June 2009

Magazine Features

Who Owns the Social Customer?

CRM magazine's in-depth report on the state of social media in CRM.

Social Media from A to Z

An alphabetical glossary of what you need to know about social media.

Maturity and Social Media: You'll Be Social (Soon)

CRM magazine's Social Media Maturity Model, the launching pad for a discussion of the next five years of social media.

Strategy and Social Media: Everything’s Social (Now)

You may not know what you're doing — but your customers do. If the time to act is now — does that mean it's too late to plan?

Sales and Social Media: No One’s Social (Yet)

Social computing is still working its way into the consultative sales process. For most sales forces, that's just fine.

Marketing and Social Media: Everyone’s Social (Already)

Your customers are increasingly connected — to you, to your competition, to each other — but you're not supposed to be the center of every network.

Service and Social Media: You’re Not Social (Enough)

Communities and channels are rapidly expanding — and your company needs to at least know its place in all of them.

Sales in the Facebook Era

An exclusive excerpt from the new book, The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff, by Salesforce.com's Clara Shih.

Front Office

Social Media Spawns a New Era in Customer Intelligence

Customer attitudinal information is what companies have been clamoring to obtain for years.

Reality Check

The New Currency of Social Media

Active engagement gives us a chance to better understand the customer.

Customer Centricity

The New Interaction of Social Media

Beyond marketing, the popular tools and techniques can also serve as a channel for support.

The Tipping Point

The 5 Phases of Social Experience

The social Web is about to evolve — again. Are you ready to evolve, too?

Connect

The New Maelstrom of Social Media

We're awash in social networking data. Do we really want our businesses drowning in it, too?

Pint of View

The New Connections of Social Media

I don't care to belong to any social network that will accept me as a member.

Insight

Social Shepherds

If you expect employees to stay within the lines, you need to draw the lines first.

Poking Holes in Attrition

Social networking has the potential to transform the day-to-day operations of customer service representatives.

On the Scene: Users Converge

Microsoft Convergence '09: Microsoft and its user groups extend face-to-face with @-to-@.

Required Reading: Socially Aware

The co-author of Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom explains why it's not so easy for companies to simply hop aboard the social media bandwagon.

CRM on Twitter: June 2009

Social media thought leaders, twittering about social media.

REAL ROI

Social from the Inside Out

By focusing on connecting employees, a socially entwined culture benefits clients.

A Travel Company’s Tweet Deals

Quality time — and high-quality engagement — on Twitter helps CruiseDeals.com extend its brand and develop leads.

Infusing Social Communities into Service

With Helpstream's on-demand offering, Infusionsoft bolsters its customer support.

Investing in Knowledge Management

Financial software developer Advent uses InQuira to show it's what you know and who you know.

Secret of My Success

A Community Gives Pitney Bowes Its Stamp of Approval

A forum designed to address one problem evolves into an enterprise asset.

Re:Tooling

Re:Tooling -- Social Networking Platforms: Making Social More Social

Capable of far more than pokes, tweets, and zombies, vendors begin to connect with social software platforms.