Your consumers are perhaps the most important component of your company, so why would you take their experience with your brand for granted? And most businesses would say that their customers’ experiences are extremely important to them. CRM isn’t always a top focus for many businesses when it comes to social media.

Leaving social media out of your CRM strategy, or simply ignoring it, can have major consequences for your brand. Consumers who have had a positive brand experience are more likely to suggest others and return. For enterprises of all sizes, social CRM is becoming the expected norm. All departments require access to the rich insights gained from social interactions.

Customer data from other departments, on the other hand, might be quite useful to the marketing team.  To create better experiences, social media CRM systems allow you to track, benchmark, and engage with customers across social networks. Even if your company’s marketing department has CRM solutions for other things, social media can’t be ignored.

What is a Social CRM?

Connecting your brand’s social media to your CRM system is the goal of a social customer relationship management approach.

This provides a better, more thorough overview of existing or potential customers’ behavior patterns. Social CRM software combines data from social media platforms with customer data from your CRM solution. Your social media and customer service teams will be able to help customers have better experiences, and your sales team will be able to learn more about the leads they bring in.

Here are some ways that integrating your social media platforms with your CRM application could help you improve your whole CRM approach.

Monitor the customer experience at every stage.

That means keeping track of chats, likes, and other engagement data is critical to developing a lasting relationship. It’s not just about attracting new clients through social media. Instead, your company must learn to nurture existing relationships, consistently deliver value, and stay on customers’ minds.

That’s why it’s critical to keep track of your buyer’s journey at each stage. A detailed social dialogue history is an excellent place to begin. As a result, your brand can communicate consistently at the same level throughout a customer’s experience.

This is why so many customer care departments rely on client profiles. It allows support staff to understand where a customer is in the buying process, previous conversations, and what the problem was previously. With this information, your customer service staff has a better idea of how your brand interacts with customers, leads, and prospects.

Use keywords and hashtags to find new customers.

One of the most effective ways for companies to uncover conversations, mentions, and even users is through keyword and hashtag analysis. The majority of the time, this analysis assists brands in identifying possibilities that they would not have discovered through native social platforms. Hashtags in particular enable users to organize content and make it easier to find for others.

Keep track of industry terms.

What are the terms your audience searches for and uses on social media? Analyzing your industry’s keywords can reveal terms that your potential clients are interested in. Deep keyword research should aid in the discovery of these terms and users.

To improve your engagement strategy, look at what keywords are driving engagement for your competition. This is a fantastic way to locate customers who are interacting with competitors.

Keep track of branded keywords.

Tracking your own company name isn’t nearly as crucial as tracking branded keywords. Without your knowledge, some keywords or hashtags might become part of your brand. Keeping up with these terms, on the other hand, can show you a lot of potential buyers who directly mention you but aren’t picked up by @mentions.

Track misspellings of your brand name.

Keep an eye out for typical misspellings of your brand name to see whether anyone is trying to contact you or make a purchase. Keep track of how your brand name is spelled and used on social media if your company has a unique handle.

Use Analytics

Once you’ve identified them, analytics can assist you in discovering more about a certain customer. What was the reach of the tweet regarding your product that this user sent out? Have they mentioned any competitive items recently, and if so, when?

Analytics could be the key to a customer conversion if you send a user’s profile and specific facts about them through the CRM pipeline to a marketing or sales person at your organization.

Negative comments should not be deleted.

Even if your company’s offerings and customer service are both excellent, customers will inevitably post negative comments on social media. Some grievances may be more justified than others. With that in mind, deleting a bad comment can have far more detrimental consequences than the comment itself.

If your customers notice you deleting negative feedback, they may conclude that your organization is more concerned with its online image than with serving customers. Maintain a proactive and professional manner when dealing with negative remarks.

Improve your social ad targeting.

Your social media marketing approach most likely includes advertising to your customers. The more information you have about your clients and their preferences, the more precise your advertising can be. This is where the data in your CRM may help.

You can increase the target demographic for your advertising by linking your social media with your CRM software. You could also use this information to create audiences of people who look like your ideal customers based on their age, gender, interests, and so on.

Dismantle your company’s communication barriers.

If you want to use social media to improve your CRM strategy, break through your organization’s silos. Instead of marketing holding all the cards in your plan, get sales, social media teams, and customer service all on the same page. When someone asks a question that the marketing team doesn’t know the answer to, brands often silo their social media efforts and create unsatisfactory customer journeys.

Brands must instead focus on breaking down silos and optimizing task management. A social media CRM platform will enable you to assign specific discussions to customer service, sales queries, or marketing possibilities. You must be prepared to communicate via social media if you want to generate better experiences. 

For many firms, working on a single platform makes it easier to assign questions, comments, and enquiries to the right team.

Maintain a consistent brand voice across all platforms.

Maintaining a consistent brand experience across all of your social channels is wise. To do so, you must keep your brand language and social interactions consistent. One customer is quickly turned off if one of your social media platforms is attentive and caring with incoming questions while another is entirely silent.

Having a consistent brand voice aids in the development of your entire identity. If there are inconsistencies in things like brand principles or ideals, your customers will not hesitate to call your brand out.

Respond to consumer concerns more quickly.

A good CRM strategy greets customers at every stage of the buying process. As a result, you will be unable to ignore the negative feedback and involvement from others. One of the simplest methods to improve your CRM strategy is to increase your reaction time to customer complaints.

Consumers don’t want to wait for a response and are aware that the message they send will almost certainly be viewed by someone. Social media is only one aspect of your brand’s experience, but it might be the most valuable. You can turn a lot of negative sentiment into at least partly good experiences by making CRM management easier.

Make sure to purchase the proper CRM.

Your social media management tool should concentrate on the performance of your marketing campaigns across all of your social media platforms. Your CRM, on the other hand, should include not only the necessary connectivity hooks to these social media management platforms but also CRM-specific social media functions like dashboards, reporting, and clean data gathering.

Many CRMs now include easy-to-use, customer-focused social networking tools that are built right into the CRM. This includes CRMs made just for small businesses.

How to maximize your CRM using social media

All departments that work with clients or leads benefit from social CRM. It provides everyone with a more complete image of the people they’re conversing with. Sales, customer service, technical support, marketing, and even product creation are all included.

Create a social listening system.

Tracking brand mentions on social media, including:

• Conversations about your business, your goods, and services.
• On social media, target phrases and key people within your company.
• Finding social conversations about your business or niche

Organize your social interactions.

Your customer service and social media staff may be communicating with current and future consumers across various platforms. By consolidating that data into a single inbox, you can ensure that your CRM data is linked to people rather than just profiles.

Integrate social media data into your CRM.

Platform connectors should allow you to integrate social data into your CRM. For businesses of all sizes, social CRM is becoming increasingly important. As a result, several CRM systems already support easy interaction with social media platforms.

Bottom Line

You can simply track, monitor, and connect with social users to improve the experience by employing a social CRM platform. A social CRM strategy can help your social media team obtain a better, more holistic view of your clients and modify their marketing plan accordingly. Similarly, social data will provide more information to your customer service team, allowing them to provide better service. 

Social media CRM tools can be a tremendous tool for businesses, bringing together teams and improving customer experiences. They’re essential for modern social media management and the company in general.

Martin Gessner

Martin Gessner is the Founder of Focus on Force.

He has spent over 10 years working in various Salesforce roles including business analyst, project manager, consultant and solutions architect. Along the way he has earned twelve certifications, published "The Salesforce Career Playbook", and helps Salesforce professionals learn more about Salesforce, develop their career and prepare for certifications.