Open up your mind and say, ahh...

As the headline implies, even though Social CRM exists as an official category, what it is and what it is not is blurry and hotly debated. Think about the vast array of vendors selling social media solutions for a moment. Many of them are positioned as Social CRM or sCRM tools, but when you examine true capabilities versus stated positioning , you will find that many vendors are in fact stronger players in social media management (SMMS), social CMS, listening, collaboration, intelligence, and conversation management.

If you think about this from a business perspective, it’s almost impossible to identify which vendor is truly qualified to deliver against the goals of a new social CRM system.  Decision makers have to spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to sort through what is true and what is simply good marketing. Often, they must recruit experts to help survey the landscape and qualify vendors.

Earlier in the year, I met with Houston Neal to discuss the state of Social CRM, where it’s headed and where it needs to go. As you can see, I believe that 2012 is the year when we finally start to accurately segment the market while better defining what Social CRM really is and how businesses need to think and rethink their approach to customer relationship management. It’s part technology and part philosophy. Because, in the end, it’s about relationships.

Here’s the transcribed conversation…

Houston Neal: To begin, do you think a true social CRM suite exists in the market?

Brian Solis: That’s a good question. Let’s first take a step back. The thing that’s a little bit more interesting about Social CRM – and definitely one of the things that’s under appreciated – is the idea that it forces us to rethink the definition of CRM. By that I mean, CRM was originally about putting together an infrastructure, processes, and methodologies to support customer and sales processes. What we see now is mainstream social media. So, the whole discussion around socializing CRM is about the introduction of new touch points within the business ecosystem that we didn’t design around originally.

When you ask if there are any solutions out there, the answer is yes and no. What was CRM and what will be CRM are two very different things. And, quite honestly, you’re actually going to see a complete transformation in business in general. It goes by names like “social business,” “adaptive business,” and “holistic business.” What we’re learning now with the democratization of information is that individuals are in control of the brand and brand experience as much as the business. This is paramount. This is at the heart of what’s fueling the socialization of CRM. If I could put it into one nutshell statement it would be that brands used to be defined by the marketing department. That was because they controlled the media. Now that people are starting to take control of the media, brand equity becomes this collective of brand experiences. Those brand experiences are shared through blogs, Facebook, Twitter, forums, you name it.

When you try to design software around capturing this activity, you have to begin by questioning your business strategy. What is it that you are trying to accomplish? Are you trying to steer experiences at the beginning, during, or after? Or, all of the above? Tools are starting to emerge that allow you to identify decision making processes at every step. They are all, in one way or another, adapting to certain parts or many parts of this social CRM idea. But if indeed social CRM is much bigger, as we’re discussing here, then it’s just getting started.

Finally, just to make things a little bit kookier, what we are talking about is removing the “C” from CRM. It’s not just about customer relationship management. It’s now about this idea of what I call SRM. Drop the “C” and call it social relationship management. Or just drop the “S” and call it relationship management. The thing I like about RM is that we’re not just talking about relationship management. This could mean reputation management and a whole bunch of things. This is really what we’re talking about, right? Because you can influence the decision of someone before they’re even a customer. You can manage the whole information work flow process, channel it within the organization so that you’re not just learning and responding, but so that you are adapting as a business to be better structured to handle the customer of the future.

Moving on to a more specific question, what type of applications do you think would make up a social CRM suite?

I recently wrote an article about Dell and Gatorade building these rooms called social media command centers. They look like NASA with screens all over the wall showing things like conversations, relationships, keyword clouds, and whether certain words are becoming more or less dense. They’re monitoring sentiment in real time. It’s pretty crazy and it’s cool at the same time. But if you imagine like this futuristic world of CRM, it would start there, right? It would look a lot like that because essentially what they’re doing is they’re monitoring all of the activity that’s taking place. Who’s saying what and where, who’s asking what, who needs a reaction, who needs a response?

This is one way that the social CRM system would really start to begin. From there, it’s a matter of technologies and work flow that allow you to hear, see, process, respond, and adapt all within the infrastructure in the way the business is designed.

Take Nimble for example. It will allow you to track all of these different individuals, then at a point of engagement it, let’s say its Twitter, channel one individual to someone in customer service or product management.

