I’ve been doing number of workshops on how to use Twitter for business. Each time I had to go into lengthy overview of different content types and twitter content strategies.

Here is a quick overview of my thoughts on this subject.

What is Content Strategy?

Content strategy includes the following stages:

• Planning (business goals, target audience, type and sources of content, frequency of distribution, etc);
• Content creation (tools, processes, methods);
• Publication (tools, processes, methods);
• Analysis/Governance (usefulness, relevance, etc..)

Let’s look at major Twitter content types.

• “Meforming” [term introduced by Guy Kawasaki] – you telling us where you are, what you eat, who are you with, etc..
• News/articles sharing – you including a link to a news story you liked;
• Event announcements;
• How to questions/complains;
• You responding, commenting on someone else’s content.

Here is a random snapshot of my twitter stream:

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These are my links for May 6th through May 8th:

• The iPad Really Is Hot
• A few of my favorite stories this week
• Borders to Launch E-Bookstore Next Month
• 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Leverage LinkedIn’s New Features
• Nokia Sues Apple Over iPad Patents
• Does social media make sense for your organization
• Mashable’s Pete Cashmore Talks About the Open Web on Bloomberg
• Mastering Ducks in Memphis
• Facebook Adding Location Features This Month [REPORT]
• Social Business Top News for May 6th from 07:08 to 11:46

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Fact:

Increase in sales of ½ pints of beer on Thursday nights from 45 to 300-350 using Social Media channels to promote this offering.

Fact:

Sales revenue growth 10% for the year vs projected 3% due to increased customer awareness and engagement via social media channels.

About Tied House Brewing:

Family owned and operated since 1988 local micro-brewery in Mountain View, Ca.

Main Social Media Channels used:

Twitter and Facebook.

Tools:

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These are my links for April 19th from 13:52 to 16:04:

• Collaborative solutions are a work in progress at Pitney Bowes
• The Bus Ride: Webrings 2.0
• Facebook Now Commands 41% of Social Media Traffic [STATS]
• Vogue Features Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in May Issue
• How Companies Can Use Sentiment Analysis to Improve Their Business

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These are my links for April 19th from 10:44 to 12:49:

• Apple Countersues Kodak Over Patent Infringement
• Mountain Dew Releases 3 Fan-Created Flavors
• Facebook to Link Profiles and Pages
• Microsoft Launches Social Media Platform for Politicians
• Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter – Video Book Review

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Sometimes you wonder: why? Why people are not following you on Twitter.

Here are top 5 reasons:

1. Make sure your Twitter profile is updated and contains descriptive info on who you are and what you do;
2. Your tweets: if all you do is auto-feed your twitter updates, do not engage in conversations [unless you are CNN ..] people most likely will not follow you;
3. Frequency of your tweets – if you very very casual Twitter user – also can be a flag to not follow you;
4. Numbers: correlation of number of people you follow and people follow you. If you have much higher number of people you follow vs people who follow you back – might make people think twice to follow you or not;
5. Overall number of people you follow. If you follow gazillions of people then some people would think you are not selective and just going after numbers of connections.

And of course these 5 reasons applicable in case of complete strangers looking at your Twitter presence and trying to decide to follow you or not.

Feel free to add your thoughts and your considerations!

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I was honored to be invited to attend SugarCRM annual SugarCon 2010 Conference. It was held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. I liked the location mainly because it was next to a BART station – made my commute to SF from Bay Area much easier.

On another hand we all were unhappy with unreliable WiFi connectivity at the hotel. Seems like most of the venues in SF are not addressing this very important issue..

First day’s keynote was packed with people occupying empty floor spaces on a back of the hall.

Major partnerships has been announced:

-         with Microsoft – seems like Sugar CRM was able to secure MS support in cloud applications space;

-         with SnapLogic – also important partnership; integration is always a constant area of concern and with SnapLogic’s opening of integration widgets appstore, this potentially expensive and time-consuming task can be simplified;

-         lastly with their partnership with SIOS, Sugar CRM was able to address the reliability aspect of cloud-based mission-critical applications.

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This week Bay Area Executives meetup members we were thrilled to listen to a person who knows Technical Support space inside-out:

John Ragsdale is the vice president of technology research for the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA). Previously he served as the vice president of technology research for AFSMI, SSPA, and TPSA. Ragsdale’s area of expertise is in creating strategies for improving the overall customer experience and services operation through technology. Ragsdale drives TSIA’s highly regarded technology research agenda, delivering insightful, thought-leadership research and analysis on the most pressing business issues facing services leaders to enable them to better plan and execute their service strategies.

Prior to joining SSPA, Ragsdale spent over five years at Forrester Research as vice president and research director. During his career, Ragsdale has held product management and marketing positions at various service and support technology vendors, including Clarify, AnswerSystems, Platinum Technologies and Nortel Networks. He has been involved in customer service throughout his career, including over ten years managing both the internal and external customer support organizations at J.C. Penney, before moving to the Silicon Valley in the mid-90s.

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“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” Einstein

Not too long time ago I had a question related to the use of some type of online service. The first thing I did – went to their online help. It took me a while to play with my search terms to finally get to an article that was somewhat related to what I was looking for. But… it did not contain clear instructions on how to solve my problem.

I immediately decided to use their real-time online chat. Well, the person who was on another side apparently was using the same knowledge base that I was searching in my step 1 of solution finding journey.

And then I had to move to step 3 – writing an email to that company’s support department describing the issue yet again. I did get a response back, but it was the same one that I already heard 2 times before. I responded. My response contained less than admirable words towards the support services of the company which product I was trying to use. Magic! My request got finally escalated! And I did hear back from THE expert. The one who understood my issue and helped me with the solution.

Just for the fun of it, I went back not too long time ago and checked the online knowledge base of that company to see if they have updated the solution I was trying to use with the data that helped me with resolving my issue. No, the content was still old, no updates.

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Why We Cannot Get CRM (and SCRM) Quite Right

Instead of commenting on each of these blogs I decided to write this post. Mainly because my view on the topics above is somewhat different. And the main difference is that I can’t discuss something so high level and vague as overall Social CRM framework. I want to start with specific business processes as we know them and assess the impact of “social” on them.

Let’s for example take a look at a classic enterprise B2B software sales process. It consists of stages. Here are sample stages:

Field Sales Stages:

-         Opportunity development;

-         Discovery;

-         Preparation of Solutions Set;

-         Proposal;

-         Socialization;

-         Potential Pilot;

-         Project Approval;

-         Contract negotiations;

-         Closing deal.

Companies manage sales process in SFA module – either stand-alone or part of CRM system.

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