About | Advertise | Submissions | Write for Us CrowdsourcedFRD Home Advertising Branding Content Marketing Lead Gen SEO-SEM Social Media More Strategy Design PR eBooks Educational Facebook Guest Posts Twitter Tapping Social Networks for Business: Interview with Clara Shih, author of The Facebook Era November 9th, 2010 | By Deni Kasrel When Clara Shih says social networks are great tools for customer relationship management you can trust she knows what she’s taking about. Personal relationships are at the heart of business relationships. You ask them how their kids are. MORE >>

However, online community building requires skill -a cultivated skill - in order to create a productive and safe environment for information exchange. Online communities can be of great value to organizations seeking to foster relationship building, increase customer intimacy, and to better understand the needs of their members (and therefore have the ability to translate those needs into service offerings or products). But, in order to be successful, the act of supporting interactive areas needs to be conducted wisely. MORE >>

1) Data is Free, Relationships are Not: As contact data becomes more and more available, approaching free in many cases, the value of the relationship will increase. As part of a continuing trend, the ability of your audience to block, prevent, and ignore communications that they don’t desire will increase, with reduces the value of the data (who they are), and increases the value of the relationship (their perception of you). It’s coming around to that time of year again when we all offer up predictions for what the coming year will offer. Sort of. What do you think? MORE >>

Rapidly changing customer behaviors and expectations, coupled with increasing competition, is making it difficult for reps to close deals, often driving sales organizations to re-examine ways to boost sales. That’s because the progressively complex sales environment is pushing sellers to develop new skills. To make their coaching efforts more effective in this evolving environment, managers should ensure that they steer clear of some common coaching pitfalls. Many managers typically focus coaching on sharpening sellers’ relationship building skills. MORE >>

simple 5 step program can help you refocus your marketing efforts and adjust to the new requirements for B2B marketing success: Step 1 – Understand Your Audience Customer focus begins with understanding your customer and their market environment. Also make sure you segment your target markets according to demographics, psychographics, and business environment to identify the segments that are the best fit for your company's offering; segments that have the most to gain by becoming your customers. Customers are are in the driver’s seat today. What business problems do they face? MORE >>