back of an anonymous feedback form, Eric is enthusiastic about real, honest communication and enjoys writing his own online bio whenever he gets the chance.

View other posts in our guest blog series:

Power to your employees! But do brands have the guts? by Danny Whatmough

Helping clients better understand and engage in social media by Jonny Stark

The social media strategy series: Getting Buy In by Gemma Went

The tall and the long of it by John V Willshire

Social Media in the 21st Century – Deja Vu all over again by Paul Smith

The Secrets of Pitching Social Media by Paul Sutton

The social media strategy series: Is social media right for your business? by Gemma Went

Talk is cheap by Peter Bouvier

Show social or show business by Chris Hall

Back to the future… by Adam Vincenzini

Managing Client Expectation in Search by Chris Hyland

Get Excited And Make Things by Stuart Witts

  • http://topsy.com/www.social-collective.com/2010/08/10/guest-post-social-media-is-dead-long-live-social-crm/?utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L2 Tweets that mention Guest post: Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM | Social Collective — Topsy.com

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Good CRM, Mark van den Berg. Mark van den Berg said: Interesting thought on #socialmedia and #CRM: RT @GoodCRM: Guest post: Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM: http://bit.ly/dmGkwv [...]

  • johnbottom

    Eric – you're absolutely right about why we are doing this. It is all about relationship management if we're doing it right. But then surely “social media” is only half a term. It's like saying 'telephone' or 'email'. And why say “relationship management” instead of “marketing”? Is it really more accurate? I always understood that “marketing” was defined as the process for identifying and managing markets – which of course only exist when you are meeting customer needs. So “social media marketing” is as valid as “social CRM”.

    I wholeheartedly agree that we should not forget what we are really doing here, but this is really a semantic debate. But whatever you call it, I like the way you describe it!

    Thanks for posting

    John

  • http://www.wisdomlondon.com Kate Spiers (Wisdom London)

    I've been struggling with “social media” too – it does seem an inadequate term. And not wanting get caught up in the semantics, social media as a term does pose a bit of danger in terms of focussing on the wrong things (as you've demonstrated) and also of missing the opportunities this channel presents.

    I like the idea of “social business”, with social crm being a core principle, as well as social engagement as part of the wider social conversation – which, I maintain, is essentially what it is.

    I would like to think we're all getting a bit smarter at reaping the social harvest, as it were – taking data, clues, trends, emotions and putting them to work…and moving away from – and helping our clients and colleagues move away from – endless broadcasting. So thanks for the firm and well-put reminder.

  • http://twitter.com/benwerd Ben Werdmuller v.E.

    Social media is certainly a misleading term – and actually, as well as not helping the businesses and marketers who use it, it does tool developers a disservice by inviting comparisons with “the media”.

    Surely, though, we're at the stage where we can stop using special terms and simply accept that a growing portion of business, marketing and customer relationship management is taking place online?

  • http://www.twitter.com/barryfurby @barryfurby

    Great post Eric, hard hitting and pointing out some facts that need to be addressed.

    There's a huge level of frustration in this industry right now and I think part of it to due to our ability to over publish and create guru's and cliché terms.

    Re-positioning these tools and addressing how they can be practically used to influence business – marketing, advertising, PR, customer service is where we should be – I'd like to see more bold talk in an attempt to raise the bar.

    Thanks

    @barryfurby

  • http://www.twitter.com/barryfurby @barryfurby

    “reaping the social harvest” – i like that :)

  • katespiers

    was planning a blog post on the concept…I like it too! thoughts? wanna collaborate on it and grow the idea?

  • http://www.spice.co.uk/ Eric Swain

    John, you caught me trying to be a little provocative. It is semantics. But perhaps we are at the stage where social media needs to move past the hype (unavoidably encapsulated in the label) into the real, bedded-down, day-to-day, mainstream business world and a new term could help cut through some of the negative connotations of the “social media” label.

