How a CRM Can Help Your Social Media Strategy

Social media has become an outstanding force for driving business activity in recent years – but managing social media for a company is no simple task. A social CRM can help turn your prospects into potential sales and clients while limiting the time you spend hunting down sales.

What are the benefits of a social CRM?

A CRM allows you to import your contacts and social media connections into one place, while integrating valuable tools, such as email marketing, social media profiles, Google Analytics, and advertising campaigns.

Many social CRMs also provide auto-updating metrics and reports for email and advertising campaigns, online transactions, and social interactions among followers and market influencers. Lastly, an effective social CRM strategy allows busiensses to rate the “hottness” of prospects through web tracking. Some of the components of prospect tracking include email metrics, clicks on links, registration for newsletters and social media events, conversation and social media activity monitoring. Some CRM platforms then allow businesses to individually connect, message, and monitor communication between prospects – increasing the likelihood of prospect to sale conversions.

3 Social CRMs You Should Consider

1. ZOHO

ZOHO is a cheap social CRM option in comparison to its widely-successful competitor, Salesforce. This platform even offers a free account that provides a vast number of benefits. The ZOHO social CRM integrates with other online applications to provide advantageous tools like website analytics, custom reporting, automation, and territory management. ZOHO also provides Twitter following capabilities for individuals that mention your company. Lastly, the individual social media account engagement has led many users to rate ZOHO highly in comparison to other social CRM options on the market.

Although ZOHO offers a cheap option for businesses looking to engage in social media, it’s low-price quality comes with some downsides. The free system is accompanied with limited customer service assistance. It also has few customization options, which limits the extent to which a company can tailor the CRM to fit their market needs. Most notably, ZOHO falls short in offering integration capabilities with 3rd party sites in comparison to other systems.

2. Nimble

Another popular social media CRM on the web is Nimble. This software system provides abilities to monitor social media activity, directly manage communication, and personally message prospects. Smaller companies may benefit from Nimble, as it provides a more personal approach to prospect tracking. The Nimble social CRM system also lists “Today’s Top Contacts” inside of the platform, allowing business owners to take advantage of the most valuable leads.

While Nimble is a spectacular tool for businesses looking to get active on social media, it lacks the advanced features that many other social CRMs provide. Many users of Nimble have noted the lack of automation abilities, such as drip marketing and auto-social integration. In addition to this, Facebook-friendly users are likely to avoid this system, as it contains limited Facebook features and messaging abilities.

3. Microsoft Dynamics

A newer social media CRM available on the market is Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Dynamics offers a system that showcases social media management. Not only does it allow for advanced social media engagement and posting, but Dynamics allows businesses to track trends and influencers in individual industries. The advanced reporting includes information on social communication per social media platform, geographic activity, and influencer activity. Furthermore, Dynamics offers a thorough keyword-specific focus option that allows businesses to monitor activity per desired territory.

While we find Dynamics to be an incredibly market-changing product, it also comes with significant drawbacks. Dynamics features little 3rd party integrations, which has diverted many users away from this system. It also lacks email tracking and automation that many look for in a social CRM system. Lastly, the learning curve for this product is significantly high, as it requires advanced knowledge and initial market customization that is not highly-desirable among the average user.

Making your own CRM spreadsheet

If you have searched the CRM market and can’t seem to find the perfect platform, you may consider creating your own CRM for your business. To do so, determine the CRM features that best fit your company’s needs. The most common-sought features include: email marketing campaigns, social media engagement, prospect communication tracking, advanced reports, territorial management, and website analytics.

Google offers a personalized CRM creation tool through Google Drive Spreadsheets. This free option allows businesses and professionals to integrate the most valuable CRM features with Google Analytics in one place. Additionally, a custom Google social CRM is completely customizable to fit your industry, business, your lead market, and even your geographical location.

• Monitor website traffic through Google Analytics
• Track social media campaigns, profiles, and advertising effectiveness
• Integrate marketing (social, blog, or email) campaigns
• Set up auto-updating reports in your Google Spreadsheet

While a custom-built Google CRM yields great tracking and can increase traffic to your site, the extreme complexity involved in setting up Google Analytic metrics in a Google spreadsheet has limited the use of this method. We hope to see Google Analytics improve their Google Drive CRM integration to reduce the learning curve in the future.

Social CRM’s without a doubt have a positive influence on business activity and potential sales. There are dozens of social CRM software options on the web, but finding the CRM that best fits your company needs is key to playing a social CRM to your benefit. Engaging regularly and personally on social media with your followers is an important Arizona business social marketing strategy for any company, large or small, and helps boost both company reputation and potential SEO effectiveness. Communicating industry and market knowledge, through guest blogging and other tools, and providing company updates online improves the quality of your web presence and overall website ranking.