So, let’s say I send a Tweet. Customer service then takes this tweet, and using a tool like Nimble, it could bring in more information than what you would normally find in that tweet. For example, the person’s name, what other accounts they have across other networks, etc. It would then build a database around it. Customer service can then push out a response and track the response. The database could also send a signal to the listening agent to say, “we’ve got this one handled, you can check it off your list.” If the listening manager finds a sales opportunity, they could funnel it over to sales. That tweet can then also populate the sales database and sales can use this to respond and track the status of the opportunity. This is just one, very light way that this can be done today. Over time, it will get more sophisticated.

If you look at my blueprint for the social business you’ll see this thing called the conversation cloud on the left side of the blueprint. You’ll notice Get Satisfaction. What they represent is this conversation cloud that channels conversations into one place. So, let’s just say somebody asks a question on Twitter, or somebody asks a question on Facebook, or somebody goes to the website to ask a question. The magic with Get Satisfaction is that they can put together common responses and common answers from a knowledge-base, directly to the individual. So it can just constantly serve up the right answer without even having to have a human being present, which is huge. It saves them a massive amount of time. This is yet another dimension to CRM that we really haven’t seen before.

So, when you look at Get Satisfaction, combine them with Nimble, then combine with a command center, we’re starting to see pieces of this complete social CRM suite emerge. Then there is going to be some type of glue that brings it all together. That glue is probably going to be somebody like Salesforce who buys all of these pieces to offer one complete solution, or parts of the solution.

What trends are you seeing in the market, both in terms of product development, and general market activity?

I’ve seen a lot of innovation in tools that are called social CRM, even though they’re really one facet of a bigger discussion around social CRM. I’m also seeing a lot of enterprises either innovating or acquiring social CRM type solutions. Though, I’m not sure that I see anything that’s comprehensive. Nor do I see a lot of strategic messaging and real expertise around that messaging. In general, I think we’re going to have more confusion before we have clarity. I think everybody is just learning here as we go.

One trend I hope to see – and I don’t know that I’m going to see this immediately – is the definition of the need. People need to have a better understanding about what it is. Before executives spend any real money or resources around designing infrastructure on the activity, they need to understand what it means. This trend is going to take a little bit of time. Right now social CRM either lives in a silo in marketing, public relations, or customer service. The most important trend we’ll see in 2011 – and going into 2012 – is the understanding of social media’s impact on the entire business.

So basically coming up with use cases?

Ahh, use cases. Lets see. I’ll give you one. But, let me preface it. Dell is often used as a social media success story. Some people believe that it’s overused. But let me tell you why it’s an excellent example of social CRM.

Dell has innovated around a problem. And that problem was that people hated Dell. If you remember it was called Dell Hell. Dell Hell was really the collection of negative experiences through blogs and Tweets. What ended up happening was Michael Dell – and the rest of the company – took it so seriously that they innovated with social CRM systems around it. And it’s still evolving today. When there’s a problem on Twitter, blogs, Facebook, or anywhere else, they watch to see which issues gain momentum. As this happens, they unearth what the problem is, get a team to fix it, then push the fix. This completely extinguishes those discussions. So that means that it went from a listening component to a development component to a distribution component of a CRM system. Phenomenal, right? They’ve got the same infrastructure for sales, human resources, finance and legal. This is what I’m talking about. Dell is able to understand the nuances of its brand and brand experiences at any step of the decision. They’re building an infrastructure, and more importantly, a methodology of philosophies around engaging with those experiences, dealing with those experiences, or managing those experiences. So while they’re far from being the complete example of an entire solution, Dell is by default, building a social CRM system for the entire organization.

I also wanted to send a special note of thanks to Lauren Carlson, Houston Neal,  and the Software Advice team for including me in the 2011 Authority Awards. Other winners include good friend Mr. Paul Greenberg and Denis Pombriant, who is someone I look forward to getting to know better in 2012.

I asked Jason Falls for a guest post to mark the release of his new book, “No Bulls–t Social Media“

Few can argue with the umbrella point of Brian’s latest book. Technology and the reclaiming of the marketplace by consumers has brought about the End of Business As Usual. Companies are collaborating internally, with customers and even one another far more than ever before. Businesses are becoming social, not just using social media. We’re conducting business in a new world.

But let us not forget that while these social and power structure shifts in the marketplace seem to indicate that many businesses and their practices were broken, they weren’t completely broken. We needed a new timing belt, not an entirely new engine.

