Salesforce Head to Head with SugarCRM and ZohoCRM

Does your business have a CRM solution in place? With many offerings like Salesforce, SugarCRM, and ZohoCRM, which one is right for your business? Most businesses have a pieced together sales process through email, spreadsheets, and notebooks. If you are looking for a better solution to get your business sales process firing on all cylinders you should have a CRM solution in place.

So what should I use for a CRM?

There are many offerings in the Customer Relationship Management space and we can not look at them all, this is a review of some of the most common cloud based solutions that we are familiar with. We will review Salesforce, SugarCRM, and ZohoCRM. Each of these solutions offer a cloud based platform and mobile support.

Salesforce

This is probably the most well know crm platform in the cloud. Rightly so as I think the number of Salesforce users is around the 2 million mark. Salesforce is one of the original SaaS companies offering a fully cloud based application for users.

Features at a glance:

Even though it is one most popular platforms, I am not a big fan. If you are looking to live in your CRM then Salesforce is a good choice, however if your organization is not currently using any type of crm you might find users will be overwhelmed with the number of options available in Salesforce. Setup can be a bit of a process to get rolling.

I believe Salesforce lends itself to the larger organization. The features are amazing but for small teams this can be daunting and if you are going to implement Salesforce be sure to work with a partner to get you started off with some training to speed up the learning curve.

SugarCRM

SugarCRM is a unique platform because you have a cloud based solution or a self-hosted solution. Being open source you have access to customize the interface and database in the back-end. This also provides a large community of 3rd party tools and addons in the Sugar Exchange. One of the features I really liked was its easy to use marketing tools for things like setup of newsletters and email marketing campaigns.

Features at a glance:

SugarCRM was quick to get up and running and fairly easy to get your data imported. Good integration with lead capture for your website, however it will take a bit of HTML knowledge to get the forms in place and customized to your liking.

ZohoCRM

ZohoCRM is one that is starting to get some traction in the CRM space. We have personally implemented Zoho as our CRM of choice. It has great support for Google Apps and Gmail. The gadgets make it very easy to access your CRM right from Gmail. You can create leads, potentials, and tasks from within Gmail without having to jump back and forth.

Features at a glance:

The marketing tools are somewhat limited and I think if you are wanting to have a tight integration with your marketing then SugarCRM or Salesforce might be a better choice. However if you are looking for seamless support of Google Apps then ZohoCRM is the choice.

Resources:
¹Customer Relationship Management

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This Weeks Email Tip, Don’t Use Email

Being Valentines Day, I thought a great email tip would be Don’t Use Email. How many of you have read an email and thought, what is this person saying? Not understanding the tone or emotion in email is one of the biggest pitfalls of email communication.

Most times when we read email it is read with tone-deafness. It is hard to understand what emotion the sender is trying to convey. Things like facial expressions, tone of voice are lost in email. This is where things get mis-understood and feelings get hurt, people can get offended, and the message can be taken the wrong way.

Don’t Use Email

Most of us over-estimate the understanding the reader will have when reading our message. So it is important that we understand when not to email. Let’s face it, some things are just to sensitive or complex to be communicated by email.

It is important that you know when the time to pick up the phone,  are go and see the person is appropriate. It may seem to take extra time, but it eliminates the chance of confusion and also you can answer questions as they come up in the conversation.

5 Questions To Help Decide

• Can you clearly communicate your message without emotion?
• Can you say it in 2-3 sentences or no more than a paragraph?
• Will questions come up with your message that will need to be answered right away? (Remember we don’t respond to email in real-time)
• Is the message of an emotional nature or personal?
• Who are you sending the message to? Have you had the experience of them mis-understanding your emails before?

If you answer yes to any or all of these questions, I would suggest you pick up the phone or go for a visit. If your message is taken the wrong way, the time you will waste trying to explain yourself can be saved up front by skipping the email and talking in person.

Flickr Photo by Fawlty128

¹ Emails and Egos!

Be sure to check back for next week’s Email Tip – Don’t Say Anything!

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Really, Do You Have to Look at Your Email Now?

