Our first two articles in our Seminal Series on Social CRM make it clear that the world—in terms of customer engagement—has dramatically changed. Customers are ready to engage their vendors on a social platform. Likewise, vendors need to understand the importance of such engagement and the necessity to do it well. There is, however, still a bit more groundwork to be laid before we dive in to how that is going to work.

You’re presumably actively reading everything you can get your hands on regarding social media. It’s important to provide some context and understanding at a “big picture” level about how this all fits together. For example, what is the difference between social media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM?

Here is a handy reference to make the distinctions more clear:

Social media started out broadly spanning the Web among consumers. The term Web 2.0 was coined by Darcy DiNucci in 1996. She wrote:

The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially static screenfulls, is only an embryo of the Web to come.

While DiNucci’s concern primarily regarded Web design and aesthetics, I find her commentary to be an interesting parallel with the discussion about how customers have insisted on increasing control. Back in the day, the Web was a one-way trip from the “matter of fact” creator/owner to the content consumer.

The term Web 2.0 took off in 2004 when O’Reilly Media hosted the first Web 2.0 conference—the term’s description began to get even closer to the parallel I have drawn. Consider Tim O’Reilly’s comment:

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.

Understanding the rules of the new Social CRM platform is the pinnacle focus behind our blog series. In fact, in 2006 TIME magazine made the masses of users participating in content creation on the Web the “Person of the Year”:

It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before… You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.

Naturally, any force this powerful is one that business will try harnessing to create value. Subsequently, Enterprise 2.0 was born.

There are actually two different classic definitions of E2.0. One describes it as any use of social media by business. The second popular definition of E2.0—and the one I’ll use here—is that of social media used by business for internal collaboration among employees. I like the latter definition better for a variety of reasons, but primarily because it fits better with the story being told. It’s nothing to be dogmatic about, but rather to be aware that people may mean one of two things when using the term.

Business using social media to collaborate on producing content was a very logical extension of the original Web 2.0 movement. Content was becoming cheaper and more plentiful almost by the minute as this movement flourished, both inside and outside the walls of business. But at the same time, something else even more interesting was happening.

The notion that social media was about producing content began as the original concept—largely as a result of projecting paper and television content into the Web medium. In fact, this medium is capable of much more. It’s not just a place to broadcast developed content less expensively. It is a place where two-way conversation is possible—where we don’t need to watch passively. We can be social; we can and should actively participate.

Once a two-way exchange becomes possible (in many ways this may be more critical than creating content for the masses), much changes. The stage is set for Social CRM. If we’re going to be having conversations, one of the highest value areas for conversation is with our customers, potential customers (e.g. leads) and influencers. Yes, we can simply continue beaming content at them. However, if we can engage them in conversation, we’re much more likely to have a successful interaction.

In our next installment, I’ll start talking about how to go about being social in ways that make those interactions more likely to be successful. As it turns out, if you already know how to be social, you just have to build and expand on that knowledge.