The process we should know that still holds its own in the new business landscape is strategic planning. For most companies, strategy is top-down. You have business strategies that are then broken down into discipline strategies (like marketing) which can then be fractured out into strategies around practices like public relations or even social media. These ladder up to help accomplish discipline strategies which then aide in the business strategy completion.

For social media marketing specifically the biggest challenge most companies have in approaching the practice strategically is they lack a clear understanding of what social media marketing can do for the business. Identifying the possibilities is the critical first step in the strategic planning process. You’re not going to use social media marketing to solve supply chain issues in your distribution network because social media marketing doesn’t drive that type of activity.

Over the course of the last few years working with clients and seeing other companies implementing social media marketing efforts, I’ve identified seven primary business drivers of social media marketing. These seven things are what social can do for your business. They are:

• Enhance branding and awareness
• Protect reputation
• Extend public relations
• Build community or loyalty
• Extend customer service
• Facilitate research and development
• Drive sales or leads

Focusing on one, three or even all seven of these areas gives you a direction … a purpose for your efforts. Now you can dive into the business process you hopefully already know how to do: plan strategically. Set goals, delineate specific objectives that help accomplish those goals, then excise strategies and tactics that support those objectives.

When you do this, you approach social media marketing strategically. This eliminates two primary pain points for many businesses diving into social marketing. It keeps you from falling victim to the shiny new object syndrome and helps you measure what matters. If your activity can’t be traced upward to support your goal or goals in one or more of the business drivers, then you don’t do it.

Your objectives hopefully have specific triggers that make measuring easy. An example of a strong objective statement might be, “We want to reduce call center costs by 40% by end of year.” How do you measure you success with this objective? Look at your call center costs. How do you achieve the drop? Develop strategies that move customers to social channels or your website to facilitate support rather than calling.

No worrying about Twitter followers or ReTweets, Likes or Lists here. You measure what you’re trying to accomplish.

Strategy is not likely foreign to you. And as much as Brian’s assertions are right — business as usual no longer exists — some of our business practices are still not only relevant, but required.

Don’t be distracted by the technology, the tools, the new environment or even the fascinating possibilities. Approach your social marketing

Find more about the seven business drivers of social media marketing, including case studies and ways to measure them in Jason’s new book, co-authored with Erik Deckers, No Bulls–t Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing. It’s available on Amazon or at many retail bookstores.

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Part 8 in a series introducing my new book, The End of Business as Usual…this is not content from the book, but instead, this series serves as its prequel.

Social media says so much and so very little at the same time. First, social media implies that media is just that, social. But when you study many of the best practices or test the advice dispensed through popular “top 10″ posts, you find that at the heart of notable social media successes is simply brilliant creativity and desirable incentives, not necessary authentic or genuine value or engagement.  With every Tweet or Like to win campaign, hilarious viral video, and user-generated promotional series, businesses make social media more of an oxymoron than a movement to transform two-way conversations into improved customer relationships.

According to an annual IBM study, getting closer to customers is the overwhelming top priority for CEOs. And, social media is lauded as the great facilitator for engagement and renewed business relevance. What we tend to forget however, is that social networks are merely platforms for people to connect with friends, family and peers. Businesses are not the primary beneficiary of connections, but they can certainly benefit once they realize that a Like or follow does not equate to an opt-in for marketing communiqué.

If CEOs are placing increasing importance on customer relationships, why is it that we are less aligned with the “R” in social CRM and closer in alignment to the “M,” where M stands for marketing and not management. That’s because of where social media lives within the organization today.

In IBM’s recent “From Social Media to Social CRM” report, it was revealed that social media is already siloed within marketing, marketing communication, or public relations, accounting for 52%, 45%, and 42% ownership respectively. When we think about the primary function of each of those functions, it’s clear to see why the premise of many of today’s top social media best practices are marketing driven rather than market driven.

The difference between a social brand and a social business is internal connectedness, preparedness, and collaborative approach to customer and employee engagement.

A Social Media and Social CRM Strategy are Different

As good friend Paul Greenberg noted in his book CRM at the Speed of Light, “The underlying principle for Social CRM’s success is very different from its predecessor….traditional CRM is based on an internal operational approach to manage customer relationships effectively. But Social CRM is based on the ability of a company to meet the personal agendas of its customers while, at the same time, meeting the objectives of its own business plan. It is aimed at customer engagement rather than customer management.”