Building on our email tips from a few weeks back, I wanted to start sharing some tips to improve your productivity with email. I know most of  these will sound common sense but let’s be honest, how many of you responded to an email on your mobile while having a conversation with a friend?

Email Tip – Do not respond in real-time!

Seriously, this email tip is a very simple effective way to get the most out of your email communication. I know many people live for the “Ding” or desktop notifier from their email client. This was never designed to condition you to jump when it went off. It is not an experiment in behavioral response, however that is what it has become for many. The “ding” hits them and they jump!

Remember, most of the time the reason someone is sending you an email is because they do not have the time for a conversation anyway. Your responding in real-time sets up an expectation that this will be the way the email communication will continue from that point forward. Now you are not only disrupting your workflow you could also be disrupting someone else!

How do I stop?

So the best method is first, don’t check your email in real-time. This will make you feel like you have to respond in real-time. So set a schedule to check your email 2-3 times per day during business hours. Next, set a response time goal – this will also help with the email that you do not want to respond to. I would suggest 4-6 hours during business hours and if at all possible do not respond to business email on the weekend. If you do business email when your out of the office set the response time goal to 12-24 hours.

What does this do for you?

Using this email tip will help you be more productive at other important tasks and you will find within a week or two of practice you will really start getting stuff done! Second, when you give it time to respond you will be able to provide a more detailed response. Let’s face it, email communication is hard to convey emotion, tone etc. so the better thought out your response the less chance of confusion from the reader.

Flickr Photo by Steve 2.0

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Want Website Video? Host it On DropBox

Dropbox is a powerful cloud storage platform offering many ways to share and collaborate with your files. One nice feature is the public folder, it offers you an easy to use option to share videos and embed them on your website. Similar to using Amazon s3 it provides a great way to host videos on your website without having the streaming take away the bandwidth from your site.

In this quick tutorial I will show you a quick way to host your videos on Dropbox and embed them on your WordPress website. This can also adapted to work on any website with some tweaks in the steps to meet your platform.

What you will need

So to make this work very well for WordPress we will be using the following:

• Dropbox Account
• JW Player Plugin
• A Video that you want to embed

It is important to note that you can use other video plugins to accomplish this, or just use LongTail Video wizard to get the player setup. For the sake of this tutorial I sharing a what I think is the easiest way to get your video online quickly by using Dropbox and JW Player plugin for WordPress.

Here is a Sample of a Video Streaming from Dropbox

 Here is the Tutorial

For those of you liking step by step instructions see below.

Step 1: You will need to put the video you want to stream in your Dropbox Public folder. This allows the proper permissions so that the video can be streamed on your website.

Step 2: You will now need to browse to your file to Copy Public Link to use for embedding the video on your website with the JW Player plugin.

Step 3: Now that you have the link you need to embed into your WordPress post with the JW Player plugin.  You can access this by clicking the Add Media button in your WordPress post, then click the External Media option in the Add Media Panel. Now you will see a place to paste the URL for the media you want to stream.

Step 4: Now click the Add Media button and that will bring up the screen to set the parameters for your JW Player display. Customize these setting to your liking and click the Insert JW Player button.

Step 5: Save your post and test to make sure it works!

That is it, if all went well you should have a video that is posted on your WordPress website and streaming from your Dropbox account. This is a great way to get started hosting your own videos without putting extra pressure on your website bandwidth.

Video – Oops, I dropped My Whoop by Allisonclark.me

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How to get your Social Media Strategy Going

Getting started with social media is fun and exciting so here is a quick guide to help jump in.

So what is this hype about social media? Why is it something that everyone is talking about but no on is really telling you how to use?

Social media is the fastest-growing marketing channel in the world. Spend on social media marketing in the U.S. will grow annually at a 34% compound rate through 2014, according to independent research firm, Forrester research, Inc. By then, social media market­ing will amount to a $3.1 billion industry, surpassing email marketing in terms of spending, Forrester said in a 2009 report.¹

Social Media is really taking something that we do everyday and expanding it. Now we are able to use various social media channels to share and learn.

