Social CRM for Business: Analytics Can Spur Greater Success

The lesson in this tale, says Pombriant, is that listening to your customers is key, not just talking at them. "When you think outbound messaging only, you are thinking like the shirt maker."

To get a better handle on what your company can be doing to improve your Social CRM strategy, there are lots of IT tools and vendors in the marketplace who can help your company listen better.

Sentiment analysis vendors include SAS and Radian6, which was recently acquired by Salesforce.com, according to Pombriant. Analytics vendors include Marketo, Cloud9 Analytics and major vendors such as OracleOracle, SAPSAP and MicrosoftMicrosoft. Alles zu Microsoft auf CIO.de Alles zu Oracle auf CIO.de Alles zu SAP auf CIO.de

A good place to start is with the basics, he says.

"If you're an executive, you can investigate various vendors or do some of these experiments," Pombriant says. "Take your company name and Google it [as noted above] and ask yourself, 'what's it costing me to do nothing about it'"