Social CRM - Not Your Father's Customer Relationship Management

I found a interesting presentation from Brent Leary on Social CRM. It is 2 years old ppt but still hold good worth. Brent describes how Obama won the election by using Social CRM, and says:

Traditional CRM + Social CRM = Real CRM

Here's the full presentation file from Slideshare.

Social CRM - Not Your Father's Customer Relationship Management

View more presentations from bleary.

Twitter BOTs : Blessing or Curse?

In my school days, there was a favorite topic for debate competition -- "Is Science Blessing or Curse?". I have participated few times and had to put points from the both side. My stand was, and is always is -- there can not be black and white in the World. It depends on how we use and make good out of any function or technology.

Now Twitter BOT seems the same. I am happy to know that a Human (Aston Kutcher) won over a BOT (CNN) in the race to have 1 M followers. Would like to look into the matter into more detail here.

Reasons to hate BOTs.

1. Welcome Auto-DMs used as Ads

Auto-DMs are really annoying. When you follow people they say welcome with an ad -- "please visit our site xxxx". I take this as an offence. Suppose you come to our company site and we start telling you about our service one after the other without knowing why you came and what your interest is.

Do you like this? I am sure you wont. Best strategy is always to listen first, understand and then talk. And when you talk its better to ask questions and genuine questions. This will ensure good relation build-up, thus ensuring the successful use of Social Media.

2. Too Many and Automated DMs

When I follow you, I am subscribing to your Tweets and not to your DMs. You can DM, but not regularly to piss me off and force me to unfollow or block you. It is a good way of taking relations private and personal to have successful professional co-operation. Robotized actions in such functions can only harm.

3. Frequent Tweets

Twitter is not a Media like any other Media like Radio, Television or NewsSite. You don't need to be there all time. It is simply because, no one is listening only to you.

Twitter is a Media where people follow many others and share things. Quality of Tweet matters a lot than Frequency. If the frequency is too high for followers to follow, you can only lose them; you have a share of people's time and you better stick to it. Increasing the share can be a long term strategy with well thought planning, this needs quality of service and not quantity.

I unfollow any users who use BOTs to Tweet more than 5 Tweets a Min. This is irrespective of the quality of Tweet.

4. Automated RTs

This is another annoying thing. RTs are done for the Tweets that you find interesting and worthy for others to read. People have high expectations while visiting the links that are RTed. If you use a BOT for that purpose and wrong Tweets get RTed, you are gone. It can harm a lot and you may end up losing followers.

More important is the fact that such actions will lower the value of RTs. Accounts are graded by many Account graders using this metric, and the automated RTs of the useless Tweet will affect that badly.

(We are working to blacklist and remove RTs from the ReTweeter BOTs while calculating scores in Buzzom.)

5. Repeated Tweets

There are few BOTs in the TwitterSphere which Tweet about certain no. of links or services. They continuously do the repetition and add no value to the followers. It only decreases the relevance of the user and is most likely to be unfollowed.

Reasons to Like BOTs

1. Automated Followback

This is detable again whether you need to followback all who follow you. I do feel, it is necessary atleast to know what the follower has to say. I unfollow when I feel the user add no value.

This followback takes huge time as I get 200 to 500 followers daily, and it actually pains to follow each of them. I use Buzzom for this, and I am pretty happy it does for me. It has the facility to choose whom to follow back and whom not to.

I may even choose to have automated followback, but have not done it so far.

2. Find New and Interesting People

Twitter is believed to be having around 25 million users, and they all differ in their likings and dislikings. If I want to know who are from my domain and who have interest matching my interest, I need a system to tell me. I need a BOT!

3. Grow Regularly and Timely

I want to find and follow people from certain areas like Analytics and Economy. I also like to follow people who are likely to follow me back and grow my follower base. I can do it manually but again it takes times. If I have certain benahoir that can be automated, why not do it.