Remember when you met with a friend or family member and you asked something like,” hey what movie should I go to”, or I need a new car where should I go”, you would happily respond, “I saw this movie the other night, or I use the dealership and the guy I work with is named John”.

This is the social in social media. Now we can do this on a bigger scale. Not with just close friends or family but with communities of people looking to learn and share.

And it is a two-way communication channel, meaning you can share your knowledge and you can learn from someone else.

What Social Media Channels Should I Use?

Getting started with a social media can be a daunting task when you look at all the social media channels that are available. Here are some examples of social media channels that are available for you to use right now:

This is just a few of the many. Now it comes to the question how to do you manage all this. You don’t

Just like you don’t go to every pub or restaurant you have to find a few that you are willing to participate in. For the sake of today I will make it easy for you and keep our discussion around the following:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google+

These are the main social networking sites out there right now. What that means is roughly about 85% of all the users on social media are using one our all of these channels.

To decide what channels work best for you, then decide on what you are using it for. If it is for business where are your clients? What is the demographic of those potential clients or contacts? This will give you a great insight on where to spend your time. This is important because if you are not focused in your usage, social media can be a huge time suck and that is not the point.

Best Practices of Getting Your Profile Setup

You will want to make sure that when you setup your social media profiles that you do it right. This includes a completed profile and a picture of yourself.

Things you will want to do to create a great profile:

• A picture of yourself
• Your real name (We will discuss some notes on twitter later)
• A detailed description of who you are and what you do.
• Services you offer
• Education
• Interests

How Often Do You Participate?

Level of Participation varies, depending on what you hope to accomplish. Social media is not just telling everyone what you are doing it is also finding out what others are doing. Some recent research on effectiveness of social media has been done and from that and our own results here are some guidelines.

Twitter: To clarify on some jargon about twitter. It is what is called a micro-blogging platform. Meaning it is about saying something in 140 characters or less. And when you make a post to Twitter it is called a Tweet!

So the usage level will vary by user but a good guideline is:

• 20+ tweets a day with no more than 2-3 tweets of your own content.This means that you have to participate in the community you are hoping to influence and share other related content.
• 5-10 Retweet’s, this is retweeting someone’s tweet to your followers. This is great way to find and share good content and increase your following base.

Facebook – LinkedIn – Google+: These platforms are a little different because you can post more than 140 characters and you can also include rich media like photos, videos etc.

• Connect with at least 5 current or former business associates each week
• Search and find groups related to your topic and join them and become part of that community.
• Start or Participate in 2-3 discussions each week (LinkedIn)
• Participate in the Answers section of LinkedIn and answer questions related to your topic. Try to answer 2 questions per week.

Tools To Do The Work

A number of tools are available to help with this process because at this point you are probably thinking that you could never do all this work. However, with the right tools you can improve the efficiency of what you are doing and keep the workload to a minimum. It will take some time to get everything setup but once done, you can keep your workload to 10-15 mins/day.

Suggested Tools: 

There are a number of tools available to use for managing your social media. To learn more you can read our review of Hootsuite and Sprout Social. Also, we did an interview with the CEO of Sprout Social so if you would like to learn what is in-store for them it is worth the read. We currently use both the tools listed below and like them both.

• Hootsuite (Affiliate Link)
• SproutSocial (Affiliate Link)

Is This Worth it

Yes, if you did not think so then you would not be here right? Like anything it is an unknown to start, so with some proper planning and focusing in on Social Media as a communication tool you can and will find a Return on investment.

So once you get setup, be sure to connect with us and we will be happy to follow you back. You can also post your social media links in the comments below so people can join you.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google+

Reference: 1 Forrester research, inc. “U.S. interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009 to 2014,” July 2009.

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Website Conversion Only Comes With Planning Your Website Goals

To really maximize your website conversion rates you need to have a strong set of website goals to work from. No defined website goals, then trying to figure out our conversion ratio will not tell us anything. We need to know where we are, and where we plan go to analyze how well we are doing.

