I agree with your perspective, as I hear the same pleas for “the answer.” There’s another dimension here, as well: the tools themselves change to reflect adoption of new technologies.

In the 1980s, we collected fax numbers. In the mid-1990s, we asked if people had email and a website. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, we gathered mobile phone numbers. More recently, we’ve begun gathering “fans” and “followers” on Facebook and Twitter.

Take a look the system we use to manage our address book or contact list. I’d bet it has fields for “fax number”, “email”, “website”, and “mobile/cell phone number”. All of those fields weren’t there twenty years ago, because the technologies didn’t exist. Or the technologies existed, but, to butcher William Gibson’s famous phrase, they weren’t yet “evenly distributed.”

Over time, we changed our address books to include this information because so many people adopted these new tools.

The same thing happened in our organizations: we changed our databases to include fax and mobile numbers and email addresses so we could systematically communicate with our constituents.

Email was especially challenging to figure out. As websites emerged, we started collecting email addresses on our websites. More often than not, our “email list” remained separate from our organizations’ main database. When someone’s email address changed, we had to change it in at least two different places. Many times, people were only in one list; or worse, in both lists, but with slightly different information.

By now, we’ve figured out that connecting our organization’s database (in fancier terms, “integrate”) with our website makes everyone’s life a bit simpler. Database vendors and website developers combined efforts, to make it relatively common and easy for members/donors/constituents to update their own records over the Internet.

The latest trend, though, is to talk about “Social CRM”, with the CRM standing for constituent/client relationship management.

The simplest way to think of this is to take a look at your address book or contact list. If you use Microsoft Outlook or Google Mail, “Social CRM” tools can display information from a person’s Facebook or Twitter account alongside their address, fax number and email address. If you were a consultant, you’d call this “integrating a person’s ‘social graph’ with email.” Tools that do this today include http://www.Xobni.com (with Microsoft Outlook) and http://www.Rapportive.com (with Google Mail). Tools such as http://www.Flowtown.com promote their ability to “turn an email address into a social profile.”

Only recently have software vendors begun to connect (“integrate”) database systems to social media sites (e.g., Salesforce is promoting Chatter, http://www.salesforce.com/chatter, which connects relevant Facebook and Twitter info with contact records in Salesforce).

Eventually, a development director will be able to look up an individual’s record and also see their latest Facebook or Twitter status update, along with any recent news articles. That’s the essence of “Social CRM”: connecting your database to social media and information from the Internet.

Will it be helpful? For organizations whose constituents participate in social media, Social CRM will be a big “win.” In the long run, every major nonprofit donor database system will likely have these capabilities. And, yes, it will make life much easier for many people.

The tools are changing rapidly; and new tools cause other tools to change, as well.

For those interested in the exciting new world of social media, that’s great. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that we’ve changed our databases to include new information before!

– Andy Wolber

Yes, the content is key. But there’s also the type of the relationship your audience wants from you, and you from them. That’s really the heart of communications, and whatever tools one chooses need to be deployed with all that in mind.

Gavin, I agree with your points. Furthermore, I see a real disconnect between the way that social media is both personal and social, and the way that most organizations are really NOT social or personal; but are rather organizational or institutional in their approach to communications, with is a fundamental barrier to their success in adopting social networking approaches to communication, which is well, kind of altogether a different language than what orgs know and use. I cringe when i get messages on facebook from organizations (oddly, even from orgs I love), and i think this is because I expect familiarity from friends, and when orgs assume they are on ‘friends’ terms with me, it strikes me as instrusive and off-pitch, even when in other contexts their messages may really resonate.

Something I’ve been pondering is: what role have we, the “nptech” consultant tribe, played in fanning these flames? And why?

I think these questions point way towards a deeper dysfunction in the sector, whereby shiny-chasing and snake oil gradually squeeze out substance and clear thinking.