Forecasting Clouds' Top 20 CRM Blogs of 2009

(Jan 8 2010)

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Technologies: Cloud Computing, CRM, CRM Blog, ERP, ERP Blog, Green IT, on-demand, SaaS, web-based
  1. Forecasting Clouds' Top 20 CRM Blogs of 2009

    By Chris Bucholtz

    Has CRM become more exciting, or are people just talking about it in a different way? Three years ago, compiling a list of 20 competent CRM logs was a tough task. Today, the blogosphere is overrun with CRM bloggers of different skill levels, areas of expertise and commitment to the medium. Perhaps that’s because blogging itself is a component of social media and thus the raw materials for social CRM, which so many of the blogs on this list focus on.

    We selected our list based on some simple criteria. First was the content – How on target were bloggers this year? If they veered into hype too often, they veered off this list. Second was readability; strong writing and concise storytelling always help get ideas across to the reader effectively. Third was frequency of postings; irregular blogs or blogs with huge gaps between posts suffered in comparison to blogs that kept their readers up to date.

    What’s clear is that the best bloggers stayed the best bloggers, but a whole host of new voices have found the blog medium and are adding substantially to the conversation about CRM and related technologies. So, without further ado, here are the 20 CRM blogs we think you should be reading:

    1.       PGreenblog and CRM: The Conversation – Paul Greenberg

    With frequent posts, a conversational tone, and analysis that can help refine your CRM thinking about both today’s tactical decisions and tomorrows trends to watch, Paul continues to be perhaps the most universally admired pundit on the subject –and, seemingly, the most prolific. Not only does he turn out two blogs but he also completed CRM at the Speed of Light Volume 4 this year, which focused on social CRM. Perhaps the energy that propelled his productivity came from the success of his beloved New York Yankees; if that’s the case, then we should all hope for a World Series repeat. Paul was a visionary about the role social media would play in CRM; it has been fascinating to watch him shift from prediction to practicality.

    2.       Beagle Consulting Blog – Denis Pombriant

    Denis continues to mix CRM and other issues – notably this year, the concept of sustainability – into an interesting point of view that looks at CRM in a bigger context. His emphasis on service as a critical component was ahead of the pack, and he continues to provide pragmatic analysis on the shift toward social CRM.  Read his blog and take it as your own analyst report; he hits all the major industry events, it seems, and always has something insightful to say about what vendors are up to and where they’re going wrong.

    3.       Brent’s Social CRM Blog - Brent Leary

    The frequency of Brent’s posts dropped a bit in 2009, which is evidence only of his expanding reputation and the commensurate toll on his time. He still posted a ton of great material, especially around his specialties of small business and social CRM. He’s also the most likely of our Top 20 to include audio – which is good, because he’s an engaging and funny speaker – and the most likely to bring guests into his audio mix. And as for content, no one does a better job of making the case for jumping into social CRM with both feet than Brent. There will be organizations who thank him this time next year for his articulate advocacy of social CRM – and others who’ll be kicking themselves for not paying attention.

    4.       Think Customers: the 1 to 1 Media Blog – Ginger Conlon, Mila D’Antonio, Elizabeth Glagowski and Jeremy Nedelka

    A team effort that really works, the 1 to 1 blog is a treat for a number of reasons. First off, there’s new material virtually daily. Secondly, the regular writers are gifted wordsmiths and know their stuff. Third, the focus is almost always on practical matters that any business can internalize. Fourth, the parent organization has the ability to attract some tremendous guest bloggers. Add those four points together and you have a great blog that seemed to get better as 2009 went on.

    5.       The Social Customer Manifesto - Chris Carfi

    Carfi is continues to be one of CRM’s great futurists – he uses the technology and strategies of today to predict the capabilities of tomorrow. At times he’s perhaps too far beyond the horizon, envisioning things that are remote possibilities at best, like the use of in-home stereolithographic printing to radically alter the buyer-seller relationship. When he’s discussing things closer to the present day, he seemed much more prescient about what’s possible with social media, mobile technology and CRM. Plus, he spices up the blog with snippets about his own life, like music, hikes and photography. It’s always nice to see that our prophets are real people, too.

