There is no doubt that content plays a huge role in modern business success. Content creation, curation, and distribution are three must-do activities. But do they play a role in social CRM and the use of social media CRM tools?
Your particular role may require you to do each activity in varying percentages when compared to colleagues, peers, and others. But, as they say, Content is King, and it is firmly ruling the social customer relationship management court.
Content quality is very subjective. But what is clear is that sharing content – content you’ve created or curated – is one of the most effective ways to show value online.
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Is Curated Content As Effective As Created Content?
What is curated content? By definition, curated content is content that is created by others and collated and distributed by you or someone on your behalf.
Effectively curating content positions you very well as a trusted advisor in your industry. Distributing content that solves business problems for your target audience does two very important things when you share it on your social channels:
Content Attracts
Sharing quality content on social media enables you to scale your social CRM efforts. Crafting article titles that address your ideal customer’s business issues and using the right hashtags allows prospects to find you.
You can create new business opportunities by the type of content you share. This is a compelling way to increase brand name awareness. A true game changer in business!
Content Educates
Sharing quality content that addresses the needs and wants of your ideal customers allows you to become a trusted resource. Education is an important part of social CRM.
And sharing content that keeps prospects and customers up-to-date on trending business issues, new strategies, new tools, and even current events that may affect them is a must.
Leveraging curated content is not only as effective as created content – it’s more effective as it’s readily available for use. Creating content can be a time burden for many and weighting content distribution more heavily on the curated side allows outbound social streams to be steady and engagement opportunities abundant.
If Content Is King? Who Is Queen?
Social customer relationship management is not possible without engagement. Engaging with prospects, customers, influencers, and business partners on social media is fuel for social business success.
If we all agree that content is king – then do we also agree that engagement is the queen? Engagement is the human element of business. Engagement is the relationship, the conversation, the glue that holds all the pieces together.
Content attracts and educates — and engagement brings it home by solidifying business results.
Sharing content on social media just for the sake of appearing active on social media will not bring the business results needed for long-term success. Successful businesses do not just do social – they are social.
And being social means being engaging and most importantly interested. Note, I did not say “interesting”. Showing interest in others makes you interesting to them. When sharing content on social media, be sure to create messages that solicit engagement.
Remember social is a communication channel. Listen to what others are saying. Like, favorite, share, and comment with your social CRM tools.
3 Tips For Content-Sharing Success
Effective content distribution has a lot to do with sharing at the right time on the right social networks.
A constant barrage of posts can be off-putting to your networks and posting the exact same message on all social networks at the same time – is a definite no. Here are three tips for success:
Audit Your Networks With Social CRM
You may think you know who you’re connected to on social networks but as your contact list quickly grows it is best practice to regularly audit to maintain optimal results. Due to the ease of Following on Twitter, it is likely that this social network will be your largest.
Use tools like Agorapulse (and other social engagement platforms) to audit who’s following you. Unfollow contacts who do not have a profile picture, haven’t tweeted in months, and have a high spam rating.
Determine when they are most active online to schedule tweets that will likely get their attention. Are you getting followed by your ideal prospect?
Use social media analytics to accurately analyze demographics. If the answer is no, augment your hashtag use, bio information, and content shared to better attract the right contacts.
A Little Automation Goes a Long Way
We are all given the same 24 hours a day. Leverage technology to make time spent on social activities more productive. There are many great tools available to assist you in content distribution.
Applications such as Buzzsumo are making locating the best content for your networks easy.
Others like Buffer make scheduling simple. It is impossible to manually post all of your social shares and be an effective business professional.
WebCEO provides a handy content assistant tool allowing you to optimize your content for organic visibility.
Experiment with several social media tools and select the best ones for you. Learn how to use them well and reap the benefits – social media automation frees up your time to do what you do best – be human and social.
Humans Like Humans
Many content sharing campaigns generate poor results due to overzealous sharing and poorly crafted messages. Fewer, thoughtfully crafted social shares sent at the right time will produce higher engagement metrics.
Try sending the same blog post with several different titles and reuse the share with the most engagement. Successful social customer relationship management requires constant experimenting and augmenting.
Your ideal customer personas are dynamic and the social campaigns built around them should be dynamic also.
Remember, humans like humans. Wherever possible personalize social posts and leave no doubt that the person behind the tweet, post, and share is a caring human.
Summary: Social CRM Benefits
Content creation, curation, and distribution plays an important role in social CRM. Being able to communicate effectively in written form is a business differentiator and will enable you to attract, engage, educate, and retain customers.
Communication is at the heart of social customer relationship management — and in our always-connected and always-online culture, you need a powerful voice.
FAQs Social CRM
What is social CRM?
Social CRM is a way for businesses to connect with their customers more effectively using social media platforms. It can involve a range of methods, strategies, or technologies. The goal is to improve engagement and interaction with customers.
What are social CRM features?
Some of the features may include: the ability to connect with users on various social networks, gathering demographics and even email information.
What is a social media CRM?
Zoho and Agorapulse are two examples of one.
Do I need a social media CRM?
If you to engage and develop relationships with clients on social media, then you will need social media CRM tools to help you.
Can you improve communications with a social CRM?
Yes, you will be able to respond quicker and easier with a tool designed for that reason.