I would like to use BOT for some regular stuffs, but want to make sure my action does not annoy anyone. My experience is that continuously follow and unfollow pisses off some people. If anyone can give me facility where these things dont happen, I will certainly use a BOT and save my time.

Buzzom have tested BOT with such facility and is coming up with BOT Factory soon. You may want to explore it.

4. Quality Feeds

If you are a blogger or a News Site owner, you will need a BOT to set-up feed Tweets. I am not a big fan of such feeds but don't have any problem if they are quality, genuine and manageable. I would actually love to see feed Tweets from CNN, BBC, TechCrunch etc., provided the frequency is manageable. This would mean if I get 100 Tweets in 5 mins from CNN, no way i am going to follow them and lose what other folks have to say.

When done timely and properly, feeds are actually great. They have huge value to the followers, and you save your time. A win-win situation.

5. SPAM Control

An Iron can cut Iron, a bamboo stick cannot. Only an BOT can find and nullify the SPAMMING BOT. Out of 25 million Tweeters, and out of hundreds and thousands of Tweeters we follow, there are a few thousand such Spamming BOTs that trouble us. It can be fought back only in two ways -- 1. having too much control and choosing followings with much care 2. go for a mass follow and make huge number of friends, while having a BOT working to control the SPAM in your follow list.

If you follow the first approach, you are not using the strength of Twitter and using it like Orkut or Facebook. Twitter is about going out and reaching to the maximum possible people outside of your friend circle. If you compromise here, you lose the fun and the opportunity of this new Social Media Revolution.

Have the second one, and get relaxed.

My Take:

BOTs are not essentially bad, and can be blessing in disguise. Individuals need to make a Twitter strategy and get it going. BOT may or maynot be suitable to you; you are the best person to judge.

If you like this article, do not forget to follow me in Twitter.

More readings on Social Media:

1. Twitter : Why unfollow who dont follow you?

2. Twitter Experience Bettered : InRev TwitIn

3. 82 Days with Twitter : 10 Thousand Followers and More

4. Twitter Analysis I (Twitin)

5. TwitIn

6. Twitter Followers : Quality vs Quantity in Marketing

7. Tweeters : Here's the Growing Formula

Is Facebook the most Socially Irresponsible Company?

There are very few companies who have seen the growth like Facebook did. The social media leader is one of the most visited sites in the world, and boost of having 200 million registered users. All this has in just 5 years of operation. Wow!!

I was not a fan of Facebook until last year when I realized Orkut's irresponsibility in handling the issue of hacked groups and junk messages. I slowly moved from Orkut to Facebook and in a year FB became my choice of social media site.

The suddenly Facebook announces change in its looks and starts giving higher importance to live update. This is something I preferred the least. I used to hate it when few friends would update too often to push other’s update down. Hell!! Facebook gave higher weightage to something I disliked; and if that was not enough, I have absolutely no choice to go back to earlier version.

 What was the reason behind all this? It’s the rise in popularity of Micro-blogging site, Twitter. I admit that I am a big fan and regular user of Twitter. But that doesn’t stop me from hating the redesigning of Facebook. I have different approaches to both these sites and I wish to continue using them the way I have always like to.

 Here are few reasons why I hate Facebook redesign.

 1. Twitter for exploration; Facebook for friendship

I was hardly looking to make new friends at Facebook, and in Twitter I do. I listen to a lot of people and I talk to them in Twitter; this is more of exploration. After a while, I turn back to a friend in Facebook for personal chats.

 2. Twitter is Facebook’s rival not mine

Why does Facebook force me to chat with friends in public and listen to what my friend is cooking? Is this just because Twitter is getting its share of Social Media buzz!! This is not a valid argument. I am fuming!

 3. Facebook didnot care to ask me

How I wish Facebook had asked its users if they would consider such an option. It’s suddenly imposing a new way on me and expecting me to oblige. Damn!

4. No backward compatibility

If this wasn’t enough, I don’t even have the flexibility to go back and use the old look which I was more than comfortable with. Isn't this like a father finding girl for you, and saying, "hey, you are gonna date her from today. Leave your girlfriend now!"