    6.       The Forrester Blog for Business Process and Application Professionals – Bill Band

    Being both practical and visionary is a real talent, and Bill’s got it. While it doesn’t spill all the beans on his research (I’m sure his employers might object to that), this blog with a rather sesquipedalian name delivers plenty of insight and helps readers push their hype reset buttons by aligning forward-thinking ideas with real-world practicality. His analysis of the business system ecosystem based around CRM, which came out last summer, was dead on target and was just the thing to help executives understand the real value of aligning the business around customers.

    7.       Destination CRM Blog – Christopher Musico, Lauren McKay, Jessica Tsai, Joshua Weinberger

    Much as a retailer with a brick-and-mortar presence and an online presence can leverage the two against each other, CRM Magazine’s print presence allows its blog to do new and unique things. This past year, the magazine ran its Social Media Maturity Model  http://twitpic.com/6513f and then lined up 30 different pundits to comment on the topic over the course of 30 days. That timeline fell apart a bit, but it was a bold effort to focus a variety of voices on a single topic. The editors who blog, besides thinking up bold ways to use the blog, are also strong thinkers on CRM topics and can discuss social media’s effectiveness from first-person experience.

    8.       Michael Maoz’ Gartner Blog - Michael Maoz 

    Maoz’ tart take on the breakdowns in CRM – especially on the service side – and reality-based views on social media, mobile technology and the ways people interact with components of the CRM process serve as an excellent antidote to the often-overblown view the CRM industry has of itself. While he leaves the nuts-and-bolts how-to stuff for his day job, Maoz’ blog should serve as a warning about what your organization may be doing wrong, and a jumping-off point for thinking about what you could be doing better.

    9.       Customer Insider - Graham Hill

    With a global view of CRM and ample experience in the field to back up what he’s talking about, Graham has a gift for spotting the points where ideas get lost in translation on the way to becoming business practices. That can make his posts sometimes frustrating, sometimes funny, and always very useful for CRM pros who know how important it is to keep your eyes on the ball. Graham’s blog is nearly hype-proof and it can help you keep your feet firmly planted on terra firma even as you add new ideas to your CRM strategy. His frequency of posts dropped this year, but the quality was there as it has been for the last four years.

    10.   B2B Lead Generation Blog – Brian Carroll

    No one goes into greater detail about the intracacies of finding, developing and capitalizing on leads than Brian on his blog. He delivers great advice on the entire selling process, starting with locating customers and continuing right through the nurturing process, and he’s perhaps the best selling-side bloggers at shifting seamlessly into the social media era. If the sales side of your CRM process is your Achilles’ heel, Brian’s blog has the ideas you need to strengthen it.

    11.   The CRM Consultant – Richard Boardman

    No one can tell you how and where things can go wrong with more authority than a reputable CRM consultant. They’ve seen the mistakes vendors make, the mistakes users make – and they have practical answers to minimize the damage and begin to set things right, if their customers will listen. Richard articulates the frustration and the possibilities that confront CRM consultants in extremely usable ways and turns the foibles of those he works with (and sometimes against) into fables for CRM users. That sounds kind of implausible, I know – but his last post of 2009 was called “CRM and the golden sales sausage machine.” If that’s not a fable you’d like to hear, you haven’t been around CRM long enough.

    12.   CRM Outsiders – Martin Schneider

    This blog suffered some kind of technical “reset” in November that blanked out all its previous posts, but Martin Schneider is building a new set of incisive posts. This is SugarCRM’s blog, and Schneider is certainly coming from a point of view that is both strongly open source and strongly pro-SugarCRM, but that doesn’t stop him from raising some important points in a bracing, conversational way. Particularly enjoyable are posts when Martin decides Salesforce.com has goofed up on something; everyone likes to take shots at the king of the mountain (especially the self-appointed king), but few do so as enjoyably as Martin.