At stake here is relevance among the growing base of a more connected consumer landscape. Engaging consumers from a marketing-driven approach may work for the short term, but engagement requires a holistic approach. Consumers see one brand, one company, one experience and not a series of disconnected silos experimenting in social media without a common vision, mission, or process. While businesses are building an infrastructure to support social media, governance, policies, and strategies are only as strong as the experiences they’re designed to create, the problems they’re intended to solve, and the ability to adapt to and lead consumer experiences because you can see what others don’t.

IBM studied how businesses view their foundation for social media and found that many times, the prevailing corporate culture impeded innovation and collaboration, not just with consumers, but also within. And for any change agent, that will come as no surprise. Whether they know it or not, change agents are becoming hybrid cultural anthropologists and politicians learning how to adapt the culture while rallying internal champions to bring about real change.

Here you can see the number of businesses that have defined KPIs, flexible business models, established policies, adaptive approaches to incorporating social media into business strategies, and defined governance. The blue shades on the left equates to those that strongly agree while toward the right, companies start to show that they’re not where they would like to be. According to the IBM report, only 38% are confident in the support of their company in innovation and creativity. Just 30% can comfortably say that they have strong executive sponsorship for social media. And, a measly 27% say they share insights across functions.

Once you see these numbers, it’s clear that businesses are on the right path, but we’re really just at the beginning. More importantly, one could argue that the direction of the path is questionable. Even though the businesses on the far left are established and confident, they might be operating without a holistic strategy that spans across lines of business, products, functions or across the globe.

And what of a centralized or holistic approach, defined by a common goal and reinforced through not only governance, but compliance?The effects of connected consumerism require nothing less than internal transformation and in many ways, a new outlook.

The challenges that businesses face are still relatively immature as IBM discovered. ROI, employee use of social media, and negative brand exposure lead the top three challenges companies face today. In the number four and seven spots however, we see the true threat to progress, lack of strategy and lack of support. We can not march into new territory without a unified vision. We can not lead consumer experiences if those experiences are either undefined or unsupported by the leadership organization we’re to stand behind.

When’s the last time you looked at your mission and vision statement? Can you Tweet it? Does it speak to you? The truth is that in addition to processes, businesses must rethink who or what it is to a different breed of consumer. This consumer is not just social, they’re connected across networks, devices, and they influence and are influenced differently than traditional consumers.

Mo Data, Mo Problems

What we need to do, where we need to be, how, why and to what extent is available to us today. We won’t discover these answers in the form of brand or competitive monitoring using social tools. We must capture data, interpret it, and also act upon it, now and over time, to learn and pursue relevance without forgetting our core markets and competencies.

Companies are clearly capturing data as IBM found. But as you can see, how data is analyzed, interpreted, and in turn shared across the organization is scattered. And, what happens to information (or insights) once its distributed is unclear in this study, but we can assume that it isn’t embraced and acted upon across the board.

Businesses are experimenting. Businesses are learning and adapting. But this can’t just be about social media. This must be about using disruptive technology to improve customer experiences and relationships. We can’t find comfort until we’re clearly operating outside of our comfort zones. And even then, we can’t rest until we are meeting the needs of connected consumers, where they are, how they connect, and reinforce the values, products, and services that are important to them.

Times are a changing and as a result, the foundation of business must also change. It’s a new era of business and consumerism and you play a role in defining it.

Order The End of Business as Usual today…

Part 1 – Digital Darwinism, Who’s Next
Part 2 – Social Media’s Impending Flood of Customer Unlikes and Unfollows
Part 3 – Social Media Customer Service is a Failure!
Part 4 – I think we need some time apart, it’s not me, it’s you
Part 5 – We are the 5th P: People
Part 6 – The State of Social Media 2011: Social is the new normal
Part 7 – I like you, but not in that way

Image Source: Shutterstock

Michele Cuthbert is the principal of Baker Creative, a brand architectural firm. Baker Creative practices an holistic branding approach which encompasses marketing, business, HR, public relations, social media and new media with creative execution. You can follow her on Twitter @BakerCreative or read the team’s blog.

Giving is big business. Every year non-profit organizations solicit companies in the hope of obtaining much needed funding to accomplish their missions and help others. Giving USA reports corporate giving increased 5.5% to $14.1 billion in 2009.

