BatchBook Blog
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Today’s my first day in New York City for the Web 2.0 Expo. Although I’m not officially going to any sessions today, I’ve already met quite a few interesting folks: the lovely (and very stylish!) Daria Shualy from Sense of Fashion and Sharel Omer of KonoLive, who talked with me about whuffie and bloggers and web apps (some of my favorite things!) I had a quick lunch with Kelly Leondard from the Hachette Book Group, who very kindly offered to send me a copy of Six Pixels of Separation, the hot new title from Mitch Joel that everyone is raving about. I can’t wait to read it and will share my thoughts here (I’m overdue for a business book round-up.)
We heard from Pam that she landed safely in London and today is meeting with our friends from MOO cards. She promises to take lots of pictures of her official #sbbuzz bee enjoying the sights in London.
If you’re interested in following along with us, the Twitter hashtag for the general Web 2.0 conference is #w2e (each session has its own tag as well). Pam and I will be posting updates to our own accounts (@pmohara and @mriggen respectively) and we’ll be updating our Flickr stream and this blog as time allows. If you are at either event, please give us a shout! We’d love to meet you in person. That’s what makes going to all these conferences so fun.
Tags: 140 characters, @sbbuzz, conference, web 2.0 expo
Here’s a quick round-up of some posts from users and reviewers of BatchBook.
Adam & Cheap Trick: A match made in CS heaven
If you’ve ever spent any time in the BatchBlue Forums, you’ve probably experienced the magic that is Adam Darowski. Adam is our User Experience designer known for his passion for good design, our customers and music. So the fact that he crafted an email to someone who was considering BatchBook that included a link to a Cheap Trick song came as no surprise to any of us. But the (potential) customer was so impressed, he wrote up a blog post about it, which was tweeted all around the socialsphere. And the best thing is that we have a new customer who appreciates our sense of humor.
Bedazzled by BatchBook brilliance
Robert Mattar wrote up a nice piece over at Posterous about his experience searching for a CRM that would work well for small businesses. His conclusion? He calls BatchBook “one of the most versatile and affordable applications” out there and even calls us “brilliant” in the post’s title. Thanks, Robert, we’re so glad BatchBook is working out for you since we think small businesses are where it’s at!
We love lists
People love lists and so do we, especially when we are on them! So here goes:
- Our friend (and frequent @sbbuzz participant) Bradford Shimp posted this cool list of 9 Businesses to Follow and Get to Know on Twitter. He has fabulous things to say about BatchBlue, our @sbbuzz weekly chat session, and our own Queen Bee, Pamela!
- One of our favorite small business marketing gurus, John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing, mentioned us as a way to keep track of your customers’ social media activities.
- And last but never least, social media pirate Chris Brogan reveals what’s in his software booty chest (including BatchBook) in his recent post entitled A Quick and Inconclusive List of Software I Like.
It’s a fine time for wine: Cruvee/VinTank Case study
We’re also really excited to have our first full-blown case study posted on the site. Meet Cruvee/VinTank: VinTank, which solutions for selling and marketing wine in the digital age. One of VinTank’s portfolio companies, Cruvee, provides business intelligence and performance management services for the wine industry. Our case study delves into the specifics of how they are using BatchBook.
We’re looking forward to adding more case studies in the upcoming weeks. Drop us a line if you’re using BatchBook to help manage and grow your business and would like to be featured on our homepage – we’d love to share your story.
Tags: @sbbuzz, batchbook, chris brogan, Customer Service, john janstch, small business, small business CRM, social crm
Last night, BatchBlue Onboarding Specialist Stephanie Sweeney and I made the drive up to Boston to attend the Rock Stars of Social CRM event, hosted by Radian6 and Chris Brogan. They had a lot of fun with the Rock Star theme, complete with colored stage lights, concert tees and even a full-blown Rock Band set-up for audience members to rock out with after the panel.
The panelists included were Frank Eliason (Comcast), Paul Greenberg (Author of CRM at the Speed of Light), Michael Thomas (National President, CRM Association), and our favorite CRM go-to guy, Brent Leary (Co-author of Barack 2.0 and Co-founder of CRM Essentials).
Because we consider BatchBook to be a social CRM (slide via Brent Leary), I was curious to hear what the folks at the cutting edge had to say. I was especially impressed with Frank Eliason’s inclusion on the panel, since he represents a company that is actually out there doing all this stuff. While I always appreciate the bird’s eye view from consultants and experts, I have to agree with Doug Haslam of Shift Communications‘ assertion that he’s getting a bit impatient with social media.
