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A lot of very interesting analysis has been written on the implications of our increasingly social media savvy culture. Recently, a few thoughtful pieces have been published that look at the ways to approach a customer base that is now entrenched in the social Web. CRM Magazine, who recently covered our “Vision of Social Sales,” published a new issue of the magazine that focuses on the question “Who Owns the Social Customer?” An interesting, complex question, as evidenced by the passage below from one of the issue’s articles:

In fact, the value of social media carries along with it a certain amount of risk: Embracing its full potential means embracing transparency, and engagement among transparent individuals—whether they’re employees, vendors, suppliers, customers, or prospects—involves far more complexity than the engagement you may have grown accustomed to.

Some have argued that in order to have more meaningful and effective online relationships with customers, a better system for prioritization and organization is needed within our current social media tools. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb, recently examined this idea in great length in his article “How to Create Sub-Groups to Maximize Your Online Effectiveness.”

HelpStream, a social customer service and relationship management technology company, also wrote about Marshall’s article recently on their blog, concluding that more sophisticated prioritization tools have the potential to increase the value and collaboration of online social groups.

Leveraging social media to connect with customers is central to our mission at InsideView, but it is clearly an evolving science. It’s exciting to see so many sharp minds (besides ours) at work developing the next generation of strategies to engage with customers through social media.