You might have heard that Social CRM is all around developing strategies around the “social customer”. But, what exactly is a social customer and what do brands need to know about interacting with her? Chess Media Group has released a whitepaper with Attensity 360 (which is free) introducing the social customer and the document provides a lot of valuable information and insight on who exactly the social customer is and why it’s important to understand her. The entire document was edited by Mitch Lieberman (who actually also contributed content as well) who did a killer job. Here’s what we covered from a high level.
We broke down the whitepaper into several parts:
Part 1 introduces the social customer and takes a look at how she interacts with content on the web and via mobile devices. It also takes a look at some of the implications that the social customer has on brands and companies.
Part 2 talks about developing a holistic relationship between the company and the social customer and explores things such as company outputs vs company expectations as well as what the social customer actually means to brands.
Part 3 addresses creating mutual value between the company and the customer. Referring to a quote from Gartner that I always use:
“By 2010 more than half of companies that have established an online community will fail to manage it as an agent of change, ultimately eroding customer value. Rushing into social computing initiatives without clearly defined benefits for both the company and the customer will be the biggest cause of failure.”
Overall I think we did a great job with this whitepaper and everyone worked hard; I’m proud of the work we did. In a few days I’m going to talk about the Social CRM whitepaper that Chess Media Group released around understanding Social CRM as it goes quite well with this one, but you’re going to have to wait a few days for that one. Understanding the social customer is a great preface for what we are going to talk about next.
Here is a teaser powerpoint that was created to give more information about the whitepaper.
As I mentioned the whitepaper is free to download so please do so (and share it!) and let me know what you think.
Jacob, thanks for sharing this. I think the biggest concern I have is that we run the risk of generalizing and assuming about the 'social customer' just like we have in previous marketing efforts. (Know your customers as a platitude). You talk about how the social customer is a big producer of content, for example. There are a lot of customers who are lurkers, consumers and commenters on content, but not creators (ahem!). Where social meets the customer can be REALLY powerful is we can start being more intelligent about who is an influencer, an advocate, a detractor–and know these people more intimately. That is the power of this next generation strategies and tools, imo.
Hi Katy,
Good point and yes I agree with you. We did make a generalization in the whitepaper but I don’t think all social customers are content creators, I think the key difference is actually how they consume information.