After the panel, Doug and I had a brief conversation where I wondered if, when email entered the picture ten years or so ago, there were endless conferences and seminars and articles written about how email (a communication tool in the same way that social media is a communication tool) was going to fundamentally change the business world.
Admittedly, email did change the way companies interacted with their customers – I was in the customer service department at Amazon.com in 1997 and I witnessed it happening first-hand. Customers found it insane that we didn’t take phone orders; that Amazon was an Internet only company. At the time, we were too busy answering customer emails to talk about email as a tool.
That experience definitely influenced BatchBlue’s commitment to providing excellent service. One thing BatchBlue does using social media is host a weekly Twitter chat called SBBUZZ, where small business owners can talk about the issues (largely focused on social media and other technologies) that are most important to them. What’s nice about this event is that a real community of folks has developed there. Each week, there’s an opportunity for folks to share what’s working, what’s not, what kind of issues people are having, even just to swap funny stories about what happened over the course of the past week as they deal with running and growing their businesses.
If Social CRM is all about the customer, I guess what I’m missing at these big, “rock star” events is more of a presence from other small business owners who are in the trenches, actually using these tools to build their customer relationships every day. There are plenty of Rock Stars out there, talking to each other on SBBUZZ and similar social media places. And my favorite Rock Star, Stephanie, was sitting right next to me. She in every way embodies customer service and building customer relationships done right. I’d wear her concert tee any day.
Image: Chris Penn a.k.a. Financial Aid Podcast via flickr
Tags: @sbbuzz, chris brogan, Customer Service, radian6, rockstars of social crm, small business, social crm, twitter, twitter chats
What do you do when you’re a small business that makes software for small businesses, specifically CRM for small businesses, and you start a weekly Twitter chat about small businesses using technology, then after a few weeks the Twitter chat folks want to talk about, well…CRM? If you’re BatchBlue, you invite someone super cool to moderate that week’s session and an equally cool person to be a Subject Matter Expert, then you step aside to let the conversation go where it may.
Sure, we hope everyone likes our product BatchBook but we recognize it might not be the best solution for everyone out there. So we’re saying “Bring it on!”
Join us tonight 8pm-10PM EST to take part in the Twitter CRM #sbbuzz conversation – Pam and I will be there but participating only as small business owners, not makers of one certain, lovable, kick-ass CRM. We’ll save that for our blog 
Tags: @sbbuzz, bradford shimp, brent leary, small business CRM, twitter
It’s been a while since we’ve done a round up of all the nice things people are saying about us and how they are using our product, so we thought we’d give you an update on what’s been going on in the Wonderful World of Press.
BatchBlue on TV
Since we last checked in, we’ve been on TV (well, Hubspot TV) talking about using social media tools for business. Adam and I touched on many of the topics we cover in our Social Media for Small Business Blue Paper and we enjoyed a nice sushi lunch with one of our favorite Hubspotters Rick Burnes afterward. Fun! And delicious!
Tales from Twitter
We were thrilled to be included in Small Business Trends list “The Ultimate Small Business Twitter List“, which features companies successfully using Twitter as a communication tool. We love Twitter and have found it useful from a business perspective in a number of different ways. Is your business on Twitter? Follow us, we’ll make sure to follow back!
All the Chrises in the house
Chris Penn, who runs the successful Financial Aid Podcast, wrote an excellent post about how job hunters can use BatchBook, which is very timely in light of the present economic climate. And social media wunderkind Chris Brogan proved he’s not just another pretty face by showing us how he uses BatchBook to help him beat Dunbar’s Number.
@sbbuzz is buzzing
As Pam wrote last week, we created @sbbuzz after receiving a plea from a small business owner to help her better understand what tech tools are out there and how your average small business owner should be using them. @sbbuzz is a weekly conversation taking place between techies and business owners on every Tuesday from 8pm-10pm EST addressing these very issues.
We’ve had two successful sessions and look forward to hosting another this evening. See what people are saying in the Twittersphere.
It’s exciting to see the many different ways people are using our product, and discovering new ways to be helpful to our customers. It’s what we love doing and it’s what keeps us as busy as bees.
Tags: @sbbuzz, chris brogan, chris penn, Hubspot, Press, twitter
