Blogging Elements

Should a Blogger use a CRM system?

Posted on 25. Jul, 2009 by Ashwin in Blogging

According to a study conducted by microsoft small business, small businesses have two huge issues to contend with: finding new customers and retaining them. While marketing itself is a perplexing issue most entrepreneurs have to battle with on a daily basis, trying to keep and retain these customers is just as important. This reason alon saw Customer Relationship Management tools and services to emerge in popularity. Tools like salesforce.com, Netsuite and Zoho CRM are making it very easy for any small business to implement and use such systems.

The question is, should a blogger use a Customer Relationship Management system?

It depends.

If you do nothing but blog about what you fed your cat this morning or the gruelling travel routine you had endured for the past few months, you really don’t need a CRM. However, you will certainly need one if you have anything to sell at all — be it information, products or services. You will need a CRM because:

It eases aggregation of lead data: Blogging automatically hurls you into the region of Social CRM, where unlike data driven CRM which was prevalent a few years ago, leads are collected due to people finding answers through your blog containing incredibly useful content. If you have compelling, thirst-quenching content that your prospects seek, they would take necessary action that kicks the CRM system into action. Customer details are collected automatically (with social media driving some leads into the system),allowing you to focus on what you do best.

Form a Community: A social CRM strategy helps you to focus on building a powerful community through meaningful conversation and debate. Users find you through interaction on social media in the process of finding answers to their problems and eventually reach your blog. Once here, they would start interacting with you and trust you enough to form a part of your community — an effective way to convert clicks to sales.

It automates, organizes and boost productivity: Traditionally CRM systems have been used by companies such that relevant departments are updated in real-time about what’s happening to the business, automate certain aspects of customer management and lead development and other such specific reasons. A blogger can use a CRM for much of the same reasons except that it might not be a company that you are running; it could just be you. However, it streamlines your efforts, it automates some aspects of your business, organizes everything for you so that it is easy for you to work on your business and boost productivty immensely.

What do you think? Have you tried using CRM before? What do you think the ramifications will be? Do you think that a CRM system for a blogger is too much to ask for?

Tags: Business Automation, Social CRM, Traditional CRM