I’ve been throwing around the term audacity a lot lately when talking about social CRM.

Blame it on Barack Obama. Not as much for the name of one of his books, but for his campaign to be our next president of the United States, aka POTUS. I mean really, who would have “thunk” he’d have gotten this far a mere two years ago. I know I didn’t. But now he’s being referred to as potentially becoming the U.S.’s first CRM president for his campaign’s strategic use of RightNow Technologies CRM platform. And others refer to his potential for being our first social media president. Oh yeah, and if we think hard enough I guess there may be one or two other “firsts” that would come out of an Obama presidency.

So if some consider him a social media candidate, and others consider him a CRM candidate, I’ll agree with both camps and say Obama could be our first social CRM POTUS. This brings me back to the audacity theme. Along with automation and analysis, audacity makes up one of the “Three A’s” of social CRM I recently wrote about for Inc.com.

Audacity is the ingredient that allows us to tap into our creative side to connect with people in ways we never allowed ourselves to do before. But it’s more important than ever to do so as more business relationships begin with Google searches, Facebook pages, and Tweets.

While audacious thinking may seem strange and counter-intuitive to our "in the box" way of business as usual, here are two examples that jumped out at me.

Free + Audacity = $1M

Speaking of Google, if you do a search on the term new rules of pr you'll come across David Meerman Scott’s 20+ page e-book. I should say you’ll come across his FREE e-book. No sign-up required. No email address collected. Just download, read and enjoy.

This is completely counter-intuitive to what we’re used to. But, as David explains in the short audio snippet below, his decision to give away his “new rules” led to 50,000 downloads in the first month, a book deal with Wiley publishing, a best-selling book, and a thriving speaking business. Between his writing and speaking, David figures the decision to give away his e-book gave him $1M in business. Can anyone tell me what the ROI on that would be?

The Notorious B.I.G. of SEO?

I have to admit, I’m still trippin’ (aka buggin’ out) on this one. I recently found out (from a tweet no less) about a guy named Chuck who goes by the “MC” handle of The SEO Rapper ... and no I’m not kidding. In fact Chuck has a series of rap videos on his YouTube channel that touch on many different phases of search engine optimization. Now Chuck will never be confused with rap royalty like Rakim or KRS-One, but his videos are actually quite good. Don’t take it from me, check out the stats from one of his more popular videos — Design Code (uploaded March 20, 2008):

• Over 297,000 views
• 512 text comments
• 10 video responses
• 4.5 out of 5 ranking on over 1,400 votes

Admittedly, I have no idea how much business (if any) Chuck has received from his videos, but these numbers really blow me away. I’d kill to have twelve comments on my posts, let alone 512. Not to mention video responses, or that high of a ranking based on that many votes. But that’s what audacity can do for you if you can let it loose. I don’t know about you but I might have to “drop” a few lines myself if it will get me a few more comments ... and potential business deals.

Now we don’t have to rap to put audacity to work for us. We don’t even have to give stuff away. But the above numbers are hard to ignore. So we do have to allow ourselves to push beyond our traditional boundaries in order to find what will work for us. Better yet, find what works for the people we wish to captivate and build meaningful relationships with. That’s the power that comes from an audacious social CRM strategy. Have you committed an audacious online act today?

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About the Author: Brent Leary is a Partner of CRM Essentials. Brent also hosts Technology For Business $ake, a radio show in the Altanta, Georgia, USA area about using technology in business.

This is a post from: Small Business Trends

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