 

History Repeats Itself?

 The first thing that came to my mind when I heard of current redesign is “History Repeats Itself”. People and companies make mistakes mostly out of fear and greed. The reality could be different from what they see. Let me discuss few incidents that has happened in past.

 Sweet Coke:

Coco-Cola was having a great lead in US Market and Pepsi was rising fast. This posed a threat to the Coco-Cola Company and they made a strategy to hit Pepsi. They changed the formula of Cococola and made it sweet. They were bullish in their strategy and were targeting to kill Pepsi; but the result was hazardous. They lost huge market share to Pepsi not because people liked Pepsi more but because people were upset in not finding their favorite drink in the market. They turned to Pepsico.

Cococola soon realized its mistake and was fast to track back!

 

Soundless Harley:

Harley Davidson faced intense competition from the Japanese rivals, who mostly manufactured the soundless sports bikes. They were losing market share for many quarters, and then launched the soundless Harleys in the Market to fight the Japs.

Result was horrifying. People liked Harley for the sound and when it went soundless there wasn’t any reason to buy it. Further it was an emotional backlash on Harley users group.

 Harley realized its mistake soon and then got back to its original form. They are even now loved for the sound.

 

Live Facebook:

I am still not convinced with the reason for Facebook to make itself a Twitter look-alike. Twitter has a user base of around 8 million and Facebook 200 million. 

 Now the questions remain.

1. Do Twitter's quick 8 millions weigh more than the Facebook's huge 200 millions?

2. Did Twitter actually take away Facebook users? Or is this just a Twitter killing strategy of Facebook after they rejected its buyout offer?

3. Has the investment from Microsoft also brought their culture of not listening to users and forcing new things to Facebook?

4. Would this make traditional Facebook users move to its rivals, Myspace and Orkut or will they remain with Facebook?

5. Is Facebook the most Socially Irresponsible Social Media Company ever born?

 Well these questions need to be answered. My take is – What Facebook has done is wrong and it has hurt the sentiments of people like us. They have made our life more difficult and they have taken us for granted.

 This makes Facebook the most Socially Irresponsible Company today! Agree? Do not forget to share your view as comment here.  

 --

PS: Please particpate in the Facebook user review Poll on the top right hand side of this blog. Let’s take our voice to Facebook.

--

More readings on Social Media:

1. Twitter : Why unfollow who dont follow you?

2. Twitter Experience Bettered : InRev TwitIn

3. 82 Days with Twitter : 10 Thousand Followers and More

4. Twitter Analysis I (Twitin)

5. TwitIn

Twitter Experience Bettered : InRev TwitIn

InRev comes up with a Twitter Account Management Tool, InRev TwitIn. It has addressed two major areas:

1. Account Grading

InRev TwitIn Score is a behavioral score built to rate the Twitter Accounts. It is a combination of three important aspects -- Twit Efficiency, Influence and ReTweet rate. For each of these three paspects, it provides individual scores and a overall InRev TwitIn Score is the sum of these scores. Here's what it says about my account: 

2. Twitter Account Management

Through InRev TwitIn one can manage Twitter Account better. You can simply focus on talking to people and enjoy the conversation while following and unfollowing tasks can be left to TwitIn. InRev TwitIn has three functions now:

a) Flush -- Unfollow whoever does not follow you

b) Grow -- Follow new people randomly.

c) Reciprocate -- Follow people who follow you

Now its just simple follow and unfollow, and you cant choose whom to follow and whom not to. This is because of the Twitter API Limitation. The Advanced Follow/UnFollow engine is coming once we get our server WhiteListed.

InRev TwitIn is SAFE and SECURE
Privacy and Security InRev does not save passwords of the users. It performs the actions based on user request only, and no extra action is taken without user permission. InRev Twittin is safe to use and there is no security leakage risk to the user.

Try it out and let me know how you feel. Any suggestions are most welcome.