    13.   Duct Tape Marketing – John Jantsch

    If you want practical ideas you can put into action right away – especially if you’re a small business – this is the blog for you. With near-daily updates, concise descriptions of new applications, audio and video to help illustrate his points, and much more practical thinking than theoretical noodling, Jantsch provides an easy entrée into the world of social media. His access to other experts, who pitch in with guest contributions on a regular basis, only strengthens this already-strong blog.

    14.   Project VRM Blog - Doc Searls

    The extension of the concept of a relationship with customers is that customers should have the ability to manage the relationships they have with those selling to them – hence vendor relationship management, or VRM. Doc Searls isn’t so much peering over the horizon at our future as he is looking at a parallel reality that suggests what our present should be – an environment where customers aren’t managed but are instead collaborated with in order to meet their needs and the needs of the vendor. His posts are so common sense that they may make you wonder if CRM is barking up the wrong tree – and what it would take to change the tree to make it right.

    15.   Church of the Customer – Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba

    Putting yourself on your customers’ shoes is easier said than done. That’s why this blog is so useful – it breaks down the things companies do wrong and the things they do right, and they do a great job of pointing out how these things appear to the customer. That extends to the use of social media and other emerging business necessities that should make this a place of pilgrimage for marketing and sales pros.

    16.   CRM Strategies Blog - Brian Vellmure

    A CRM consultant who clearly does lots of research in order to stay at the top of his game, Brian is given to writing very complete, very detailed posts on topics ranging from social media to customer acquisition. He does a great job of explaining concepts and then buttressing his arguments with references to great online content from expert sources. To steal a turn of phrase, he’s both a content creator and a content curator. Putting the two skills together makes his blog a very valuable resource for organizations no matter where they are on the path to effective CRM.

    17.   Service Untitled

    This rather unassumingly-titled and all but anonymously-written blog takes aim on that third leg of CRM, service, and does so with a sharp and observant wit. While it’s often better at exposing service mistakes than it is at advising about how to avoid them, the blog is excellent at cutting through ossified ideas about process and getting to the human aspects that can make or break service. This is an area that is growing in importance and this blog is positioned to be a big help in doing service well.

    18.   Web Strategy Blog – Jeremiah Owyang

    Looking to change, manage change or understand what changes are coming? Jeremiah’s the guy for you. Able to speak about the evolution of business and social media from a first-person point of view, Owyang, the partner for customer strategy at the Altimeter Group, has been an advocate for social CRM for several years and few do a better job of identifying the characteristics in CRM products that make them social. He’s also great at turning Altimeter Group research into the basis of very lively analysis that goes way beyond the raw numbers.

    19.   Customer Experience Matrix – David Raab

    Marketing is one of the three pillars of CRM, and no one covers the fast-developing marketing automation space better than Raab. He does the test-driving that’s critical to passing fair judgment on vendor’s products, often compiling quickly-digested tables on multiple products within a category or devoting entire posts to the pros and cons of new releases. He also delivers informed analysis on what these vendors are up to and what the marketing automation landscape will look like down the road. Raab still sees marketing automation and CRM as separate players – but he also argues that they should always be on the same team.

    20.   A Title Would Limit My Thoughts – Mitch Lieberman

    Skillfully hidden among the millions of blogs out there by its odd title is this gem, which dwells on the topics of CRM, social CRM, customer strategy and enterprise integration with unusual thoughtfulness. What’s best about Lieberman’s writing is that he understands that these things are all ingredients in the same big pie – leave one out and you’ll fail, and change one without adapting the others and your pie might taste funny. There’s also a strong business analytics feel to how Lieberman tailors his observations – he’s no wild-eyed evangelist but instead has a scientific philosophy that recommends acting, measuring and then adjusting. Since CRM is never “done,” this is a welcome and measured approach to new CRM approaches.

     

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