To plan for website conversion we need to define what we want visitors to our website to do. This is our first step in creating website goals. With this information we can then start to develop a strategy to help visitors make the decision to complete the desired action.

These actions can be things like:

• Subscribe to Your Email Newsletter
• Subscribe to Your Blog
• Fill In a Lead Capture Form
• Buy Something etc.

These are just some of the desired outcomes we might have when a visitor is at our website. Now that we have isolated our website goals how can we improve our website conversion for these goals?

Here are some tips to get you started

1.

Get Found Online

Now that we have our goals, we can start to develop your strategy to get found online.

Some areas that will help with getting found online are:

• Build Inbound Links
• On-Page SEO Strategy
• Your Title Tag and Meta Data
• Sitemaps and XML Sitemaps
• 301 Redirects

These are some of the areas that we will need to focus on to improve chances of getting found online. The more people who find our website the better chance we will have of a website conversion.

2.

Design & Usability

Now just getting found does not lead to website conversion, once a visitor comes to our website we will need to provide a place for them to want to complete the desired action.

Here are some tips to think about when working on design and usability:

• What is the First Impression
• Maintain A Consistent Look Throughout the Site
• Use Good Images
• Simple to Follow Navigation
• Accessibility

3.

Content

So we have a visitor to our shiny new website now how do we get website conversions?  This is where we need to develop a strong content strategy to be able to provide our visitors value while they are on the website.

Good content will help them learn more about us and our company and why they can trust what we do.

• What is Your Messaging
• Offer Content of Value and Education
• Good Quality
• Simple Language avoid Corporate Speak
• Be Clear
• Blog Regularly
• Allow Content To be Social and Shareable

4.

Website Conversion

Now we have clear website goals, we are getting found online, and we are producing great content; now we need website conversions. It is not a bad thing to ask for business, make it easy and comfortable for visitors to become a subscriber, a lead, a customer. Be clear on what we are offering as well so visitors know what they are signing up for.

• Effective Call-To-Actions – Make it Easy for Your visitors
• Great Positioning of your Call-To-Actions
• Landing Pages
• Simple and Clear Forms
• Newsletters

These are just some of the tips and strategies to implement to improve our website conversion ratio. Once we start this process it becomes something that we will have to continue to do.

Based on our website goals we will need to look at our website conversion and analyze how we are doing. Then optimize and improve and repeat the process!

What tips can you share to help with website conversion?

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Interview with Justyn Howard CEO from Sprout Social

Sprout Social did a major redesign of its social media management tool late and 2011 and that made some users happy and left others shaking their heads. Like life one thing we can always count on is change, so we decided to reach out to Sprout Social and see what there thoughts were.

Justyn Howard took some time to give us the inside scoop on the changes and what is planned for future. While Hootsuite remains one of the main tools used for social media management, Sprout Social is not laying down in its efforts to bring a powerful tool to users.

If you would like to read the review of Sprout S2 or the head to head review of Sprout vs. Hootsuite please do.

Question: History and a little about Sprout

Sprout Social Inc. is headquartered in Chicago, IL with a team of 35 who are passionate about helping our customers make more meaningful connections with theirs, through social media. Sprout was founded in 2010 and serves thousands of customers across the globe.

Question: With all the positive about the old platform why the upgrade?

We’re perfectionists with big ambitions about the quality and power of the tools we give our customers. Sprout 1 reached a point where it wouldn’t allow us to grow the way we wanted as the social media space (and our customer needs) evolved. It was sort of like planning a family of 5 while living in a 1 bedroom apartment. We needed a bigger foundation. There were parts of S2 that individually took as long to build as the entire first platform – it’s got amazing stuff under the hood.

Question: Based on that what are the growing pains you experienced with the new platform and how does that relate to the business growth?

We had our first experience with letting down our customers after the new launch. Since a lot of the work was behind the scenes, our customers understandably were scratching their heads as to why we’d mess with something that wasn’t broken. We had some issues with our data migration and features breaking on the live servers that snowballed. We knew people would love the result when we ironed out the issues, we knew it was the right move, but it was an awful feeling in the interim.

Question: What are the plans for 2012?