Businesses are willing to give, but are often confused as to which causes might be best for them. A successful match can lead to a fulfilling partnership and helping others, while a mismatch may lead to disaster. Businesses can build stronger relationships with their stakeholders through their charitable endeavors. Helping others while helping themselves can lead businesses to bigger profits.

Here are some quick tips and pro advice for helping your business choose the right charities to support.

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First Steps

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• Clarify your business’ values: A great place to start is your mission statement. Most companies use their mission statement as the philosophy that guides their daily operations. Clarifying your mission will help you see the natural connection between your organization and a potential charity partner. You will be able to help identify other goals more readily in other areas of your business.
• Find out where your stakeholders are donating: Survey your customers to identify which causes and non-profits they support. Demographic and psychographic profiles may provide you with more insight about the cares and concerns of your customers. Identify what is important to them and any specific causes they may support on their own. Choosing a cause which resonates with your customer shows you are in tune with the matters that are important to them.
• Don’t forget your employees: As the heart and soul of a business, employees’ concerns should be taken into consideration as well. Identify if there is a need coming from within your company. Choosing a cause that your employees care about will get everyone excited and yield better campaign participation.

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Picking a Charity

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Now that you’ve done your research, it’s time to actually pick a charity.

• Determine the criteria for the potential charity: You should consider certain factors such as the size of the charity, the age of the organization and whether the charity will do its work locally, nationally or internationally.
• Narrow it down: Search for charities that meet your criteria. Here is the tedious part. Giving USA cites there were more than 1 million charities in the United States in 2009. You may want to enlist another person or a committee to help with the selection process. GuideStar.org has a wonderful search function that allows you to pick through its database by criteria.
• Compare mission statements: Choose organizations whose mission statements resemble or complement your company’s values. Organizations that share the same ideals may work more harmoniously toward a common goal. List the non-profits that fit your predetermined criteria and focus the remainder of your search on these organizations.
• Make sure organizations are registered with the IRS and have proof that meets the criteria for tax-exempt organizations. If your chosen organization doesn’t meet these specifications, your company’s contribution may not be tax deductible. The Better Business Bureau, CharityNavitagor.org, GuideStar.org, Charity Watch and the Charity Review Council are great resources for helping you determine legitimacy and accountability. If the organization does not show up on any of these databases, ask to see its letter of determination. Faith-based non-profits not listed with these resources may still be legitimate. Ask to its official listing in a directory for its denomination.
• Transparency and accountability is key to obtaining funding from any donor in the non-profit sector. Foundations require the organizations to keep track of financials to ensure the monies are spent as promised. A reputable charity will define its mission and programs clearly, have measurable goals and use concrete criteria to describe its achievements, according to GuideStar.org.
• Trustworthy non-profits will discuss their programs and finances. GuideStar.org suggests avoiding non-profits that use pressure tactics to obtain funding or won’t share internal information.
• Be confident in your partnership. If an organization makes you feel uneasy, it was not meant to be. Do not pair with them. Many reputable organizations do the same kind of work and use funds wisely to do good deeds.
• Give your partnership a trial run. Test your partnership by donating to a small project before doing a large campaign. Observe how the charity works during the process. Check for accountability, transparency, and trustworthiness. You will get a sense of how well your organizations work together without the large commitment up front.

Charities are a fulfilling way to further the mission of your organization while helping the community in which you live and work. Keep these tips in mind the next time you conduct your next cause marketing or charitable campaign, and your organization will be sure to come out ahead.

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Interested in more Social Good resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Devonyu

Who owns social media? Is it marketing, customer service, public relations?

Looking at a recent study conducted by the Pivot Conference, the top four departments where social media is currently run are as follows:

1. Marketing
2. Public Relations
3. Sales
4. Customer Service

Perhaps, it’s the wrong question to ask however. It’s not unlike asking who owns email. But, here’s another question and as we think about it and let’s broaden our perspective as the answer may not appear immediately.

Who owns the customer relationship?

The short answer is everyone.

If that is the case, then examining how social media is run today is not at all how businesses should think about it tomorrow. A not so long answer to the original question is “any person or department affected by outside activity where public interaction impacts decisions.”

Businesses tend to have a single or narrow view of the customer and as we’re learning, they’re connecting with one another and sharing experiences that transform their roles from prospect to advocate to adversary to influencer and everything in between.

