Integrate Social Media activities into your CRM/MAP systems

The power of a CRM system and a Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) is that you are able to see a comprehensive view into the activities around your customers. The lense gets even stronger when you integrate your CRM and MAP so you can see both offline and online activities for your customers. The inability to integrate social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging into your CRM/MAP systems is a negative but it also represents a great opportunity for the vendor that can figure out how we can do this.

Imagine if you looked up a customer in your CRM system and you had a view of all offline activities such as show attendance and phone calls along with all marketing campaigns from your MAP and all interactions with your various social media sites (retweets, blog visits and comments, FaceBook fan, LinkedIn groups). That would be a true Digital ID. I know Eloqua and Hubspot have done some things for tracking social media activity but I do not think anyone has been able to integrate it all into one view. I am not even sure this is possible, but it would make life a lot easier!

Very Good Slideshow

I am also trying to figure out the impact of social media on the b2b buyer. It is not nearly as clear as it is in B2C land. Here is a good slideshow that reviews the potential of social media for B2B firms.

B2B Social Media Marketing: Building the B2B Business Case for Social Media