If you’re not familiar with Dynamics CRM’s new social capabilities, you can learn more about them in my post, “Sneak Peek: Microsoft Plans Exciting Updates for Dynamics CRM.”

Similar to last time, the tips that follow have been collected through a combination of my own experience managing Intelligent Technologies, Inc.’s. social media profiles as well as two articles on the subject, “Tips to Increase Social Media Engagement” by Newslab and the Mashable article, “21 Rules for Social Media Engagement.”

Here are three more great ideas for improving your company’s social media engagement:

• Listen to the conversations that are occurring about your company online so that you can respond to them and address areas of contentment and pain points when they arise.
• Involve your followers in a conversation by asking them questions. Just make sure that you have a reason for asking the question beyond just wanting to get people talking. If you pose a question that is completely irrelevant to your business, it may get people confused, panicked or cause them to stop following you altogether.
• Social media profiles can be a great place to show the human side of your business. This is especially true for Facebook, because in a lot of ways it is the most casual of all social networks. This makes it the ideal place to share information about your company that people would be interested in, but would not normally be available on your website or other profiles. For example, if your company sells something very technical such as machinery or specialized software, your Facebook profile may be a good place to display the story behind the product. More specifically, you could give a brief history of your company, share a little something about the key employees with whom your customers and prospects interact with on a daily basis or give a behind-the-scenes look at the latest event you hosted, complete with pictures.

 As you continue to enjoy the latest updates to Microsoft Dynamics 2011 we hope that you’ll find these tips to be helpful.  If you have questions or other ideas you’d like to share, please feel free to leave us a comment.

Or, if you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM and how it can help you manage and build relationships with your customers, we’d love to talk to you. Contact us today!

By: Laura Heinbockel, Intelligent Technologies, Inc., a Microsoft Silver ERP Partner in North Carolina

How to Get the Most out of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011′s New Social Features (Part 2) is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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What follows below is a list of general tips and tricks companies can use to improve their social media engagement. They’ve been collected through my own experience managing Intelligent Technologies, Inc. social media profiles as well as two articles on the subject, “Tips to Increase Social Media Engagement” by Newslab and the Mashable article, “21 Rules for Social Media Engagement.” So, if you’re looking for further reading on the subject after you’ve finished this blog, each of these would be a  good place to start.

3 ways to increase your business’ social media engagement:

• Use your social media profiles as an opportunity to become a resource for your followers. By that I mean, avoid just pushing out canned messages on your social media profiles. Instead devote some of your posts to making sure that your followers understand that there is the human behind these accounts to whom they can go and ask questions.
• Once you begin receiving questions from your followers, make sure that you answer them in a timely manner and that you have a clear pipeline set up for handling these interactions .This is particularly important if your business is technical in nature and the person who regularly checks your social media accounts may not have the specific knowledge needed to handle your clients’ or prospects’ questions themselves.  Make sure they know to whom they should forward these inquiries and that those individuals understand how they need to be handled.
• Give back, reciprocate and acknowledge the useful contributions of your followers. This can be achieved by re-tweeting a message if you’re using twitter, or posting the message you find interesting to your own Facebook wall or LinkedIn status updates with a mention of where it came from. Furthermore, this may seem counterintuitive, but asking for re-tweets when posting on twitter can actually be an effective method of increasing engagement. Research shows that when you add “please RT” to the end of the message 51% of followers will do so.

As you begin to enjoy the latest updates to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and explore its capabilities we hope that these tips will help you make the most of its social media features.  And, stay tuned to next month’s blog posts where we’ll share even more great social media tips.

If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM and how it can help you manage and build relationships with your customers, we’d love to talk to you. Contact Intelligent Technologies today!

by Intelligent Technologies, Inc

How to Get the Most out of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011′s New Social Features (Part 1) is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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1. How to Get the Most out of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011′s New Social Features (Part 2)
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Many of our CRM clients don’t realize that social media marketing features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM can greatly streamline their marketing activities. Let’s take a look at how:

Tracking and Measurement: It’s one thing to have a social media strategy in place, and completely another to be able to measure what’s working and what’s not. If your strategy worked the first few weeks or even months, it’s very likely it’s not as effective anymore. With how fast the social media stage changes, you need to constantly keep ahead of the tide. When social networks and CRM work together well, businesses gain the ability to better listen to customer conversations and engage social customers on their own terms while managing and measuring their efforts to do so. By combining CRM with social networks, you can also get closer to a true view of your customers so you can further optimize your marketing, sales, and customer service efforts.

Richer Connections: Social media is a new way to communicate with your customers and prospects, which means an opportunity for richer connections.  By combining CRM and social networking, you can easily track conversations and stay connected 24/7, creating great relationships that generate business and customer loyalty.

