Wednesdays With Will: The Importance Of Social Engagements

By William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist

As a Business Owner or Director of Marketing, you recognize the importance of protecting your company’s brand and reputation. With the rise of social media over the past decade, everyone has been given a voice on the internet and you better believe they are going to use it. This can be perceived as either a good thing or a really bad thing. It can also be a moving target since public sentiment can change at the drop of a hat. Today we are going to discuss the importance of social engagements with your current clients and would-be clients.

Since there have been businesses, there has been a desire to know what prospective clients want without them having to tell you. In some respects, social media has become a vehicle for just that. With multiple social outlets available, people can now share their sentiment on a particular topic very easily. That information is now available for the world to see, in most cases, but you need to know how to find it and how to leverage it.

In my previous posts, I briefly touched on Social Engagements through Microsoft Dynamics CRM and how it relates to Sales, Marketing, and Services teams. Today we will be taking a deeper dive into what it is and how it can assist you with brand management. Let’s start with a quick example.

Imagine your company manufactures a popular line of household appliances. It’s November and your newly designed coffeemaker has just been released for the holiday season. Your marketing team did a stellar job raising awareness and excitement about your high-end coffeemaker so it has become the “must have” present for the holiday season. Some of your customers couldn’t wait for the holidays and decided to start using it immediately. To their dismay, the coffeemaker kept shutting itself off before the desired amount of coffee was brewed. They took their dissatisfaction to the internet and posted on social sites how it was a waste of money and that they recommend others steer clear of your product. This scenario could strike a major blow to your quarterly sales projections as well as your company’s brand. Luckily you have Microsoft Social Engagements.

Determining what is being said and by whom is the first step to resolving the situation. Social Engagements gives you the ability to see what is trending regarding your products and organization across multiple social platforms such as Twitter, blogs, Facebook, news syndication, videos, and any other source that supports RSS. It’s supported in 19 different languages so international brands can benefit as well. Based on your chosen topic and most active contributors to a conversation, you can determine the key influencers. From here you have the option to drill down even further to uncover the number of posts, trends, their location, and sentiment of these authors. You can also redisplay data to show influencers with the greatest reach by Twitter or news articles.

Being aware of social sentiment and being able to view what is being posted on social networks is important. Having the ability to easily interact with them is empowering. This brings us to the next step. Social Center allows you to view and respond to posts from multiple social outlets all through a single pane of glass. If you prefer, you can delegate these social interactions out to your team for response based on designated priority level. These great features help improve team workflow allows you to react quickly, remedy the challenge, and mitigate any potential damages.

I’m sure you have better things to do with your day than monitor the social sites. Through Trend Alerts in Social Engagements, you can set notification for when specific events occur regarding the topics you care about the most. Data is only as powerful as how meaningful you can make it. The Social Analytics in Social Engagements displays information that is easy to view as well as maneuver through.

Let’s put everything together using our earlier example with the coffeemaker. By using Microsoft Social Engagements we would be alerted that our product is trending through Trend Alerts. From here we can look at Social Analytics to determine what is being said based on geographic location(s) as well as the top influencers having conversations about it. After a solution to the coffeemaker malfunction has been determined, we can now reach back out to these influencers, using Social Engagements, letting them know about the resolution. At this point we can use Trend Alerts once again to be notified of improved sentiment. This information can be shared across your Marketing, Sales, and Services teams.

At the beginning of my post I mentioned that social media gives everyone a voice and this can be perceived as either good or bad. The realty of the situation is knowing what is being said about your company or product is always a positive. If something bad is being said, this gives you a chance to make it right. How a business handles customer service defines them in their customers’ eyes.

There is more to discuss when it comes to the Social Engagements portion of Dynamics CRM but I like to keep these articles short and to the point. As always, I encourage you to reach out to me to discuss these topics in deeper detail. I hope you enjoyed and found this week’s article informative. If you’re interested in some how-to related CRM material, check out blogs by my colleague Ben Ward here. Till next time…

About the author:

Will has over 16 years of experience in business development, team management, and project management. Will has worked at Managed Solution for over four years and is currently advising businesses on best CRM practices and implementations. Will’s focus is on process improvement and analytics specializing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Will is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with certifications in Presales Technical Specialist – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Sales Specialist- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Application, Sales Specialist- Office 365, Sales Specialist- SMB Infrastructure and Sales Specialist- Datacenter.

Other articles by Will Marchesano:

• Wednesdays With Will: The Importance Of Social Engagements

• Wednesdays With Will: Improving The Service In Customer Service

• Wednesdays With Will: Empowering Your Sales Team With Microsoft Dynamics CRM

• Wednesdays With Will: From Marketing to Smarketing Leveraging Microsoft Dynamics CRM

• Technology Making Dreams A Virtual Reality

• Wednesdays With Will: Microsoft Dynamics CRM & Office 365 – Working In Perfect Harmony

• Wednesdays With Will: Making Your Business Intelligent

For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691.