Social media is not about conversations on Twitter and Facebook nor check-ins on FourSquare or Places, or flipped videos on Youtube. It’s about using this opportunity to build bridges to a new genre of customers and the people who influence their decisions. Our mission now is to pave paths to future relevance. The reality is that we are as much competing for the future as we are for the moment. And as a result, we are perpetually competing for relevance.

We can blame it process, hierarchy, ignorance, lack of budget and anything and everything standing in our way. Or, we can own the acts of socializing the company using social media as a banner for customer centricity across the organizing. Maybe we could all follow the advice from my dear friend Hugh MacLeod (@GapingVoid) and create our own #Evilplan for change. Then grab pair of self-sharpening industrial scissors and run through the hallways with to begin the long and arduous process of cutting red tape to free people to collaborate internally and externally.

Someone has to do it.

Without you, even through we’re operating with the best of intentions in social media, we are still operating from silos. The customer however, does not see silos, they sees the company as one. It’s time for an integrated approach to create an adaptive business, a collaborative business, an aspirational business….a business of one.

Maria Ogneva is the director of social media at Nimble, a social relationship management solution that transforms your entire community into business opportunity by leveraging the best of customer relationship management, social media and communication tools. You can follow her on Twitter at @themaria or @nimble, or find her musings on the company blog and her personal blog.

It’s no secret that customer experience is one of the cornerstones of an effective business strategy. In all honesty, it should have been all along, but many companies chose to hide behind corporate walls and only talk to customers when it was convenient for them instead of when the customer needed them. There’s no need to belabor the point that social media has put customers in the driver’s seat. However, companies don’t need to live in fear of the next Kevin Smith or Nestle Fanpage episode. They just need to fix their customer experience to ensure that products and services actually do what they’re supposed to do and the company’s support and service are actually helpful.

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Social CRM Connects Social Customer to Social Business

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Today’s business must address more aspects of the customer experience than ever before. In addition to a stellar product or service, you now have many more channels to listen to and participate in, while keeping the experience consistently excellent. Where it gets complicated is wading through the noise, turning data into insights that the whole company can use, and sharing these insights. Because there is so much data being hurled at you, solutions that help unify and share information in a usable format have become necessary. Analyst firm Gartner estimates that more than 80% of growth in enterprise use of social networking tools will be driven by customer engagement projects and estimates social customer relationship management to be a $1 billion submarket of CRM in 2011.Recall that in my previous post about social CRM, we addressed some key tenets:

• Listen and engage;
• Have a 360-degree view of the customer;
• Adopt transparency and customer service as cultural foundations for your business;
• Share and align with your team; develop necessary workflow;
• Social engagement must be enterprise-wide.

In an effort to see these theories applied to real-life situations, let’s examine some examples of how my personal customer experience was affected by businesses correctly capturing, sharing and acting on relevant information.

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Honeymoon and Teamwork

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For my honeymoon, I stayed at a world-class resort called Tabacon in Costa Rica. Each day was full of thoughtful and personalized details that were carefully orchestrated among various employees of the hotel, as well as external parties. The best part of the experience was a private dinner in a cabana in the rainforest. Let’s dissect the collaboration and communication that had to occur for this experience to happen:

• Our travel planner contacted the hotel to make arrangements and communicate our honeymoon status.
• A reservation specialist received the reservation, captured client (mine) information in the internal record system, analyzed honeymoon suite inventory and booked it.
• The hotel referenced client preferences via my profile for that hotel group (“Leading Hotels of the World”) and discovered my preference for champagne.
• The hotel communicated this preference to housekeeping; housekeeping prepared the room for arrival with a champagne bottle and a personalized note of congratulations.
• The concierge greeted me at the door and offered the private dinner and established a channel in which I could book it.
• The hotel collected menu preferences and desired time; communicated time to chef and waiter.
• The waiter came to pick us up in the room and the chef prepared food to client specification.

At least five people and two systems (internal and external) were involved in making this an unforgettable experience. So why did I use this as an example, even though there was no social media involved? Because social or not, the underlying business principles haven’t and shouldn’t have changed. A finely tuned communication and collaboration system is key if you want to provide an excellent experience, whether it’s via the social web or in-person.

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How Does Social Media Enhance Experience?