Streamlined Management: There are also more options as add-on modules to enhance your social media marketing reach even further. Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM are add-on modules developed to address specific business needs. The Social Networking Accelerator allows Microsoft Dynamics CRM users to discover online conversations, identify influential people, and engage with them on social networking sites using their customer system of record—Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

If you would like to learn more about how connecting social media networks and Microsoft Dynamics CRM can help your business, please contact me by calling 416-369-4362 or by emailing gmartin@bdo.ca.

By Gillian Martin with BDO Solutions, Leading Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner in Canada

BDO Solutions has implemented hundreds of Microsoft Dynamics solutions in many industries and leverage our expertise to help clients find out what works best for them.

Social Media Networks in Combination with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Create Marketing Power is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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• Treat social networking as a new channel within CRM. Many companies already use CRM solutions to manage customers, contacts, interactions, and communications, so it makes sense to continue to use customer management tools when these activities move into social networking channels.
• Enhance and extend CRM through social networking. While social networking activities can be considered as an additional channel in CRM, they also extend and enhance the capabilities of CRM with new ways of engaging customers and managing conversations.
• Play to the strengths of both CRM and social networks. Use CRM and social networking sites together to better listen to customers, analyze information, and respond to customers in a way that’s meaningful to them.

In order to help Microsoft Dynamics CRM users successfully implement these strategies, there are several different social media integration tools available for download on the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace. One such application that works and integrates well with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is InsideView. In the whitepaper, InsideView Highlights, the app’s developers outline its most useful features, including:

• Smart Agents™: Continuously scans 25,000 + online sources to deliver useful compelling business insights about prospects, customers, and competitors.
• Smart Connections™: Goes beyond LinkedIn and helps sales people connect with prospects through their personal and extended professional networks including colleagues, former colleagues, and reference customers.
• Social Media Profiles: Allows you to view 360° profiles for your contacts, including their detailed work history, key affiliations, and real-time social network updates so that you can be relevant in your conversations.
• List Building: Offers dynamic prospect list building by company, contact, industry, geography, business events and/or social media profiles.

As you can see there is great value to be had from merging Microsoft Dynamics CRM with your social media activities. But that being said, we have just scratched the surface on how this type of integration can help your organization better manage its online marketing and sales activities. So, feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like to find out how we can help your organization succeed with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

By: Laura Heinbockel Intelligent Technologies, Inc., a Greensboro, NC Microsoft Dynamics Partner

Integration With CRM: the Key to Making the Most of Social Media is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM can serve as your early warning system for product and service issues to protect you from this scenario.  By monitoring the opinions and views of your customers, you can react quickly and even identify emerging opportunities so that you can implement a proactive strategy.  And best of all, you don’t have to assign someone to monitor Twitter every waking moment.

The Social Networking Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM proactively monitors social networks for key words, complaints, and issues relating to a brand.  You can track chronic complainers to identify top potential service issues.  By tracking influencers of a given topic or issue, you can spot trends to help you create services and products that meet changing expectations.

Make sure you don’t get blindsided by bad press or miss new opportunities with the Social Networking Accelerator for Dynamics CRM. Contact Steve Kane at 301-634-2404 or skane@broadpoint.net to find out how BroadPoint Technologies, the premier Dynamics CRM reseller in Virginia, can help you stay tuned in.

by Broadpoint, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner Virginia

Microsoft Dynamics CRM as Early Warning System: Improve Customer Service With the Social Networking Power of Dynamics CRM is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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I find tracking and targeting of social media a very difficult task with the amount of information out there today. Microsoft Dynamics CRM acknowledges this and makes tracking social media easier with CRM Accelerator.

According to a Microsoft News Center press release, “The Social Networking Accelerator allows business professionals to monitor and analyze customers’ conversations on social networking sites, and as a result, provides real-time status updates about their products and services.”  Thus, making it easy to track progress and results of social media marketing as well as reduce costs and establish business insight across social networks, channel-centric organizations and Web interaction channels.

If you are one that has postponed this inevitable transition to social media marketing within your organization, contact us here at Sikich to learn more about the CRM accelerator and ease into it- effectively and efficiently. Sikich is an Illinois-based Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specializing in the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We work with over 4000 customers in 4 states: Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Kansas, in a variety of industries with a focus on manufacturing and distribution, professional services, education and not-for-profit.

By Sikich, a leading Chicago IL Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner serving IL, IN and MO

Track Social Media Marketing with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerator is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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Looking to improve your Social Networking Strategy? Find out  how the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerator tool can help by reading the full article:  Effectively Manage your Social Networking Strategy with the Dynamics CRM Social Networking Accelerator. 

by Affiliated Resource Group, an Ohio-based Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner

Effectively Manage Your Social Networking Strategy with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Social Networking Accelerator is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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