WordPress. I manage four WordPress blogs, contribute to a fifth, and will be launching a sixth in a few weeks. WordPress does not work well with Internet Explore 9. So Chrome is a great alternative. I can do all I want in WordPress with Chrome. It’s simple. All the WordPress functionality I use, works with Chrome, not with IE 9.

Twitter. I have been an active Twitter user for three years. I have multiple accounts I manage. I have struggled to find a good application to manage them. I started with TweetDeck on my laptop OS. No good. At the time it used Adobe Air, which had a horrible memory leak and made the application unusable, and eventually rendered my laptop unusable. I switched to Tootsuite. Fun name. Decent product, but it was slow.

Just last week I looked at TweetDeck again. To my delight they have a web based version that is a native application in Chrome. It is wonderful! Runs great! Couldn’t be happier.

Am I shucking IE? No. IE lights up certain websites in a way that Chrome just cannot. IE is my default browser.

Having more than one web browser works well for me.

The message editor that you use to create your e-mail template is pretty easy to use. It certainly has advantages over what I was using before. There is one quirk that I succumb to on a regular basis. And that is you have to save the HTML content within the editing window. Saving the e-mailing template alone, does not do it.

You can also easily view Web Page Views associated with each mailing, and see a graphic representation of the statistics.

Here is the message editor. Be sure to click on the disk icon in order to save your work:

And what I really like is the nice simple display of mailing results. Here is an example that shows multiple mailings together so you can compare results:

And because the functionality is contained in CRM, you can use the CRM inquiry and reporting functionality to really dig into results.

There are two reason I use this functionality:

• Help build my e-mailing list
• Provide positive identification for some of the “Anonymous Web visitors”

The second reason is the most important to me. The additional information provided by the web form starts to add real value to the web tracking activities captured by Coremotives. It allows me to analyze who and what type of people are using my sites. This will allow me to further engage with these people and broaden our relationship.

Here are the main components of web forms:

This shows the fields that are going to be visible on my web form. I try to keep it to a minimum. All I want is a name and an e-mail address. The rest will come later as I broaden the relationship. These fields are going to map directly to CRM

This shows that I’m going to have a lead record created in CRM when the user completes the form. It will also check for duplicates. I’m also associating these web form interactions with a specific marketing campaign.

This shows what actions are going to be taken when the form is completed. In this case I am sending an e-mail with a link to download an e-booklet. You can see from the drop-down list, that you could select from several action types to take, and you can select more than one.

The web form will also generate its own HTML code to make it easy to include in your web site, e-mail, etc.

What’s really nice about this is that you’re engaging your prospects and customers in an automated fashion. You’re making an offer that they can act on right away.

I don’t know why I find this so annoying. I think it’s just the perversity of the whole thing. These are my three main issues with it:

Twitter is a social tool. If you post updates, answering the question, “What’s happening?”, you are presumably thinking that others might be at least somewhat interested in what you report. Making it more difficult for others to follow your messages seems perverse. You’re using a social medium to be anti-social.

When someone initiates to follow you back, TrueTwit sends a Direct Message (DM) to the person initiating the follow. This is spam. This Direct Message is certainly of no interest to the recipient, and the recipient did not request it. Therefore it is spam. TrueTwit initiates the very activity it says it’s meant to stop. That’s perverse.

Of course you can avoid getting the spam DM’s from other TrueTwit users by signing up for the service. This then makes you a “carrier”. You won’t be infected yourself, but you’ll be helping to spread it throughout the community. That’s perverse.

Hollis Tibbitts writes a wonderful article here (I wish I would have written it): http://socialmediatoday.com/softwarehollis/385357/truetwit-satan-savior-or-simply-misunderstood

Do you use TrueTwit? Come on, admit it if you’re a TrueTwit.

Do you find it annoying? Do you think it’s idiotic?