Great follow-up by Deep in his blog. Get it here.

82 Days with Twitter : 10 Thousand Followers and More

I started using Twitter on Dec 2nd 2008, thanks to @lokeshawasthy and @bibek. These two folks inspired me to come, and I came to try it. Since then I have come a long way. 

Got a message yesterday from @MrMilestone saying I reached 10 Thousand Followers!! The five digit number gave me some happiness and then I looked at the history. It was on the 82nd day of my joining Twitter. Don't know, if this is a good feat; but seriously felt happy and thankful for the love extended by my followers. Thanks all.

My Twitter Experience has been great. Enjoyed some good conversation with few folks; learned a lot from the people whom I follow. 

Few of the achievements:

1. Just in Time Update

Got to know most news as soon as it happened. Be it political, economic, technical or other; I became more up to date on things.

2. Widen Knowledge Base

Being a Business Consultant and an Analyst, I was lost in my field. I followed people from various background and got to know other areas pretty well.

3. Friendship and Networking

Made friends from all parts of the Globe. Now I have more friends in US than in India (country of residence) or Nepal (my hometown). Wow :)

4. Traffic to Website or Blog

Got huge number of visitors to my blog; surprising but true now Twitter is the biggest source of traffic surpassing Google by more than 50%.

5. Review of Services and Products

I am very grateful to those folks who reviewed InRev services and products. Special thanks to @robertnelsoninc, @greybucket, @justinrfrench, @a_smart_union, @masonronald, @onlinesneh, @bhuttan, @bibek, @lokeshawasthy and others.

The views and comments helped to better our offerings.

6. Increased Personal Branding

It was virtually impossible to make a brand of my own after starting the company in a short time. Product building, serving clients and earning revenue all take time. But thanks to Twitter, it does not take either. I could make a space for myself here, and could prove myself. This has not only given confidence in my partners, but also helped me build profile to talk to external parties, clients and partners.

7. Ideas Sharing and Business Enhancement

Twitter rocks in this area. I Twitted few times on what would people like to see in Economic Reporting Portal, F-Cube, and in ten minutes got 10 replies. Wow!! We are working on providing those facilities and our next release on March 15th will be far better than what our original vision was.

Second, I asked for suggestions on InRev TwitIn, a Twitter Account Management Service, and got 21 suggestions in a day. We worked on those lines and brought the service. It instantly became a hit and surprised everyone including ourselves.

We have brought Reporting, Analytics Ranking and few Account Management functions there. Rest functions are kept for next phase.

8. Own Medium for Marketing and Gained Confidence

Now I have my own medium for Marketing, where I can reach to thousands of people on a click. And Its all free to use. Thanks to Twitter. 

I would never have such facility without it. A small advertisement on a national newspaper cost a lot, and building a reputed blog to market take hundreds of days. Twitter has proved to be the blessing for start-ups like InRev.

9. Increased Efficiency of Talk

Twitter has limitation of 140 characters for each Tweet. I used to get pissed off earlier with this limitation, and even thought of starting a rival with 500 characters (...lol). But after using it for more than two months, have started loving it.

It has increased my efficiency in using words. Less talk, straight message and work done! It has impacted on other works too; I have become more to the point now (my friends say so!! Must be true).

10. Job and Marriage Offer

I started blogging around 3 years back, and it was just because I wanted to share my views to the World. But after a year it became source of job offers, and got few marriage offers too! 

82 days in Micro-Blogging through Twitter has too brought two job offers, and who knows marriage offer might be in waiting :D

--Well That's It for the past 82 days with Twitter. Hoping better experiences ahead. Will certainly share more in coming days. Do not forget to give your comments! Would love to hear what you think on my experience, and love more to know your experience.

Liked this article? Follow me (@leplan) in Twitter.

Twitter : Why unfollow who dont follow you?

Twitter is supposed to be a Micro-Blogging site. There most people speak, but few people listen. There are even people who neither listen, nor speak. And surprisingly, there are a lot of computer bots acting like Humans and fooling the audience.