We’re strengthening our team capabilities, adding new networks, enhancing the reporting engine and building several new surprises for 2012. Our customers can continue to expect new ways to make their lives easier in the coming months.

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Google Apps for Business Migration and Support Services

If you’ve been considering a move to Google Apps for Business, now is the time to make the move with support from Damang Media. We now offer full service support for businesses looking to migrate to the powerful tools offered through Google Apps for Business to make the transition smooth and seamless.

With our Google Apps for Business 30-day free trial, we believe you will discover how Google Apps can bring together essential services to help your business communicate and collaborate more effectively.A move to Google Apps for Business brings a powerful set of tools to any business.

Email — Most people, by now, are familiar with Google’s popular email program, Gmail. Using Google mail for your business means gaining control of your email rather than letting it control you. Google mail has powerful spam filters, search features, works with Blackberry, iPhone and Android platforms and, best of all, has unparalleled storage with 25GB per employee.

Calendar — The web-based Google calendar app will keep your employees connected and organized. Employees can create and share multiple calendars and access these calendars from their mobile devices. Calendar syncing happens instantaneously reducing scheduling hassles and IT management concerns. You can also easily publish calendars and events to the web.

Document Control — Google Docs brings the power of cloud computing to your key documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Employees can edit and work on these web-based documents at the same time from multiple locations so everyone has the latest version of a document at all times.

Sites — Google Sites brings another powerful tool to employees. With this app, employees can easily build collaborative websites for projects and events. The sites can help keep teams organized and you can control who has access to each of the sites — teams, the entire staff or the entire world.

Google Apps for Business has the power to transform how you do business. Cloud computing frees employees to work in new, collaborative ways from multiple locations as long as they have a mobile device. Flexibility allows employees to work more creatively and more efficiently.

Our goal at Damang is to help you work less and play more and Google Apps for Business is the key to making this a reality for your business. Try our 30-day trial today and let us show you how this powerful business tool can transform the way you and your employees work.

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Building Your Social Media Strategy

Your social media strategy will continue to be a crucial component of a strong inbound marketing for businesses plan throughout all of 2012 and the years to come.

With millions of people and companies engaging in social media as their primary platforms for professional networking and marketing, the atmosphere has become cluttered and crowded.

While social media will likely play an even stronger role in successful SEO, and inbound marketing this year, there are many aspects of social media and social media marketing that will have to change and update. Now is the time do plan your social media strategy.

Social media marketing is an essential aspect of inbound marketing for business, and there are several new techniques and practices to help you develop your social media strategy.

Here are seven of them:

1.

Devise More Aggressive Goals

The first step to any new year challenge is reevaluation of your old goals. The same goes for your companies’ social media strategy. Go through your goals from last year and examine how successful you were. Work to understand what areas you were successful in and why and then devise a new set of goals that are more aggressive and more educated.

2.

Expand Your Platforms

For the most part, when we hear the term “social media” we think Facebook and Twitter. While these are no question the social media masters in the industry, there are new platforms that will need to be explored in 2012. Whether you like it or not, your social media strategy for the new year should include Google+ and LinkedIn. Take advantage of all the arenas that are available to you. Even if you are unable to really commit the time to regularly updating LinkedIn or Google+, you should create pages for your company to create a greater search presence.

3.

Try Outsourcing

Though the term “outsourcing” often has a negative connotation associated with it, it can come in very handy for social media marketing attempts. With social media having such an essential role in the marketing plan of many companies and businesses, it is essential that apt and inspired individuals are managing these campaigns.

With the added cost of hiring people to manage social media accounts, it can be tempting to let employees with other job commitments pick up the social media responsibilities. However, your campaign will have much more success if there is a dedicated team of trained personnel minding your social media marketing campaign.

4.

Use Analytic Tools

There are numerous online tools for measuring the success of your social media marketing campaign. While many companies and businesses have integrated some of these tools into their social media strategy, many are not using them to their fullest ability. Before you can expand on your social media campaign, you must measure the success of your current one.

