Social + Marketing

Thoughts on Twitter – and how CRM vendors stack up

Last time we looked at blogging best practices and which CRM vendors walk the walk when it comes to actively blogging.  In this post I’ll share some highlights of how the same vendors are using Twitter to engage with their customers and the marketplace at large.  But first, here are a few thoughts on Twitter as a social marketing and support channel…

In my experience, Twitter is a great listening channel, a good promotion and alert channel and a pretty good customer service channel.  But it’s less effective at branding or story telling (hard to do in 140 characters) and is overrated as a “full-service” or true collaboration channel given that there is just too much noise IMO.  Comcast is perhaps the poster-child for using Twitter as a service (really listening) channel, and even GM is now getting into the act to spot and engage with unhappy customers (see here).

And there is a lot of interest around Twitter as a promotional channel for group buying (like Groupon) or special coupons and multi-channel campaigns like my friends at OfferPop and JitterJam are building.  For B2B, when Twitter campaigns work well, they tend to work as well as a good opt-in email list.  With of course the added bonus of a word-of-mouth “multiplier” when your followers re-tweet messages to their followers, and so on, effectively multiplying your reach and original list.

As for Twitter and branding, a while back I did a quick hit analysis looking at the correlation between Twitter influence and brand value (using Forrester’s CxPI index).  Not surprisingly all the top brands – the Top 10 in the CxPI index – also had a high Twitter influence score (over 95 in Twitter Grader). But so did several of the lowest rated companies in the CxPI index such as USAirways, Qwest and our friends at Comcast.

Clearly top brands are actively using Twitter, but actively using Twitter does not make you a top brand!

So how are top CRM vendors using Twitter?  For this part of my analysis, I looked at two measures: where is Twitter promoted/placed on their corporate web site, if at all; and how influential/engaged is the company via its corporate Twitter account.  I used Twitter Grader to measure influence, although there are many other tools that may be interesting to try as well.  And there may be individuals in these same companies that have more followers than the company itself, but I focused just on the company account (there is a lesson here in fostering individual vs. company brands, but that is another discussion).

In terms of placement, here’s where I found links to Twitter and which vendors placed their link in that location.  Again, I may have missed some placements, and if I found a link on the home page I didn’t go looking for others on additional pages.

• Home page – SugarCRM, nGenera, Amdocs, NetSuite, eGain, Convergys
• Press page – SalesForce, RightNow, Pega, Consona, Ciboodle, CDC
• Product page – Oracle
• Blog -- Chordiant
• No link found (yet) – Sage, KANA

As for influence, here’s how the vendors ranked in terms of Twitter Grader scores - higher is better! - as of last week (tool has been a bit flaky this week):

• 99+: SalesForce, OracleCRM, Sage
• 95+: Convergys, Amdocs, RightNow, NetSuite, SugarCRM,
• 90+: nGenera, Pega, Consona, eGain
• Under 90: Ciboodle, Chordiant, KANA, CDC

Now, by combining these datapoints with our blog analysis we can create this snazzy chart to get a visual picture of how these vendors compare:

 

As before, I’d love your thoughts / comments.  And next I’ll talk a bit about LinkedIn.

Blogging best practices and CRM vendors that walk the walk

Blogging was one of the first Web 2.0 tools to “cross the chasm” from consumer to business use, but for some has taken a back seat to newer channels like Twitter or Facebook.  Yet while adoption among the F500 is slowing (see here), in terms of ROI, blogs continue to deliver, and in fact scored the highest in terms of delivering measureable benefit for customer-related and partner/supplier purposes vs. other technologies (Video sharing, RSS, social networking, Wikis, podcasts, ratings and 5 other Web 2.0 tools) in McKinsey’s comprehensive 2009 Global Survey focused on Web 2.0.

So corporations have reason to continue investing in blogging – but what about vendors?  When I was CMO at eVergance (acquired by KANA Software in 2007) and we launched the “evolved thinking” blog in 2008, our objective was twofold. The first goal was to provide a forum to share the thoughts of our excellent team of practice leaders - including Esteban Kolsky, whose current blog is required reading in Social CRM circles.

The second was to engage in discussions with clients and prospects as a continuation of dialogs started in our in-person “knowledge sharing days” and even an extension or backchannel to sales discussions.   This second goal was somewhat harder to “engineer” but became a key part of nurturing relationships, showing our “chops” and persisting conversations that may have begun on a Webcast or live event or even during a product demo.

What was also clear from this experience is that good, regularly published content is necessary but not sufficient to create a well-read and even highly ranked blog.  Promotion, cross-links and even outright recruitment of readers is equally important!  Blogs are just another channel, and like “traditional” media rely on reach and frequency to create an impression.  Good content doesn’t matter if no one reads it.  And the more you engage via active comments and replies, the more the channel shifts from a communication channel to a true Continuous Relationship Marketing channel. 

So how are vendors doing today in leveraging the power of blogs to engage with the market?  As part of a new study, I’ve been looking at how a selection of top CRM vendors are using social media to engage with customers, or are “walking the walk” so to speak, via their corporate blogs, Twitter and LinkedIn to start.  In terms of blogging, just having one is only a ticket to play.  It’s actually more interesting to see how they are being used and maintained, so I decided to look first at the number of posts and comments in each (since the start of the year) as a proxy for “frequency” and “reach.”