    My linguist friends tell me that the most important thing isn't how you say something but that people understand what you mean. In this case, however, I think the weight of the cultural detritus interferes with what we mean. Perhaps changing it slightly will refocus our minds (and those of our customers) to see if for the opportunity it is.

    I think the term “marketing” suffers similarly insofar as people often view it (wrongly in my view) as a set of outbound channels (just like “brand” is thought of as a logo and colour scheme, etc). Perhaps “CRM”, which historically encompasses Sales, Marketing and Customer Service gets us closer to what I described. Perhaps not.

    Thanks for your comment.

    Eric

  • http://www.spice.co.uk/ Eric Swain

    Thanks, Barry.

    It's that “cultural detritus” weighing down the term “Social Media” that I mentioned in my reply to John above that I am trying to cut through; all the guru-speak and clichés.

    I think we are starting to move that way as an industry. We need to keep talking (better yet, doing :)

    Eric

  • http://www.spice.co.uk/ Eric Swain

    Yes, Ben, I think “media” is the problematic part of the term “social media”. I think the term “social” in this context is actually enhancing; so adding “social” to “CRM”, “business”, “communication”, “marketing” does help cut through to what we are talking about.

    And so, obviously, I don't think we are quite at the stage where we can stop using special terms. We are moving that way, and one day “social” will be just part of the standard ways organisations do business.

    Thanks for you comment.

    Eric

  • http://topsy.com/trackback?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.social-collective.com%2F2010%2F08%2F10%2Fguest-post-social-media-is-dead-long-live-social-crm%2F%23comment-67534755&utm_source=pingback&utm_camp Tweets that mention Guest post: Social Media is Dead; Long Live Social CRM | Social Collective — Topsy.com

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by barryfurby, Hayley Davies. Hayley Davies said: Social Media is dead. Long live Social CRM http://bit.ly/beNqg4 [...]

  • http://www.spice.co.uk/ Eric Swain

    Hi Kate,

    I think we are getting a bit smarter, which may be why the terms we use need to be refined in some way. It's not essential but for clarity purposes (and this is Social Clarity, after all), it helps if we can be a little more precise.

    What I didn't mention is that when talking about gleaning insights in order to improve outcomes, and focussing on analysing the data from the social networks, I am envisioning larger organisations that find it impossible to scale their social engagement on a 1:1 basis. They need to take a different approach to Social CRM. That doesn't mean they should ignore engagement, far from it, but they need to recognise there is much to be gained from the conversations they can't follow/take part in. And those gains should be much more than “social mentions” or Facebook “likes”.

    Thanks for your comment.

    Eric

  • http://twitter.com/Beth_Carroll Beth_Carroll

    Would you like to fashion something as a guest post for the SoCol blog?

  • katespiers

    Absolutely – would love to! Will flesh out the concept some more and connect by email?

  • http://twitter.com/Beth_Carroll Beth_Carroll

    Great! Send me your details to beth@social-collective.com and I'll explain a bit more about how it works. B

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  • http://twitter.com/CloudNineRec Steve Ward

    Eric that's a great message. I love the idea of Social CRM.
    Social Media will always be Social Media – we're not going to lose that tag easily – but I think it was Olivier Blanchard who proposed that it should called Social Communications, which was pretty accurate, as it is more about communications than media. However Social CRM takes Social Communications to the next level, as it involves the customer/market interaction development cycle, and social communications merely gives us that capability to fulfil CRM so much better than businesses have previously been able to.

    Great, inspiring post.

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  • http://scorpfromhell.blogspot.com A. Prem Kumar

    Eric, guess you have got the crux/spirit of #scrm! :) You might want to look at this resource guide for Social CRM containing pointers to the curated content from the thought leaders & pioneers. http://j.mp/scrmrg1 :)

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  • http://kundedata.dk/ CRM

    I love the idea of Social CRM.  sure read again.

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