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Only when you are confident in your ability to support the collaborative process should you invest in a full-scale social media effort. I recommend following these simple steps:

1. Listen and respond. You should be listening for signals from social media for needs of existing and potential clients. You want to engage proactively: listening at the point of need; as well as reactively: listening for indicators that someone may need help. To provide another personal example, Virgin America effectively and quickly responded to a need I had via social media. Unlike its competitor, Virgin got back to me very quickly, taking care to resolve the issue in the backchannel instead of sending me to an 800 number.

2. Cross-reference social and internal customer data. Is there anything that could have made the Virgin example even better? Certainly! It would have been even better if the company automatically knew my frequent flyer number without me having to message it. To successfully serve someone or give them an unforgettable experience, you need to know what your relationship is with the person who tweeted, your history of communication, as well as purchase history, if it’s a customer. For example, at my company, we help you cross-reference people from the social media stream (either your own or as a result of tracking keywords) to the internal record for a full 360-degree view.

3. Understand context of relationship. Quick caveat: this new level of customer intelligence should be used in context of the relationship. While the customer may want you to get the full scoop on him or her in a customer service scenario, a company should never appear like it is using the personal information of someone who has no relationship with the company.

I once had a sub-par experience with a major financial institution where I couldn’t get in touch with customer service. Exasperated and in a panic, I complained on TwitterTwitter, after which the Twitter rep got back to me promptly. Before I could even write back with details about my situation, she proactively e-mailed me via the e-mail address on record. In this case, it wasn’t creepy and actually provided value, because we had a relationship, and I knew the company had my e-mail address.

Of course, if an existing customer is having a bad experience, your first priority should be fixing the experience, communicating it back to the user and asking this person to keep voicing feedback and opinions. This will increase brand affinity and create an experience worth sharing with others. Whether your customer is having a good experience or bad, it’s key to create a participatory channel in which ideas can be voiced and captured, and progress communicated back to the customer.

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Share and Collaborate, Rinse and Repeat

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As you do all of the above, make sure that your team, as well as key external parties, are on the same page with you. Cross-reference social data with internal data, retain and reference current and prior conversation threads and ensuing actions items. Just like how the Tabacon personnel immaculately shared information about me, delegated tasks to each other, and stayed on the same page, so should any business that wants to provide a superb customer experience.

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Image courtesy of iStockphotoiStockphoto, AndyL

I’m not a public relations professional, but lots of PR people read this blog for ideas on how social software and social networks are changing the business. I want to offer some thoughts for 2011: small bites but a larger meal. Let’s get into it.

Platform Fatigue is Upon Us

We don’t want to update our status on FB/Twitter/Foursquare/LinkedIn/ThirdTribe/OWN/etc. We want to connect on maybe two or three networks tops. One or two of these will remain the “commons” services like Facebook or Twitter. The rest of people’s interactions are going to fall into smaller communities, often private or self-selected in some way.

As a PR professional, your role is to help get attention, to get the story out there, to get people interested via your efforts. The small bites approach to this will be to reach them at the commons, and/or to possibly create some of these self-selected communities. The difference, however, is that it won’t be okay to create the “AXE Shampoo community.” Even though I use their shampoo, I don’t want to talk about washing my hair.

Instead, smarter PR companies will create communities that fit the demographic of people who buy AXE (I guess men 18-45 or similar), and will create an opportunity for AXE to participate that’s potentially interchangeable with some other properties over time. The PR company will maintain the space. It’s theirs. And thus, a community who is drawn together becomes a valuable asset for the PR organization.

The number will never be a fraction of the population of Facebook or Twitter. Small bites.

Content Does, Indeed, Rule

We stick around for interesting stuff. C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley released Content Rules (affiliate link), your guide to creating decent content. Pick up a copy and brush up on what has to happen with your group. PR has moved into a role that used to be squarely in marketing’s court: content creation. PR used to be responsible for getting out the story, for making events happen, that kind of thing. But with the way the Internet works today, content is the coin of the realm. I disagree with the old “content is king” adage. Instead, you’re looking for more coin. In this case: coins=attention. And content gets the attention that you need to build your relationships with your client’s would-be buyers. (Oh, and if you think public relations isn’t now part of the sales process, it’s not so directly, but the PR agency or department that helps drive sales into the business are the ones who flourish in 2011.) Give them interesting small bites of content.

