Yesterday morning at Gartner’s CRM conference, it was said that Social CRM will be a $1 Billion market by 2011. (That’s right around the corner folks).

All of a sudden, there is a lot of noise in the marketplace about Social CRM. In a sure sign that Social CRM is racing towards the mainstream, Chris Brogan even recently named Social CRM as one of the three hottest trends to look for in 2010.

Below are the best resources to get you up to speed on Social CRM as quickly as possible, and capture first mover advantage in your market niche.

Number One:
Start Here: The Author of the “CRM Bible”, Paul Greenberg, recently authored what will soon be known as the “Social CRM Bible” in his 4th edition of CRM at the Speed of Light. Spending $20 and a bit of time in this treasure will go a long way towards helping your organization embrace the opportunities emerging now and in the future.

Want to know who Paul reads and listens to? Check out his recent blog post on “Social CRM: The Conversation” on ZDNet – “Following on More than Friday: The Ones who teach me”

Number Two:
This one is a must read and there is plenty to chew on and ponder how these changes will effect your business. Graham Hill’s – A Manifesto for Social Business outlines 15 key mega-themes of changes happening to the corporate landscape and how businesses must evolve. Take note. This is almost too much insight for just one blog post and triggered some great back channel discussion between many of us several months ago.

Number Three:
A great list of conversations and posts from the Social CRM Accidental Community who have been actively participating in the seminal discussions of Social CRM “industry” for the past 18+ months. This list has been largely curated by Prem Kumar Apraranji. This is a great resource list in and of itself.

Number Four:
Mitch Lieberman, Jacob Morgan, and Connie Chan did a nice job on their recent white paper, Chess Media Group’s “Guide to Understanding Social CRM”, which speaks about the evolution of CRM to Social CRM, and how corporations should look to adjust their business model(s) to engage with the Social Customer.

Number Five:
Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang of the Altimeter Group did a fantastic job bringing structure to a fragmented conversation and laying the framework for assessing where the market opportunities are now, and where they’ll be as we journey forward. Use this document to frame your conversations about leveraging Social CRM tools in your organization. Where will you start, and what are the greatest opportunities for your organization now and in the future?

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Number Six:
Ready to start looking at vendors? Jim Berkowitz has assembled a comprehensive list of Social CRM vendors broken down by their specialty. Start your vendor research here.

I have a thought or two, too!

If you are interested in reading some of my musings, click here for some of my articles on the topic of Social CRM

Join the Social CRM conversation

Want to join the real time conversation as it happens?

Here are a few ways to participate:

1. On Twitter

Follow the #scrm hashtag.

Looking for a list of people to follow on Twitter? Here are a few places to look.

• Those that I follow and are actively engaged in the Social CRM Conversation – my Social CRM list on Listorious
• Lots and lots of Social CRM Twitter Lists
• The Social CRM Accidental Community

2. Social CRM Pioneers Group
Get involved in the Social CRM Pioneers discussion group

3. Share your thoughts below or send me a private note

Have some other suggestions for the list? Please feel free to add them below.

Oh, and if you found value in this post, don’t forget to tell your friends!