SocialCRM and The Cluetrain Manifesto

OK, this was not on my radar, I was thinking something completely different this week. Thanks Brian, thanks a lot. Ok, I cannot  blame Mr. Vellmure at all! (Brian has some really great insights, I learn from him every blog). I was doing some research and had the URL open in a tab on my second PC. But, I was not looking that intently until Brian suggested that we all take a look again – it was time well spent.

The give people a common baseline (from Wikipedia):

The Cluetrain Manifesto is a set of 95 theses organized and put forward as a manifesto, or call to action, for all businesses operating within what is suggested to be a newly-connected marketplace. The ideas put forward within the manifesto aim to examine the impact of the Internet on both markets (consumers) and organizations.

Now, my challenge to the the Accidental Community, and the community at large, is to choose one or two of the 95 theses and suggest whether the current use, thoughts and/or applications available, regarding SocialCRM, support your choice. You can find the complete list at Cluetrain.com.

Let me kick things off

I will start this off with two sequential statements that I seem to keep coming back to, number 36 and 37, which are: “Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.” and “If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market.”, respectively.

I will very simply state that by working to define your own SocialCRM  philosophy and strategy, you will quickly find out if you have a gap or not. SocialCRM cannot fill this gap, the problem is bigger than SocialCRM. So, how does this answer my own challenge? The mere thought process of defining a SocialCRM strategy would expose the gap and help the company to make appropriate changes (though that gap can be tough to close). SocialCRM has added value!

You should keep these two Theses close as you design your strategy. If you really want to dive in deep, please read Wim Rampen’s latest post and then think about my statement – if the company culture does not overlap with its community from a philosophical perspective, the SocialCRM strategy cannot be realized.

Ok, folks, what do you say?

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