Ian Hendry, CEO of WeCanDo.biz, recently had a post over at ZDNet regarding Social CRM for small businesses.  Hendry’s thesis is that most of the discussions surrounding SCRM involve distributed brand management.  While important for medium and small sized businesses, Hendry argues, the strategy has the danger of leaving small businesses behind.  Hendry argues that the ideas of Social CRM are not doing enough to allow companies to utilize social media to market and sell products.   Hendry looks at the potential of Social CRM for market research and test marketing ideas and products:

Think about this: as much as you might ask your customers or target market what they like and what they want, few ever answer and those that do can give you skewed answers. But that sort of information is available across the Social Web as those same customers update their profiles; post, tweet, StumbleUpon and Digg. Your customers are revealing aspects of their needs that they’d never bother sharing with you directly, but by knowing where they are online a whole heap of additional information can be at your fingertips before you contact them; helping to drive the dialogue you have before they’ve even started thinking about your company, let alone discussing it.

By attaching CRM records to social identities, you can build a profile that significantly advances what you know about your customers and how you market to them. Using all the contact methods at your disposal, not just social media, you can build a need rather than wait for them to chirp up online before you chip in and interrupt their conversation in attempt to ensure they say only nice things about you.

Another aspect of Social CRM for small businesses is for the small business to establish online personas that become thought leaders and perceived “experts” in the company’s specific field.  Much as white papers are a tool to allow companies to market themselves with problem-specific content and indirectly push their company, a social persona for a company can allow it to push free knowledge out to the world, with the idea of generating perceived expertise and eventually drive sales.  Social CRM can also be used to build up a community around this persona, allowing targeted but discreet marketing to a companies social network.  All in all, Hendry brings up a good discussion that needs to be had:  what are the requirements and benefits of Social CRM for small businesses, and how can Social CRM best be leveraged to drive sales.

H/T: Jim Berkowitz

Related posts:

1. Is Salesforce.com’s approach to Social CRM Correct?
2. How Will Social Media Be Leveraged for CRM?
3. Social CRM Must Be Social!