No, I did not look (yet) at traffic, but feel that these two measures should give us a feeling for who is investing in this channel, and who has (perhaps) moved on to other social channels or forms of online interactions like forums.  Here’s some of what was found – note that numbers are current as of the middle of last week and any errors in representation are mine not those of the vendors.

Several vendors stand out and get top grades when it comes to their corporate blogs:

• SugarCRM - 39 posts; 40 comments
• Oracle - 39 posts; 6 comments
• RightNow - 11 posts; 25 comments
• Sage - 13 posts; 10 comments
• nGenera - 46 posts; 107 comments

Yes, I know the nGenera "wikinomics" blog is broader than CRM, but it’s the company’s featured blog.  Several others (Amdocs, Chordiant, Consona [3 separate blogs], NetSuite, and Pega) have semi-regular posts, but NO comments so far in 2010, so get an “incomplete.”

And a few others have opted for a newsletter-type format (Ciboodle, SalesForce) or offer no blog at all (eGain, CDC).  I know I’m missing a number of vendors, so feel free to make suggestions or even include links for me to check out in your comments.

Next up, I’ll plan to discuss how these same vendors are doing with their corporate Twitter channel.

Using a persona model to target social media

I’ve written a bit about the social channel “persona” model I created a few months back (see here and here) and now that I’ve used it on a few consulting gigs I thought I’d share some observations in this forum, and see if readers might have some additional ideas on how the model could be applied/extended going forward.

The model is basically constructed around a spider chart, with Age of channel users, Relationship (nature of connections), Activity, Persistence, and Tone making up the 5 dimensions.   This is certainly a simplistic view of the world, but it worked for me – and allows one to compare and contrast social channels as follows:

In practice, we can also use this type of framework to:

• Target demographics – e.g., which channel is best for reaching a young audience at work?
• Align tone – e.g., corporate tone fits on LinkedIn, but not on Facebook (Nestle is learning this)
• Schedule posts – e.g., Blogging once a week is okay, but Twitter needs much more frequent updates
• Mapping alternative or future channels – e.g., how do private company forums compare?

 

Of course, getting a picture of how your customers and other target users currently use these channels is a key starting point (as discussed here). And determining what cross links need to be “wired” first – Twitter to blog or forum content, Web to Facebook or LinkedIn etc. are also really important to pick up audience where they currently congregate…and steer them to the most relevant/engaging resource.

What do you think?  Are there other dimensions I should add?  And how else could we use this model to better target and assemble the right mix of social channels?

The evolution will not be televised

I recently pulled together some thoughts for the Social Business Edge conference "slam", and since I have not heard back (and in fact will be in Bay Area most of that week for our next social media roundtable), I figured I'd share and use this as a kick off to my new "mini" blog.  As always, comments/thoughts/questions welcome! - Allen

Social media and Web 2.0 approaches have enabled some remarkable new online businesses like Facebook.  And helped a growing number of organizations better share information, cultivate their brands and even support their customers.  But if we take a step back, and take a more historical view on what we are seeing, a lot of what looks to be shiny and new is in fact an evolution of what has been transpiring in media and computing and business over the past several decades.

This broader perspective, and a renewed effort to see how the “new stuff” – channels, models and behaviors – can borrow from or force change on the “old stuff” is to me where we need to focus as a community.  Or at least keep an eye on or risk missing the lessons of previous waves of technology adoption and substitution economics.  Of course once we start to look at the impact of social on existing business models, and enterprise applications, and devices, and consumer expectations, and behavior, things can get a bit tricky.  But this rigor is good – and necessary to truly tap the potential of social business models.

So where should we focus once we reject the “creationist view” of social media in favor of an evolutionary one?

First, we should question how much social alternatives will really change the long-term use and viability of existing channels.  For example, if the costs of content production and distribution approach zero, are all traditional publishing businesses really dead?  Or will some (many?) media companies evolve their models to leverage the new economics and emerge as more focused, innovative and profitable social businesses?  We also need to factor the idea of “trust” into this equation as well.  Who will consumers really trust to hold their data or provide their news and advice in this new world?

Second, the path from social media to Enterprise 2.0 will not be as smooth or direct as many pundits think.  Using communities and social networking for customer facing processes seems like a slam dunk.  But few companies are using Web 2.0 tools for core business processes like finance or purchasing, as many tools, data models and even trust models from the consumer world don’t fit the enterprise mindset and IT stack.  Where will social business find its beachhead? And where will it be a tough sell?

Third, while it’s easy to get (initially) excited about the latest apps like Google Buzz and cross-over devices like the iPad, I fear we are losing the battle over style vs. substance.  Good design serves up emotion and utility.  For social business, utility must come first.  The evolution from desktop computing to mobile devices to perhaps specialty “terminals” for the Cloud provides some lessons for the next social-enabled devices.  Is location the missing piece? Or maybe voice? Or is it single purpose-ness and simplicity?

Looking forward to project the future of social business is essential.  But so is looking back.