What is clout? The term has been around for a long time and while the definition hasn’t changed, the meaning of clout has changed dramatically. 

In 2004, if I had a bad experience in a restaurant and wanted to vent I would – in this order – call the manager, mention it to friends in passing and maybe post on a local blog or chat site.

If I had the same issue today, I would – in this order – tweet about it, post it on my facebook wall, tell a LinkedIn connection, Yelp a review, text my friends and finally, if I got around to it, contact the manager of the restaurant.

You can see how clout has changed! No longer is my clout limited to my face to face conversations, it is extended to my entire social network, made of up hundreds of friends, colleagues, and even perfect strangers. Companies can’t afford to “overhear” their consumers; we stopped communicating to you years ago and are telling everyone we know about your product or service.  This new viral word of mouth happens in mass and today’s companies have no choice but to step in or be left behind. 

Salesforce.com just announced its Service Cloud 3 platform along with the intent to purchase Radian 6. Why is this a big deal?  The Service Cloud 3 platform allows companies to listen to these conversations and participate in real time from one platform via, phone, chat, email and social.  

Designated agents can now monitor social websites and respond to customer issues – both positive and negative – from the cloud.  These social messages have the same routing power as other communication channels and can be prioritized by YES, clout! Much like a customer having a rating or score based on their buying power, a person can also have a clout score to quickly measure their social influence on the web.

There are companies out there that have been monitoring social conversations on the web from the onset. But even these proactive companies are often disconnected from their support teams and participate in social conversations at random and on another platform.  

Smart companies will build relationships with influencers who have high clout scores and the biggest influence on their brand. Listening to them and engaging them can help you increase awareness and help spread their message, not by word of mouth but by word of clout!    

If you don’t follow salesforce.com closely, it’s probably because you’re not currently a user. That will probably change pretty soon. Investors in old technologies are getting worried, with Kaufman Brothers issuing a "Sell" rating on Accenture for that very reason. Cloud computing and SaaS (salesforce.com especially) are taking a significant bite out of the old giants.

On June 22 out in San Jose, salesforce.com is hosting a huge event called Cloudforce (which we’re sponsoring), where they will be unveiling the next nail in old-technology’s coffin: Salesforce Chatter. So why mention the investment worry over the old world of technology players?

Simple: the old guys just don’t get it.

There is an enormous revolution going on, and pretty much every person is taking part in it. Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. The social connections between individuals have exploded, and mobile access to these systems lets us plug in to those connections anywhere.

With Chatter, salesforce.com is now making the enterprise social. Everything you know and love about social media is now coming to your company, but only if you’re a salesforce.com user. Nobody else is doing this, and investors are paying attention and putting their money where their mouth is.

Salesforce has been on an absolute rocket ride, and that is showing no signs of changing any time soon. Maybe it’s about time you join the social revolution too.

One of my favorite parts of being a marketer is how naturally social and outgoing the marketing lot tends to be. It’s why we in particular take to social media so easily. There are a lot of mediums out there, but thankfully there are a few great tools to make it all a bit more manageable. Below are a few of my favorites, grouped into categories.

Twitter Management

Hootsuite: the definitive package for managing your corporate and personall Twitter accounts. Users can add, update, and monitor multiple Twitter accounts (and now, even Facebook) from a single browser window. Hootsuite makes managing a corporate Twitter account easy by granting access to as many (or as few) people as you’d like.

Since Twitter is limited to 140 character updates, you have to make the most of each character. Hootsuite features a built-in URL shortener which also tracks clickthroughs for you, no matter where you post them.

Don’t have time to update Twitter all day? No problem. Hootsuite lets you schedule tweets in advance, so you can continually update your feed with things your followers find useful.

In addition to their website, Hootsuite also has a desktop application and a new iPhone app.

Social Media News

Mashable: without a doubt the best source for Social Media news on the Internet. It’s updated constantly by a number of bloggers and is a treasure chest of information.

Mashable covers Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, mobile, and anything else social/techy that you can imagine. It’s easy to navigate and the articles are all written with the modern attention span in mind. Get in, get your info, get out. Awesome.

