ACT! and the Web - Social Contact Management: Part 1 of 3

[#1]

Social Contact Management - Part 1 of 3: “What is it?”   

We all use the Web every day.  I’d like to introduce you to a concept I frequently discuss called Social CRM, or in our context - Social Contact Management (SCM).  The first part of this series will help us to understand what it is. 

If we think about ACT! from a generational standpoint, ACT! is a great solution for storing information about contacts, makes it easy to retrieve and recall information/activities and saves time by automating subsequent interactions.  However, the base of information is for the most part what we entered.  Extremely helpful as evidenced by ACT!’s success for 20+ years, but imagine how interesting things could be if we leveraged the Web to automatically and routinely add rich Web content.  This could give us timely, helpful and up to date information - providing additional insight to interactions with our ACT! contacts.    

I define SCM as the interactive blending of rich Web 2.0 internet content with the in-depth and deeply contextually relevant information in ACT!.  Given that many of us spend so much of our day on the internet, it’s natural to want to routinely include and leverage the wealth of Web information available.  For example, conducting a routine Web search on a particular contact or company is likely to return a considerable amount of useful content.  For example, just doing a Google search on a company is likely to yield links to web sites, press releases and related sites.   It’s natural that we would want to store, easily recall or quickly reproduce that content the next time I am working with that customer or company.  Further, I would want the Web search refreshed and automatically updated so I am always up to date on the selected information that is available on the Web.    

SCM is the combination of the power of ACT! and the Web – joining their respective contextual and collaborative strengths!   In Part 2 of this series,  we’ll look at  how the internet has changed the way vendors and prospects exchange information.  In Part 3, we’ll cover how ACT! can help you participate and prosper in this changing world.

Larry

[#2]

Good intro Larry. When will we have integration with Twitter? As I'm sure you realize, the timing of Social Media integration is important, as it impacts our ability to be competitive. 

John

The CRM Connection 

Message Edited by tmergel on 03-26-2009 11:23 AM

[#3]

I'm looking forward to the Insights Presentation on Social Networking.  I'm now using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and following this blog and the ACT newsgroups.  It's interesting that I am notified of posts instead of having to go look for them so this is useful and I can control what I receive based on interest areas.

SwiftPage Snapshot is nice as it has links so you can connect to LinkedIn for example to see if someone is already LinkedIn for example and to study up on them if a prospect or networking contact for example.

I not an innovator but an early adopter and am starting to see the value from a sales as well as a knowledge worker perspective in regards to social networking.  I'm quite certain there are things that are being worked on that would blow my mind.

PF

[#4]

To PF - how do you use Facebook for buis., I set it up for a musician friend and he loves it . But in buis., who would want to share their freinds ie.custmers with the world.

To larryr. what are you doing this sunday - part 2 perhaps?