media challenges the conventional business wisdom that says the conversation starts with the
company. In the old world, companies would ask customers what they want, analyze their
needs, and then formulate their strategic decisions. Today, the dialog starts with customers,
who themselves provide the data, resources and insights necessary to help transition your
business using networks as capital and human resources.

But there\u2019s so much data out there, more than ever before. In this Web 2.0 world, companies
need to filter through the noise and figure out what\u2019s valuable and what\u2019s not, and it starts by
engaging with customers in an open, trustworthy way. Those once perfectly formulated and
broad-based marketing messages have become much more individualized: It\u2019s no longer
shouting at customers, but talking with them one to one, asking questions and using their
responses to cultivate even more relevant dialog and marketing messages tomorrow.

\u201cIn the history of our business, our partners have never had so much data on their
customers,\u201d says Tony Compton, director of CRM product marketing for Infor. \u201cAnd because of
that, companies are in a position to make decisions based on what they know versus what they
think they know. But there is so much data available both from internal/transactional sources
and external/social sources. How do you know what is important and what is not?\u201d

This white paper will help you build a strategy. We\u2019ll explore how to leverage the data
obtained in social media networks to meet or exceed the needs of your customers, to under-
stand their value and what they want. We\u2019ll discuss how to build relationships with them, so that
those relationships are leveraged with their network, and you\u2019ll begin to understand where and
how CRM and social media intersect. Ultimately, you will learn how to incorporate a valuable
social media component into your marketing and CRM initiatives, including a step-by-step
methodology for finding, gathering, and measuring data effectively.

Social Media?..............3 Listen............................4 Consider......................5 Participate....................6 Create..........................7 Measure......................8 Something Old,

Written for the marketing executive, this paper provides a useful framework to begin to assess how an organization can engage in social media to build deeper relationships with its customers.

Social media is all about 1to1 communications and therefore the strategy doesn\u2019t offer a one-size fits all solution. Sidebars in the paper focus on the common pitfalls in a social media program and special considerations for a B2B enterprise.

With more than 74% of the U.S.
population engaged in using
social media, companies are
beginning to wake up to the fact
that they need to understand this
phenomenon and get into the
conversation. Look for the
\u201cGetting Started Now\u201d boxes for
ideas, resources and tools to help
an enterprise get started today.

Social media is often defined by the power of its technologies, a set of tools\u2014blogs, wikis, pod- casts, social networking sites, etc.\u2014that people use to have conversations with one another. But the converse is perhaps a truer and more signifi- cant definition: It\u2019s the conversations and relation- ships themselves, formed by the use of current technologies, which has created a rich set of new tools to generate business. Your goal in this new realm should be to use social media to engage enthusiasts and existing customers in an interactive community in order to drive more traffic and sales. This creates a highly involved audience that recognizes and interacts with your brand clearly and thoughtfully.

A new report released by Universal McCann, \u201cWhen Did We Start Trusting Strangers,\u201d surveyed 17,000 web users around the world and describes a \u201cnew influencer landscape\u201d characterized by three significant trends: the rise in social media, the importance of digital friends and the prolifera- tion of influencer channels.\u201d1What this means for brands is that they need to participate in an influence economy by providing the tools and spaces for facilitating the creation experiences consumers want to have.

\u201cPeople think of social media as being scary and unmanageable,\u201d says Becky Carroll, senior consultant, Peppers & Rogers Group. \u201cBut have we ever been able to really manage a customer\u2019s relationship or a customer\u2019s experience? No. The customer is their own person, and they are going to make their decisions based on their own crite- ria, based on their emotions, based on whatever other people are telling them. Well, social media isn\u2019t really very different than that, except that now all of those conversations and activities are online and visible for all the world to see.\u201d

And that visibility has yielded greater power to customers who are more organized and interac- tive than ever before. There are plenty of well- documented stories of companies that paid the

price for not addressing the bad experience of one disgruntled customer, since a single rant on a blog or social networking site can now reach thousands\u2014and even millions\u2014of others. A few years back, Dell took a beating because of social media bloggers, and to this day if you do a Google Search on the term \u201cDell Support,\u201d bloggers not happy with Dell support still come up on the first page of results.2

Indeed, the key to understanding social media is to understand how it enables and ties together social relationships, and to do that, you need to be a part of them. By joining social communities and getting involved in customer conversations and, ultimately, generating new ones, you can create a new voice for your company, one that stems directly from customer feedback. The following five-step methodology provides a basic outline for how to tap into the new social media landscape.

Why is social media
so powerful? Now
the conversations and
activities are online
and visible for the

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