As I read over the list (which includes 20 blogs) I discovered some new ones worth reading along with bloggers already follow like Jim Berkowitz, who writes the CRM Mastery Blog; John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing Blog and Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba who write the Church of the Customer Blog. I feel honored to be included in such great company.
2. Brent's Social CRM Blog, Brent Leary: You have to respect those who practice what they preach. Many people recommended Leary's blog for this list because they'd seen or heard him using some form of social media - Twitter, his podcast, video or some other form of free, shared relationship-building media. Since Leary is a big advocate for how small businesses should use these tools to reach and retain customers (and since he cites lots of concrete examples of how people are using them to make money today), it's only natural that he's a social media maven. The blog is a fun read, to boot.
3. Beagle Research Group, Denis Pombriant: Pombriant is exceptionally good at putting CRM's value in the context of the larger world. He was ahead of the game in anticipating CRM's position relative to the economy, and he's written most effectively on the impact of cloud computing. He's been a little more "Inside Baseball" this year than in years past, but his blog still retains the clear-eyed view of the industry and the technology that make him a valuable voice.
4. CRM Outsiders, Martin Schneider and Colin Beasty: This two-headed open source CRM monster of a blog is great for anyone thinking about buying any open source CRM product (they spend a lot of time talking about the value of the open source ethos). Of course, all things SugarCRM are discussed in detail as well. It is always fun to read Schneider thinking through an idea over the course of several posts - plus, the blog now has a weekly audio feature, so you can put an aural voice with the written voice. A lot of fun and the best vendor-written CRM blog by a wide margin.
5. The CRM Consultant, Richard Boardman: With practical musings on how to select, implement and maintain CRM solutions - and real-world explanations of why CRM systems are often adjudged to have failed - Boardman's blog is a must-read for anyone who has to make a CRM purchasing decision. His experience with vendors and as a consultant gives him ample material to draw from, and he seems to get more focused with each passing post. He is also great at pointing out the folly of people who decide they need CRM without ever bothering to learn what it is.
6. Destination CRM Blog, Marshall Lager, Christopher Musico, Jessica Tsai, Lauren McKay, Josh Weinberger: The first blog on our list written by professional writers, this nifty little number includes Marshall Lager, an all-star among CRM journalists (and one we wish would post more often). It tends to take a high-level view of the CRM landscape and often explores B2C issues that can easily be lost amid a flurry of news releases from B2B CRM companies. For covering the CRM industry and keeping things human at the same time, Destination CRM's crew is number six on our list.
7. Social Customer Manifesto, Chris Carfi: Carfi has his eyes on the most powerful trends in CRM: social media and mobile technology, most notably. Of course, his company, Cerado, works in these areas, but he has a genuine fascination with what is possible with technology when the customer and the seller actually connect. Carfi also provides coverage of shows and events that are off the beaten path now, but which will probably become very important in the immediate future. The blog is a great way to assess what is possible.
8. Customer Insider, Graham Hill: Hill's focus on the customer allows him to look through the other end of the telescope at business problems and reframe them in terms of the person doing the buying - something a lot of organizations seem to forget. He also proves that Europe has the same quantity of customer service issues as the U.S, although the issues are sometimes slightly different. Hint to companies: avoid doing dumb things when your customer is an articulate, blog-writing expert in customer-oriented business.
9. Michael Maoz's Gartner Blog, Michael Maoz: Blogging for analysts must be a pain. To apply a hoary turn of phrase almost never used to describe technology analysts, how do you sell the cow if you're giving the milk away for free? Maoz, the best of a number of Gartner Inc. bloggers on CRM, is clearly not constrained by this issue, and he does a great job of pulling little nuggets of data and asides from his various customer visits to illustrate his ideas about what CRM is about and, in recent months, what the economy may do to its evolution.
10. 1 to 1 Media Blog, Ginger Conlon, Kevin Zimmerman, Jeremy Nedelka, Mila D'Antonio, Elizabeth Glagowski, Martha Rogers, Don Peppers: It's not hard to have a great blog with this cast - it's probably harder keeping too many of the bloggers from posting each day and inundating readers with good advice and timely commentary. Again, B2C relationships are the primary focus and the crew does a very good job of deflating hype and providing real actionable ideas. To top it off, they keep their senses of humor while doing it. A group this big is doomed to have its share of catastrophic customer interactions, but the difference for these writers is they can use them to skewer poor customer policies and counterproductive marketing efforts.
