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November 26, 2009
Dreamforce 2009: Engaging Effectively with Social Networks using Salesforce.com
Posted by Maria Pergolino
Why should I care about Social Networks?
While we are in the infancy of adoption, growth is rapid and will continue to increase, some statistics to take note of include:
- By 2010, GenY will outnumber Baby Boomers. 96% of GenY has joined a social network
- There are over 200 million blogs and 54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily
- 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands. 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content
- 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations while only 14% trust advertisement
But why are people so interested in social networks? It’s because people want to be heard and share their opinion, especially with their friends and colleagues. It’s a time saver, where they can learn what their network is doing and leverage the information already gathered and generated by their peers. For companies, it’s appealing because they can get information about their brands, generate a bond with their loyal base of customers and take advantage of opportunities before social networks become more commercial.
But what should you be doing?
- Generating word of mouth
- Attract more prospects and engage customers. Your loyal clients will do the heavy lifting and make recommendations
- Generating a viral effect: leveraging the social graph
- Creating brand equity
- Discover how others are talking about your products
- Improve user experience and improve their opinions of you
- Be where they want you to be, when they want to find you
During the session we saw a live demo of how we would use Salesforce for Twitter to make better use of what is happening in social media. In the demo, a salesforce.com rep tweeted out about a product issue. In Salesforce, we were able to capture this tweet and route it to a service rep in just seconds. They were then able to tweet back with a link to the solution, solving a support issue without ever leaving Salesforce.com. Even better, the rep is credited with that solution because everything was caught in the CRM, allowing product management and support to report on these issues. Here at Marketo, we can use these Tweets brought in by Salesforce to adjust lead scores, start lead nurturing and more. Learn more in our Press Release: Marketo Connects Social Media With Marketing Automation
The session emphasized that social networks are not a fad; they’re for real and here to stay. However, there needs to be a different mindset concerning these social networks. They are not new sales channels. There are certain rules of engagement and proper etiquette within social network users and now Salesforce.com offers a way to utilize this new channel in a way that will best benefit your company.
What I liked about this session:
This session was very motitivating to marketers and Salesforce.com admin who are trying understand why so much effort should be put into social media right now. It was also great to see the Salesforce for Twitter demo- an application every Salesforce.com marketing user should install.
Maria Pergolino said on November 27, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Hey Luke,
It’s great to hear your opinion on the post. The stat was taken directly from a slide 8 minutes into the recording. This post is part of a series that are meant to describe what I learned at Dreamforce 2009. I’m sure the readers of the blog, as well as myself, appreciate you bringing some clarity.
I believe the speaker during this session meant that would happen because of the number of baby boomers that would no longer be living at that time. And I believe he was trying to give stats that help indicate social media was becoming more mainstream. I can reach out to him to try to clarify.
Thank you again.
Luke Brown said on November 27, 2009 at 9:31 am
Here we go again with misleading or simply wrong information. The first statistic of the second paragraph states, “By 2010, Gen will outnumber Baby Boomers.” The Baby Boomers are generally defined as those born from 1946-1964, numbering 75-78 million. Gen Y has looser years but Wikipedia says 1979-1992, totaling 60 million.
Now since when did 60 million become larger than 75-78 million? Secondly, many of the youngest of Gen Y will still be in school or just starting careers, so disposable income will be much less than that of the boomers.
Bottom line: market research is essential in defining one’s target market and demographics. A healthy dose of skepticism is needed when people issue general statements as facts. Any marketer worth anything knows that a few numbers can be construed in any manner to ‘prove’ a point.
Marketo, you dropped the ball on this one. This is definitely below the quality of material which comes from your blog. Shame on you for allowing such drivel.