Digg: the original (and still the best) social networking and news site. The concept is simple – users submit stories, and other users either digg a story up or bury it. The cream rises to the top. Hate mainstream media? Here’s your reprieve.

When I’m looking for content that tends to be cutting edge or obscure, I usually check with Digg. Of course there’s trolls and fanboys, but those are easy enough to avoid.

 Podcasts

Marketing Over Coffee. Yeah, their logo sucks – who cares?? This weekly podcast by Christopher Penn and John Wall is witty, humorous, and full of can’t-miss content for marketers.

Each week they bring you best practices for both B2B and B2C marketers, covering covering everything from SEO/SEM to social media monitoring and marketing. If you’re looking for a place to learn how to make nice mailers this is not it.

These guys are all about metrics and measurements. If you can’t measure the lift, they’re not interested and neither should you be.

 
This Week in Tech. Leo Laporte is an old-school broadcaster with plenty of new-school ideas. He was one of the very first to eschew traditional terrestrial radio and move into podcasting. I believe this show began in 2006, so you know he’s way ahead of the curve.

Each weekly installment is about an hour long and brings me up to speed on the week’s updates in technology, both consumer and enterprise. If you are a marketer you absolutely, positively cannot let technology pass you by. This is a good arrow to have in the quiver.

 These are just a few of my favorites. Got some of your own that you’d like to add? I’d love to see them in the comments.

Salesforce chatter has been gaining market buzz over the past month or so, especially after salesforce.com’s CEO, Marc Benioff posted a guest blog on TechCrunch on what he calls the "Facebook Imperative." His point wasn’t just to get people talking about his own social platform, but to make people realize just how far technology has come in the past 10 years.

Salesforce has always set out to make enterprise applications (the stuff you use at work) as easy to use as the applications and websites you use at home. Salesforce Chatter is going to do for the workplace what Facebook has done for personal communications. Things will move much more quickly and relationships will grow.

The ability to update your co-workers enmasse without spamming them and filling their already overfull inboxes represents the biggest difference between push and pull communications. Salesforce claims that since rolling out Chatter internally their email volume dropped by 40%. Imagine how much time that would save you in a given day! 

The fastest growing social media site in 2009 was without question Twitter. The notoriety seemed to explode with the Iranian election and ensuing chaos, where reporters were unable to provide accurate, timely information. With the government lockdown, the citizenry got information out to the world through Twitter on their mobile phones. A new dawn of media became legit overnight.

Twitter users rely on the service for more than just timely information, it has become a platform for open conversations around any topic. Company’s products and services have become fair game for both interested prospects and disappointed customers. Instead of calling a sales or customer service line, people are turning to other users for answers on Twitter – leaving companies in the dark. Anyone who has tried to navigate a customer service "dial 1 for X" menu understands why so many are reticent to use them.

Salesforce.com recognized this growing trend and created a truly elegant application that’s easy to use. Salesforce for Twitter allows companies to participate in conversations actively, and track those conversations within salesforce.com, providing a more complete view of their prospects and customers. This added information gives companies an opportunity to better serve these people, and in the channel of their constituent’s choosing.

With this application, if someone expresses interest in your company, you can respond to them on Twitter through salesforce.com. Likewise for customer service situations. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a 360˚ view of a customer, but having more information on hand certainly allows companies to provide more relevant service.

Check the video demo out below:

Yes, seriously, Sales Chatter from salesforce.com. If you were at the Dreamforce user’s conference this year, then you already know what this is about. If not, picture an application that combines functionality of Facebook, Twitter, and salesforce.com apps. You can update your status for co-workers to see, and you get a news feed of not only what others are up to, but what’s new in your favorite apps such as Content library updates.

You might think it’s too early to call this one of the biggest stories of 2009, but it is big news from the biggest player in enterprise cloud computing. Just as no one knew just how quickly Twitter would grow, I have a feeling we’re at the same point with Chatter. This could be truly huge.

For a quick video on what’s included and how it works, check out the video below.