The merger of insight and contact

Something very noticeable in the last couple of months is the growing recognition that news can be a key cog in contact building and can act as a real catalyst for establishing a dialogue. There's a growing understanding that all the dots can be joined to form a perfect storm of opportunity, and now the real desire is to find the best way of joining those dots.

What are your key clients doing in 2012?

Whilst many resolution setters have probably already picked up that first glass of wine, or left their gym pass in the outer realms of the storage cupboard, many businesses will continue to have dreams and aspirations going into the new year. Business objectives are slightly harder to let go of than the feint promise to run on a treadmill more and you won't find many companies who don't have a plan in place to hit the ground running in 2012.

Quick question for you

Got a very simple question to pose today, after somebody asked me to explain the benefits of a 'trigger event'.

Gartner survey highlights a huge discrepancy

Read a fascinating insight on social media strategy from Gartner yesterday and wanted to share some results from the survey straight away. See if you can spot the discrepancy between these two answers:

Building a social business

There was a fantastic article in Forbes yesterday from IBM's vice president of social business. Follow the link and have a read as it's a really in depth look at what a lot of businesses are now facing. They key points I took from it were how social business really does increase productivity, enhance innovation and reduce cost. It's the continuing evolution of communication which means failing to keep up leaves you with a distinct disadvantage.

Time is often the commodity most overlooked

For a sales professional or account manager who spends time racing up and down motorways, keeping up with paperwork and generally trying to balance 8 plates on one, thin pole hearing sentences like 'take a while to get to know social media' is probably not a very favourable suggestion. In fact, though they'd probably never admit it to their bosses, that line probably wakes up a few internal neighbours with continuous expletives being held back from actually making it past the voice box.

"You can now know more about customers than ever before" Benioff

Cloudforce 2011 hit London today and the message seemed very, very clear: The cloud is the new place to woo customers through social engagement. If you didn't believe the hype around social CRM then you may be surprised to learn it's already here. "We were born cloud, now we’ve been reborn social" was the stand out statement from Marc Benioff's key note speech at the Royal Festival Hall this morning.