Sexy Data and Technical Abilities Are Par

If you’re just a pretty face who helps people get their free gift bag, it’s time to level up. 2011 is about looking at all the wealth of data the social web brings you about your clients’ activities, and it’s about giving them informed decisions on what to do next. Technical skills beyond learning how to put up a blog post are a must. You need to understand Google Analytics. You need to understand the basics of how APIs work, at least enough so that you can instruct developers better in how to build data mashup tools to help your clients. Yes, it’s no longer about having a nice booth presence in 2011. Learn in small bites and you’ll get there.

The Shifts Are Already Upon Us

People explored some social media in 2010. They had a “okay, we’re in. Now what?” attitude. They are over that. Now they’re into “what have you done for me lately?” Take some small bites, put together a bigger meal for your clients, and you’ll see the rewards.

Other quick bites: mobile (get onto tablets, if that makes sense for your buyer), saying no (if they don’t need a facebook community, explain that and get off of it), and education (teach them how to fish: clients want to run the show now).

What’s your take?

Twitter is introducing a new Tab to its redesigned social dashboard. Depending on which test you’re part of, you may already see “People” or “Find People” just to the right of the Messages link at the top. This new feature is the culmination of Twitter’s work to enhance your experience within the rapid-fire micro information exchange. While this isn’t Tweet-stopping news, it is important.

By clicking through, we open a window that allows us to look beyond our egosystem to explore the topics and tweeple who also contribute to the Twitterverse. Doing so reveals that our world is in fact, not flat. And, we also discover parallel universes that could benefit from our connection as well as benefit our social existence.

This is about who we know and who we should know.

We teach.

We learn.

We grow.

As a result…the magnetism of the network grows stronger, until it becomes part of our human nature, an extension of who we are and what we do. Indeed, Twitter is gradually migrating us from social graphs to interest graphs. Why? Because Twitter needs us to grow and shape our connections to keep us focused on our attention streams and to cultivate a rich landscape of contextual networks or nicheworks around interests, topics and memes. Aside from creating a valuable exchange for information commerce, interest graphs improve how people learn, discover, share and communicate. Nicheworks are also incredibly monetizable and may in fact, represent the future of marketing, service, and advertising.

Who to Follow

WTF (couldn’t resist) introduces us to the people who are connected to friends and friends of friends as well as those whose Tweets echo  similarities to our own. Here we learn more about people, their recent Tweets and are given the ability to follow them or add them to a list on the spot.

Once on the WTF page, we’re presented with new tabs to help us expand and refine our interest graph, “Browse Interests” and “Find Friends.”

Browsing interests is also extremely intuitive.  Simply browse top-level topics and Twitter’s human algorithm introduces you to a qualified set of individuals and branded accounts. This same technology will eventually escalate beyond connections as we start to explore the world of social networks and conversations to predict behavior, outcomes, and events.

Interest graphs aren’t limited to Twitter. Every social network competing for your attention and connections will nurture the maturation of social and interest graphs. As architects of our own online experiences, it improves how quickly relevant information and people find us, our ability to develop and better our online persona, and ultimately how we positively affect those who follow us.

(h/t TechCrunch)

I recently had the opportunity to work with the Lexus team on an creative new project, Darkcasting, the company’s new social web series designed to launch the Lexus CT 200h. The Lexus CT 200h is a new compact full hybrid, equipped with some very compelling features as well as various driving and atmosphere modes to suit the many moods of the person in control – seriously.

I was cast in the series without obligation to blog or tweet. But, I do feel it’s worth sharing…and I think they knew I would anyway.

Darkcasting puts a spin (yes, pun intended) on the traditional talk show. Whitney Cummings and her guests cruise around their hometowns, in my case it was San Francisco, discussing the background of each guest as well as capturing the beautiful randomness that can only happen when two strangers sit in an unfamiliar setting, filmed by over 10 cameras in three different vehicles, while driving at the same time.

The show traveled to some of the most scenic cities in the country, creating a rich backdrop for the shows and the right ambiance for each conversation. Darkcasting visited New York, San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Miami.

Guests include…

New York: Carlo Mirarchi, good friend Baratunde Thurston, Harley Viera-Newton

San Francisco: Goapele, DJ QBERT, Chef Matt Accarrino

Each series also includes interesting back stories and behind-the-scenes footage to keep visitors engaged beyond the episode.

Whitney, if you read this…don’t poke me unless you really mean it (inside joke, you have to watch the video).

Special thanks to James Andrews (@keyinfluencer) for setting up this opportunity.

View more at The Darker Side of Green