Try to understand what areas of your strategy are working well and driving traffic to your sites and identify what areas are still lacking. Google Analytics allows you to monitor several different profiles and can tell you how many visitors came to your site from Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

There are several other tools like Sprout Social and Hootsuite that can help you gain perspective on your current campaign and guide you to find the right way to expand it.

5.

Only Measure What’s Necessary

As mentioned above, using tools to measure website analytics is an important aspect of any social media strategy. However, before you obsess of every little measurement thrown your way, figure out what analytics are actually useful to you and your business.

This year, look more closely at the specific analytics that can demonstrate real growth. Something that merely shows you the number of followers or number of visitors is much less valuable and useful than something that explains number of sales queries or number of positive mentions, for example. Don’t waste your time on measurements and analytics that don’t really tell you anything.

6.

Be Active Rather than Automated

Using automated tools to help speed up and manage your social media platforms can be extremely useful. However, as social media is becoming more and more central in the world of online marketing, automation is losing steam. Being actually active and online with your social media campaigns will be a necessity this year and the years to come.

7.

Reevaluate Your Audience

Using social media allows you to build a valuable audience of consumers or followers. This audience is essential to the success of your inbound marketing campaign. You should take the time to understand who your audience is.

Use your social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as a way to build a network of contacts. If you take the time to understand how you can serve the audience you already have more successfully, you will be more productive with your campaigns. By knowing your audience you can avoid wasting time on content and messages that don’t immediately speak to them.

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15 Tips for you Social Media Strategy

A strong Social Media Strategy is going to become more important than every in your inbound marketing efforts. Also, with the changes in SEO the past few months, the efforts we put into social media will have a bigger impact on our site rankings.

So how can you gain some traction in the social channels that you participate in? First of all is make sure you have a plan. You should take some time to plan out your inbound marketing and how that relates to your social media strategy and your SEO efforts.

To get an idea for what is to come, we polled some of the people we follow that are influential on social media trends and have a good insight on what you should include in your social media strategy.

Tips for Social Media from Twitter

MariSmith
Hi Matt. Shift thinking from “social media” as disparate form of marketing to building full on “social business.”

JohnAguiar
@damangmedia be active..less automation

garyvee
listen listen listen listen listen listen listen listen listen listen listen listen listen listen listen listen ………TALK

nuprinz
@itstrue @JohnAguiar Good one. I’d challenge folks to take it offline once in a while. Go for a coffee or be sure to meet at an event.

AmberCadabra
@itstrue @kikolani to pretty please make this the year we build business with social in mind instead of lingering on tools.

kikolani
@itstrue @AmberCadabra Whether you like it or not, you better take Google+ seriously by creating great profiles / pages and using them!

mediatemple
I would go by what we have been striving to do for the past year, 100% engagement. Be able to listen and contribute to the convo. ^ML

mediatemple
For big companies, your social channels shouldn’t just be a place for fans to come to get problems fixed…It should be a place where they come to strike a conversation. When you see that happening, you know you’re doing things right. ^ML

BenchmarkEmail
@itstrue My #1 rule: Provide value, whether it’s being educational or entertaining.

yourfrontstep
@damangmedia My best #sm advice for 2012: Don’t expect it to be like 2011! Stay social, keep learning.

LaurenEHarper
@damangmedia Engage!!

AmberSchinkel
@damangmedia that’s a tough question! I suppose make your posts meaningful and don’t spam followers with constant updates

BundlePost
Content!

WarrenWhitlock
@itstrue don’t tack names onto a tweet to get attention #2012advice

TreyRatcliff
Just do awesome things and share… people who are supposed to be in your life will come into it.

These are some great tips to get you started on putting together your social media strategy for your business. It is important also to consider your SEO when you put the social media strategy together.

Really social media and seo should be put together and become an overall inbound marketing for business plan. If you want to improve your ROI on your online marketing efforts use these tips and participate in your channels of choice and I am sure you will be pleased with the results.

What tips do you have for putting together improving your social media ROI? Please share in the comments below or post on Twitter with the hashtag #socialmediastrategy we will update the results as we get more tips.

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