Social CRM: Integrating Social Media With Customer Engagement
In the past, customer relationship management (CRM) systems were complex tools that required a significant learning curve for sales teams to master. That’s no longer the case. Modern CRM solutions like FreshSales and HubSpot CRM have prioritized user-friendliness, making them much easier to use. However, with these advancements in ease of deployment, it’s important to consider whether they meet all your needs.
CRM focuses on enhancing interactions between customers and the company, aiming to make these interactions both enjoyable for the customer and beneficial for the business. Modern CRMs use automation and cloud-based solutions to make these interactions quicker, more intuitive, and seamless across various devices, from desktops to smartphones.
Achieving these ambitious goals is a significant focus for many CRMs. However, at its core, a CRM is essentially a sophisticated database with an advanced interface. To maximize its effectiveness, it’s crucial to integrate it with other technologies, particularly social media, which plays a central role in expanding customer touchpoints and enhancing the CRM’s capabilities.
Understanding Social CRM
The idea of Social CRM has been around for over a decade, dating back to around 2010. The core concept is to foster more personalized customer relationships by tracking interactions on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter, and other social networks where your customers are active. While the public information available on these platforms can be highly valuable for businesses, it’s important to use this data responsibly. Simply observing customers’ profiles isn’t the whole story of Social CRM; it’s just one piece of a broader strategy.
Social media continues to evolve rapidly, and recent issues with data privacy, especially with platforms like Facebook, highlight the changes in user behavior since 2010. Today, social networks are more diverse and specialized, with each platform catering to different types of content and interaction expectations. For instance, LinkedIn is appropriate for job postings, whereas such content on Facebook might feel intrusive in a more personal social environment. Additionally, users are now more concerned about their privacy. Simply adding a “Social” component to your CRM strategy isn’t enough to ensure its effectiveness.
How to Make Social CRM Effective for Your Business
Social CRM involves actively listening to and analyzing customer conversations on social media. By examining this data, you can align it with your business objectives and engage with customers in ways that build trust. For instance, responding promptly and helpfully to a customer’s tweet or turning a Facebook or LinkedIn interaction into a more detailed email exchange with a support or sales representative can enhance customer relationships.
To establish a strong social customer relationship, the first step is to listen. Utilize a comprehensive social media management platform that integrates your various business accounts and employs social media analytics tools to track engagement. This approach allows you to identify which customers to focus on. By leveraging third-party services like Buffer, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social Premium, you can pinpoint your most engaged customers and those with significant online influence, ensuring that your social CRM strategy—encompassing posting, listening, analytics, and interactions—targets the right individuals.
These third-party services can seamlessly integrate with standard CRM platforms like Salesforce, which is known for its exceptional capability to combine new channels of direct customer engagement with traditional CRM functionalities. Salesforce excels at incorporating social media into established processes such as task management, call logging, and meeting scheduling, effectively integrating social interactions into the core workflows of your sales team.
An engaging social media presence increasingly shapes customer perceptions of brands. While “Social CRM” may sound like a buzzword, it’s a concept that warrants serious consideration. In today’s digital landscape, where followers are also customers and every post or tweet can be quickly shared or screenshotted, having a well-thought-out strategy is crucial. Social CRM can play a key role in managing and enhancing your brand’s public image.
Strategies for Achieving Success with Social CRM
Outline the Customer Journey
To create effective customer touchpoints, you first need to understand them. Map out your customers’ journey with your business from start to finish. Consider their initial interaction—whether it’s through an advertisement, a sales call, or an online shopping cart—and identify every subsequent touchpoint, both physical and digital. By examining this entire process, you’ll likely uncover gaps and areas for improvement, making this evaluation process crucial for optimizing customer engagement.
You might need updated email marketing materials or an improved ticket management system for your service desk. However, for social media, focus on identifying which platforms your customers prefer, how they use them, and who among them has the most influence. This information helps you understand and optimize your customers’ social media interactions, allowing you to tailor your CRM strategies effectively.
Avoid Automation in the Early Stages
Top-tier CRM and digital marketing tools offer numerous automation options, which are certainly convenient and can handle responses more quickly than humans. However, in the early stages of implementing a social CRM strategy, it’s crucial to focus on hands-on testing and experience. Start by assembling a small team dedicated to responding to social media posts directly and promptly.
This approach builds customer trust and helps your sales and marketing teams understand which aspects of the customer journey are best suited for automation. With this insight, you can then develop a comprehensive marketing automation plan that effectively engages with customers at the optimal times and in the most impactful ways.
Monitor Metadata and Hashtags
To effectively manage your social media strategy, you’ll need some technical skills, particularly in handling hashtags and other social media metadata. This data is crucial for identifying and organizing what customers and potential buyers are saying about your business. Top social media management tools leverage this information to monitor not just the popularity of your branded keywords, but also to spot issues such as misspelled brand names. Additionally, these tools can track mentions of your competitors and provide insights into industry-wide trends.
Integrating your CRM and help desk platforms with your social media marketing efforts can be complex and time-consuming. It involves a thorough process of tracking and analysis. However, once this integration is complete, the benefits are substantial. Salespeople will be able to respond to customer inquiries more swiftly and even anticipate their needs. Ultimately, enhancing customer satisfaction is invaluable, and a well-executed social CRM strategy is key to achieving that.
