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If you're a football fan like me, on this the day of the transfer window, £600million might not seem like an awful lot of money (about 3 Manchester City signings to put it into perspective) but make no mistake, in reality that number is absolutely huge. That spend, in terms of CRM implementation will increase from 4% to 10% of all projects this year which tells you something about the upward curve facing the social business craze.
Someone recently alerted me to a Guardian blog talking about how the way we speed read things on the Internet has made us all more stupid with much shorter attention spans. Or something like that anyway, I was just skimming it and got distracted by something else...
Hands up who's played social media bingo? You know the game, sitting in a meeting crossing off your sheet every time the phrase 'tapping into social media' is referenced or hearing the echoed belief that it's time to 'get to know our customers'. The thing that everyone expects from social media (largely because this message has been preached to every sales team everywhere) is that the platform will act as a silver bullet that will provide effortless access deep inside the hub of a company and shed endless hidden secrets that you wouldn't see in the usual press circles.
We've all been there haven't we? That stage where we become perfectly comfortable in routine and close our minds to any other way of thinking. It almost becomes a bit like a superstition. I am not superstitious by nature but it pains me to admit I once went through a spell where I wouldn't walk onto a football pitch without listening to Chumbawamba's 'I get knocked down.' For some reason that went over the head of all therapy groups attended, I truly believed I couldn't possibly kick a football until I'd been graced by the presence of such an outrageously ghastly song.
It was beginning to become more and more apparent towards the end of 2010 that companies were starting to re-evaluate how they used social media and discovering that listening was just as important as broadcasting. I won't try and hide the facts, this blog did the very same. Strategists began to realise the value in reaching out to the pool of online knowledge rather than just adding to it.