Twitter has influenced our lives a lot, and for me second largest contributor of traffic to my blog after Google is Twitter! And that comes in just 2 months.

I have also plans for using this platform to market InRev Products and Services via Twitter. Does this mean, I am going to add junk to it? Well, the answer is very much NO, and partly YES. I will however try to make it very pleasent for my followers and not bumbard lots of ads or feeds; but will certainly engage in meaningful communication to grow my business.

I was constantly thinking for sometime, should we follow people who dont follow back? My answer is a clear NO. Here are the reasons WHY!

1. No meaningful conversation

If you are not friend but a follower, you cannot have a meaning conversation. This will hurt your interest, and frustrate you of Social Media and Twitter.

2. Why favor someone while you are not reciprocated?

This is another tricky thing. There is a saying, "There are two qualities of a successful man; 1. His friends are successful 2. he reads good books". Better push your friends and they will pull you too. Why push someone and give him good exposure when he does not care you.

3. Lack of Online Help

Twitter's best use is to ask few what you want to know and get the answer. This is better than Google as it is Human Involved search. People who dont follow you don't see you question; forget to get answer from them.

4. Stars in real Life does not need to be followed in Twitter

Well this is personal choice. I have no complaint if you follow @barackobama or @britneyspears; but I will certainly not do. They are good at their place and I am not interested to know when they have lunch and when they have a shower. If anything important comes, I will get form the news and my Twitter friends will let me know. I don't want to make all the real life stars look big in Social Media too; I would love to see new people becoming stars like @guykawasaki @unmarketing @justinrfrench @mayhemstudios etc. (and prob you and me :D)

You may rethink if you want to keep following your favorite artists.

5. Dont ever push the indifferent friends

I have seen many people following their real life friends even through the friend is not a active Twitter user. This adds no value; and more so if he does not even care to follow you back.

6. If you are not follow anyone, you wont lose anything

Twitter is a network of people. I am sure there are many people who dont like me, but I am happy there are also a bunch of people who like me. I would better be with the later ones. Why bother about others? Right!

If I dont follow anyone, I am sure one of my friends would be following him and I will get any important Tweet that comes in Twittersphere. It is explained by the Market Law, "If something is important in the market, you will know it."

7. Care about your time; but dont over-run

You can never be faster in knowing anything. Its just that, you will know. Zeroth Law of Market says, "Never invest just because you know something. If you know anything, everybody knows it." So following someone, you wont beat time.

8. Less the people more the care

If you follow less people and targeted people, you can share your love among them and increase your influence. While if you engage yourself in reading and RTing people who don't follow you, you lose your relevance in your friends' network too. Love, hate, care and ignore; all of these are reciprocated by human brain in most general cases. Do the same, and get highly connected network and increased bonding.

9. You wont get dumped in Junk; just manage it better

Worried about auto-follow, and too much junks like auto DMs and feeds? Well, dont be. Twitter is gonna be much better. You will soon get tools to filter the junk feeds while not annoying the feeder. One way of doing it to maintain group in TweetDeck and give higher importance to the group members. Better tools should be coming; will let you know.

Actions rewarded, gets repeated. So if there are people who throw too much of junk; dont just unfollow but block him altogether!! This is the best return you can give to them.

10. You arent makeing Twitter monotonous; you are building relations

Few of my friends believe if everyone starts following others, Twitter becomes too monotonous. I disagree. There can be many inter-connected groups; it will be better modeled in a complex network of many segments where few nodes are common in more than one segments.

Result: lesser distance within the segments i.e. similar minds together; larger distance between different groups i.e. dissimilar minds away!! This will fuel the happiness index of the Twitter users, and thus make Twitter a better palce to be in.

Have any comments? Drop in here. Or mail me. Will look forward to hearing from you. 

If you like this article, follow me @leplan.

You might want to look at InRev's Twitter Management Tool TwitIn.