What Is Social CRM? A Comprehensive Guide

A social CRM solution helps a business to more effectively deploy its marketing and sales strategies across multiple social channels. While social media CRM software can streamline social efforts for a better brand experience, the additional cost may not be worth it, especially if a clear social strategy isn’t already in place. However, for businesses ready to grow their social CRM efforts, top tools like HubSpot, Zoho CRM, and Bitrix24 are a good place to start.

What is social CRM?

Social CRM is customer relationship management software that offers advanced social selling functionality through social media marketing and integrations. This is especially key for businesses looking to capture more leads through social channels and improve their brand awareness. Like many SaaS tools, a social CRM solution is designed to force multiply your efforts by applying digital conveniences, such as:

• Automation: Automating simple, repetitive tasks.
• Bulk processing: Facilitating batch processing of tasks that are performed in bulk.
• Streamlined access: Consolidating interfaces and controls, bringing all of the necessary functions into a single dashboard.
• Data transparency: Aggregating information into a single record and improving data integrity.

Top social CRM tools

Obviously, each provider will have different approaches and intended use cases. However, most will generally be built to provide certain core features and functions.

Single source of truth

While a standard CRM solution will do a good job of tracking contact details for leads as they travel down the sales funnel, convert into customer accounts, and switch to retention mode, that’s pretty much where it ends.

With a social CRM, it’s possible to connect lead and customer profiles to their social profiles. That way, sales reps can more easily track their interactions with the company’s brand. This allows customers to start the discussion where they like, and sales reps can migrate it to another platform if they see fit.

Consistency in brand experience

Social CRM software makes it easier to deliver the same experience across your whole digital footprint. Brand identity and brand experience are important, and it’s easier to achieve positive interactions when they are consistent from one domain to another.

Just as customers and leads don’t want to repeat themselves just because they switched from one social channel to another, they also don’t want to feel like there are major shifts in how interactions are handled. If they can get a response in minutes on one platform, they expect it to be just as quick on others.

This experience is more difficult to provide when manually monitoring and responding to discussions on social media. It’s much easier when everything can be done from a single suite of tools.

Integrated controls

A social CRM solution can function as a “master key” of sorts, allowing sales and marketing reps to create and schedule posts for multiple channels, monitor incoming messages and tags, track performance and metrics, and more.

This saves significant time and overhead by putting all the necessary interfaces and controls in one place. It reduces the hassle of logging into and accessing multiple social accounts, sharing passwords, and posting on multiple platforms or profiles.

Automated reconnaissance

Social CRM solutions can reduce the grind of managing social media accounts and engagement. You can set up alerts that monitor for mentions and tags and then notify you when something pops up. You can perform more advanced searches the same way. You can more effectively research and observe what works and create engagement amongst your target audience.

You can also track trends in more or less real-time, leading to better response times when a new opportunity presents itself.

Enhanced awareness

Social CRM tools help alleviate the amount of effort required to keep up with rapidly-evolving conversations. By automating the monitoring and searching and putting all of the notifications in the same place, these solutions can cut down on the effort required to keep a finger on the pulse of whatever you need to do. Faster response times mean you’ll be more effective at putting out fires or fanning the flames.

Analytics insights

The right social CRM tool can report on the numbers, providing insight into social media performance to help you plan for more effective strategies and identify problem areas.

The key here is that you can collect analytics data from across disparate platforms — data that’s normally siloed and difficult to extract, transform, and load into a cohesive database — to say nothing of turning into a report that makes any sense.

Benefits of social CRM

Setting aside any solution-specific details, most pros and cons for social CRM are the same whether you’re talking about strategy or software. So, let’s take a look at whether the benefits of social CRM would outweigh the challenges.

Streamlined social efforts

Consolidated controls mean fewer dashboards to juggle, less to manage, and easier implementation of efforts across social channels.

Improved brand experience and customer service

Businesses of any size, including startups, can deliver better brand experience and customer service through increased consistency, improved response time, and minimized wasted and redundant efforts.

Increased trust and brand loyalty

By exposing yourself to the risk of public discourse in third-party spaces, you demonstrate a willingness to deliver on promises—even when inconvenient or costly.

Social CRM: Benefits and drawbacks comparison

Top social CRM tools

Social media is big business, so it’s no surprise that there are plenty of players in the game. From big-name CRMs with social capabilities to tools designed to support smaller businesses with social media, there’s an optimal solution for just about every use case. Here are some of the most popular and worthwhile options on the market:

HubSpot

HubSpot is a strong pick for teams that want to implement a comprehensive and holistic revenue strategy, from sales and marketing to customer success.

Pricing: Free starting price, paid plans start at $15 per user, per month.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is ideal if your team is heavily decentralized or if you’re already using some of Zoho’s other products.

Pricing: Free starting price, paid plans start at $14 per user, per month.

Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is best for businesses looking for advanced collaboration tools powered by AI that can integrate with internal and external platforms.

Pricing: Free starting price, paid plans start at $49 per organization with five users.

PREMIUM: Choosing the right CRM for your organization.

Should your organization use a social CRM solution?

At the end of the day, social CRM is just a method of achieving certain goals and outcomes related to social media engagement. Whether it’s worth, it depends on whether you value those outcomes and are ready to pursue them.

As much as a social CRM solution can simplify, streamline, and supercharge social media efforts, it’s not necessarily a magical solution that will fix everything. The internet is a big place, and spreading your attention and resources too thin is a real risk, even with CRM tools.

Depending on your current situation, team composition, and established strategies, it may be better to wait until you can dedicate time, assets, and talent to navigating the challenges of a social CRM.

But if you’re already trying to do social work for yourself or if your audience and customers are trying to get your attention out there in those contested territories, implementing a social CRM may prove the difference between success and setbacks.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

What is the difference between traditional CRM and social CRM?

The only difference between a traditional or general CRM and a social CRM is that a social CRM can completely integrate with social media channels like Facebook, Twitter/X, and LinkedIn. Beyond the ability to integrate, social CRM can also deploy campaigns and generate leads to create new profiles within the CRM with captured data such as contact information and other firmographics.

What is the primary goal of social CRM?

The primary goal of a social CRM is to help businesses integrate and target potential customers through social media and other online channels. This is done through marketing and engagement campaigns that enhance the customer experience with your business brand. These CRM systems allow for precise ad targeting and insights into customer sentiment and preferences.

I recommend considering all of this when choosing a CRM, along with in-market expertise, budget, and scalability.

Allyssa Haygood-Taylor updated this article.