What initially drew me to the service was their ability to track and identify visitors to our several web assets. We receive thousands of visitors each month to our websites and blogs. I assume that people who visit our sites several times are either doing business with us already, or could be persuaded to do so in a shorter period of time than a typical prospect. My problem was how to measure the level of engagement for each visitor, how to identify them, and how to gauge when they might  most be inclined to enter into a sales process.

CoreMotives provides that functionality right out of the box, with very little configuration. A big bonus for me is that they integrate directly and significantly with Microsoft CRM. In fact, access to most all of the functionality is within Microsoft CRM.

It took me a couple of days to coordinate with various developers to install the required tracking codes on all the pages that I wanted to track. But it’s easy to do. I installed the codes on our blogs myself. Simple. As soon as the tracking codes are installed, CoreMotives starts tracking your web traffic. This is a sample of what the traffic records look like:

CoreMotives Web Traffic

If you look at the file you’ll notice that the visitor is identified as, “Anonymous Web visitor”, and you’ll wonder what possible use that is. I’ll cover that in a later article.

Now you’re interested, right?

Wow, this would be neat: I’d like to be able to track traffic to our YouTube Channel. That would be neat.

So what?

I along with others at our firm have gotten into the habit of blogging and sharing our expertise and thoughts with our communities. Beyond just the personal expression benefits, blogging has helped us develop a strong Internet presence that supports our marketing objectives.

What we’ve found is that blogging is pretty easy to do, and it’s cheap. We feel that it definitely differentiates us from our competitors, and draws in prospects.

This is the quick summary. If you’re not already blogging, get started. You cannot have an immediate impact on your market, so you need to start as soon as possible and build momentum.

I regularly e-mail out of Outlook and promote e-mail messages, outgoing and incoming, to CRM.  This leaves a wonderful trail of activity records at both the Contact level and the Account level.  It is so easy to quickly refer to the history, and get caught up on any opportunity or relationship.

I also use CRM to track phone conversations, a lot.  I schedule phone calls to complete in the future.  They automatically show up in my Outlook task list on the appropriate day.  I can go right into the record, or “snooze” it for awhile.  If I don’t actually talk to the subject of my phone call, I make a note of the date and the attempt, on the task, leave the task open, and reschedule it for some time in the future.  I usually follow up with an e-mail message and make a note of that, and note any response from the subject.

Whether I schedule the task in Outlook or CRM, or I update the task in Outlook or CRM, the two systems synchronize in due course.  This keeps me productive and moving through my day.  Terrific!

Here’s what my Outlook task list looks like with the CRM tasks:

This is a video I created sometime ago, that shows this in action:  http://youtu.be/XeZTa3ksMBI

The first thing to do is to export the records that contain the data you want to update.  You can easily use the Advanced Find function to add fields to standard views in CRM, and then export the data from the Advanced Find results.  Make sure to select the check box, “Make this data available…”  This will create an XML document that can be read by Excel.  Save the document.

Make the edits you wish to make to the XML document in Excel.

Import the data back into CRM.

This will update the data you changed in the Excel spreadsheet.

You can see the results of the import under “Imports” on the Workplace page.

I created a short video to show this in action: http://youtu.be/e6UAnSvuQHs

As an example I imported new account and contact information into CRM Online.  I imported the Account information first.  I used the Import Data Wizard and the Default System Data Map.  I chose to not map the Primary Contact because the contact information was not yet in the system:

The Imports screen will show your current import and past imports.  There is also a nice feature connected to the Delete selection that allows you to delete the records that were created with a specific import.

You can click on the Import Name and see specific records that were imported successfully, and those that were not.

I created a short video to show this in action:  http://youtu.be/nopJEi1abI4

Microsoft CRM is perfect for that.  I can easily keep e-mail messages in CRM; incoming and outgoing.  I can schedule follow-up activities that flow directly to my Outlook task list.  I can automate follow-up when appropriate.  I use automation to sendout additional content and schedule future tasks.  I record and track opportunities.  And here’s the key point:  Whenever I want to find out about a person, company, or opportunity, all the information is there, in CRM, in one place!  Beautiful.

If you’re becoming overwhelmed in your business, start using CRM.  It will save you.