I’m attending the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. I’m sharing my notes from this session. Clara Shih,founder and CEO of Hearsay Labs, which develops web applications to track brand engagement and accelerate sales on Facebook and Twitter. She is also the author of The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff
Facebook is CRM, its the way to manage your contacts and stay in touch. She makes the argument that email is dead.
(I think this is a losing argument. You will lose just about everyone if you make this statement. So what if college students are not using email. They are not working inside a business organization.)
Companies are investing more time and money on social media as part of their marketing strategy.
She put forth that Facebook is the template for online identity. It has become socially acceptable to share photos, interests and demographic information. You can get to know people more quickly. Now you also have the layering in the real-time identity.
The transaction costs of communication are being reduced. Email was cheaper than phone calls. Facebook and Twitter allow you to reach an even broader audience even cheaper. Especially, keeping in touch with weak ties.
She showed the tool she made called Faceconnector (originally called FaceForce) that pulled Facebook information into Salesforce. Essentially enhancing that CRM system.