The Best Social Media CRM
Have you looked at Social Media CRM Tools lately?
As marketing folks, we certainly have their work cut out for us–especially in this brave new world of social and new media, where relationship-building is literally everything!
Every small business owner, it would seem, now has a LinkedIn account, a Facebook Page, a Twitter Account, and many of the smaller retailers have Yelp and Foursquare accounts. How are we supposed to keep up with all this? It can be overwhelming!
Yet manage we must
As Marketers, we’re ultimately graded (and paid) based upon the quantity and quality of qualified leads and sales that we generate through our websites, blog posts, and email blasts. Our success (or failure) in using Social Media effectively is about (1) connecting (2) listening (3) engaging, and (4) turning social connections into customers.
Enter Social Media CRM: Social media CRMs are applications that aggregate information on your contacts’ social profiles, making it easier to engage and ultimately influence and educate them to the point where they’re ready to do business with you. That’s why I’ve evaluated several of the the top Social Media CRMs:
Evaluation of Three Social Media CRM Tools:
Sprout Social - is very simple, clean, and easy-to-use, and has toolsets perhaps better suited for the small, retail business or marketing agency.
Dashboard: They’ve put all the information that matters in one, simple interface, with all the information you need to measure success and know exactly where to spend your time. Brand Monitoring & Research: If there’s a conversation about your business anywhere on the web, whether it be tweets, reviews, blog posts, news…, it’ll show up in your inbox. Also, you can research users based on their Twitter profile to find targeted prospective customers and influencers based on criteria you define. Contact Management: You can manage all of your social media connections in one place, complete with history, notes, and more. 30 Day Free Trial. $9.95/month, $49.50/month for expanded capabilities.
Batch Book - A very easy-to-use business solution, minus Facebook (as of now), which makes it perhaps better suited for the small to medium sized business selling to other businesses.
To get started you just import your email addresses, and click of the “Search Social Network” button, you can easily find and add your contact’s Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn profile information. When you view the contact record, you will have links to social networking profiles as well as their last three tweets, most recent Flickr photos, and a LinkedIn summary will appear alongside their contact information and communication history, giving you a more holistic view of their social networking activity. Batch Book actually acts more like a traditional CRM with web forms, to-do lists, and pipeline development. 30 Day Free Trial. $9.95/month for solo users, up to $99.95/month for up to 50 users.
Gist - An elegant business solution perhaps better geared towards the enterprise.
Dashboard: Gist helps you meet your contacts where they are, whether they’re in email, social networks, on your mobile phone and many other sources. Gist brings your contacts into one place to give you a full view of your network making it easy to find anyone, anytime. News & Updates: You can get the latest news, blog posts, and tweets for anyone in your professional network delivered where you want it, when you want it. Always keep up to date with all of your contacts. Contact Management: You can see all your contacts across all your inboxes, social networks, and lists assembled in one place for easy access and use – no invites to send or friends to request. Gist brings the whole mobile media dimension to Social Media CRM by integrating with: Outlook, Gmail, Lotus Notes, Saleforce.com, iPhone, and Droid. Ease of Implementation: Very easy to implement. The signup wizard accessed all my contacts through Gmail and linked Google Calendar, as well as Twitter and Facebook. It was going to make me manually upload my LinkedIn Contacts (which is a bit of a pain), so I didn’t do it. Free Trial (indefinite) while its in its Beta Period.
You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Each of these Social Media CRM tools offer Social Media users a major step forward. While Gist looks like the enterprise version with its integration capabilities, it seems poised to be the solution for larger businesses.
Sprout Social has more of a small business/retail/agency flavor and makes it extremely easy to manage Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Yelp, and Foursquare–for ten different accounts for only $49.00/month. Most importantly, it grades you on your engagement and influence with your followers, and provides suggestions to help you improve–which is what a Social Media CRM should help you accomplish.
The Best Social Media CRM: Sprout Social is my choice because I’m a small business marketer/marketing agency. I’m going to use it to help my clients manage their social media.
If you have any other questions about Social Media CRM please contact me today.
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This is a good list of online Social CRM applications. I think that there is also a large number of application that can integrate with a mainstream CRM like SalesForce or NetSuite that can provide some value also. The Social CRM space is a growing interest for many organizations especially for sales people that are having to adust to the new buying process of Customer 2.0. Thanks for the post.
Thanks Koka. You’re right. I left out some plugins like Rapportive, Rainmaker, Onesource… Rapportive is a plugin that ties in with Gmail/Google Apps. I think Social CRM is going to be really important because it’ll help companies organize their engagement strategy more effectively… like you said to adjust to the way folks are buying these days.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tessa @SproutSocial, Peter Soung. Peter Soung said: Social Media CRM tool comparison including @Sproutsocial: http://bit.ly/bMieIX /via @LesProctor [...]
[...] also can read about Best Social CRM Tools in the article of Les Proctor , where he gives an overview of some Social CRM tools and [...]
Great post- I am currently looking for a CRM that incorporates communication (social and private) as well as supports all of my customer billing. Les would you have the chance to shed a little light on the subject and let me pick your brain?
Thanks Jessica… sorry for the delay in my response. There are several ways to do that. Fill out this quick form so I’ve got your telephone number, and I’ll give you a call next week: http://www.lesproctordirect.com/contact/.
[...] a previous post I covered several different very good Social CRMs. Social media CRMs are applications that aggregate information on your contacts’ social profiles, [...]
Thanks for the post!
Im currently looking for both a CRM/ Social Media System tool which can be customized as much as possible, multi language and international support, and with different brands/products. Can you please let me know if you have a list of recommendations? Thanks!
Hi Daniel
When it comes to Social Media CRM, I think Gist, Sprout Social, and Batch Blue are the best options.
I also did a follow up blog post on Rapportive, a Firefox Plugin that works with Gmail.
Have a great day!