11. The Perfect Customer Experience, Louis Columbus, Randy Saunders, et al: Aggregating a bunch of great marketing and customer relationship thinkers into one place, this blog is terrific not just for keeping you focused on how to build better customer relationships but, in recent posts, on talking about the rear-guard actions you have to fight within your organization to keep those efforts from being derailed. This has always been the case, but the blog's coverage is even more timely now.
12. Mercury Rising, Scott Annan, Scott Lake, Jeff Meldrum, Creighton Medley, Michael Marker, Andrew Milne, Jud Rasmussen: Who knows if the product MercuryGrove is creating will take the world by storm or if it will even be more than a blip on the CRM radar. Does it even matter? This blog charts the ups and downs of the development of this new system (currently called "Dex" but in the wake of a legal technicality - oh, the drama! - now with a name being "crowdsourced" through a poll on the blog) in a way that presages how organizations will open themselves up to their customers in the years ahead.
13. CRM Mastery Blog, Jim Berkowitz: Berkowitz doesn't do a lot of writing, but he does know how to pick good stuff to steer you to. His blog is almost like a one-a-day story newsfeed that comes with a bit of commentary. He's drawn to articles that are filled with on-point statistics or well-defined strategies, making him a most capable gatekeeper - like a CRM pal who emails you something useful on a regular basis.
14. CRM 2.0, Guido Oswald: Pithy, to-the-point postings about next-generation CRM and the tools needed to help it work make this a worthwhile read. Oswald is studying for his MBA and the blog is part of his thesis, but despite his youth - or because of it - he's already catching on to trends and ideas that are difficult for more calcified CRM thinkers to come to grips with.
15. B2B Lead Generation Blog, Brian Carroll: This blog was close last year before a long period of dormancy knocked it off the list. Carroll does a great job of illustrating the right and the wrong ways of generating, handling and working with leads, which are the first ingredients for a CRM solution. Carroll is the CEO of InTouch Inc., which owns MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa, so his examples are drawn from real-world experience.
16. Duct Tape Marketing Blog, John Jantsch: Not strictly a CRM blog, Jantsch tills a rich field of CRM possibilities by exploring how companies - even really small ones - can use technologies and good ideas to build strong relationships with their customers. There are tons of suggestions on this blog; if you're a small company fresh to the idea of building a modern CRM approach, this should be required reading.
17. CRM Views and Trends, Wouter Trumpie: Based in the Netherlands, Trumpy has a lot of experience in the CRM trenches but, like several of our top bloggers, hasn't let his many years of work blind him to new things. His recent posts about Web 2.0 and social media are proof of that. He's also a great source for good ideas on all aspects of CRM, including the oft-forgotten but very important call center.
18. First Coffee, David Sims: A caffeine-powered speed analysis of the days' news, Sims's blog is a great one-stop source of what's going on in the industry. Much of what appears in the blog is straight from the marketing departments of the CRM industry, but Sims also throws in interviews with power players and gives you hints about the soundtrack that's playing as he does his reporting.
19. Project VRM Blog, Doc Searls: The bumpy economy has perhaps been unkind to forward-looking philosophies like vendor relationship management, but that has not curtailed Searles's explorations of what will be when the business world finally understands that the customer is now running the show. He makes a convincing argument that companies are leaving dollars on the table already by refusing to admit that this is a consumer-driven world. As Searles wrote, "I'd rather have '-driven' than '-centric.' Because being '-centric' doesn't require you to relate. Being driven does."
20. Church of the Customer Blog, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba: Focusing on who really matters (customers) and how small things can have a disproportionately large effect on their view of an organization, this blog is another key read for small businesses, especially ones that are formulating their CRM strategies. McConnell has made a lot of hay recently out of the ineptitude of Wall Street and Detroit and how their attempts to win over "customers" in Congress in the form of bailouts has been a textbook case of wretched customer relationship management.
Read Inside CRM's complete list "The Best CRM Blogs of 2008"
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