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It seems the easy way to become social today is to create a Facebook page, add some widgets to your websites and build a campaign to drive engagement. This all seems very familiar as in the way that marketing has always executed a marketing strategy.

This is not a wrong strategy but does have some very apparent flaws, especially when it is the first tactic used as the starting point for a social media strategy.  How are you managing your existing customers via social channels? A recent blog post by Michael Maoz, a Forrester CRM analyst, talked about the excitement that Social CRM is creating within organizations. He tempered that excitement by explaining that many companies are going overboard in certain areas and neglecting others, especially around customer support and service.

This is a great reminder that while Social CRM shows much promise, it is a strategy that needs to be analyzed and built across the entire company, taking advantage of the best investment that you have in your company, your employees. In terms of building loyalty, there is no replacement for personal and knowledgeable guidance that your service team can provide a customer, creating deep long-lasting relationships.

I guess the point is, do you have your existing customer engagement strategy defined and is at a point where it is providing the return on investment that you expect? If not, does it make sense to expand the channels that your customers will be expecting to engage with your company? Take the time to understand what your goals are and if your existing processes are not up to par and you are unwilling to change, be very cautious about adding new social doors to your CRM process.