by channelmaven on March 5, 2010
Had a great time at the PHONE+ The Channel Partners Conference in Las Vegas and met some very cool people. I ran a session on Social Media in the Channel and was really impressed with the reception. There are three groups people usually fall into when it comes to social media:
- Totally get-it, are drinking the kool-aid, might even be making the kool-aid
- Realize it is important but aren’t quite sure how to measure or what it’s getting them
- Skeptics who want to be proven wrong or are just in the room to heckle
By a show of hands we probably had 20%, 60%, and 20% respectively in the room. While you can never convince everyone, I did see a couple of the self-admitted hecklers nodding their heads in agreement once in awhile. Here are a few key take-aways to share:
- Creating valuable content is the #1 key to success with social media
- Twitter is not for everyone, if you just aren’t going to use it correctly, don’t use it
- Cold-calling doesn’t work by itself anymore, get over it (note in conjunction with social media and other multi-touch elements it can be very successful)
- LinkedIn is the first step to acclimating yourself to social media, get in, make connections, look around, create discussions
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is key but don’t just optimize for the obvious terms because your bigger, stronger, wealthier competitor is doing that…find your niche and identify keywords from there.
Boarding my red-eye, I leave you with this, if you had $10 (think of it as a percentage of your total investment) you could spend on social media this is how I would spend it:
- $2 SEO specialist to find the right keywords for you or a service like www.hubspot.com so you can do it internally
- $8 to create valuable content whether eBooks, webinars, videos that you can then post out using free platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn
- The rest of the investment is just time but well worth it!
Last point, have to give a huge shout out for www.mandalaybay.com which upgraded me to a ridiculous suite…we’re talking media room people!
by channelmaven on January 30, 2010
I’m not sure if the economy truly is turning around but if the increased number of job openings for the channel is an indication, we are certainly on the road to recovery. In the past month, I’ve been asked for a valuable channel professional to fill an opportunity by at least a dozen companies. Is it that all areas of the IT market are rebounding or are good channel professionals just that hard to find?
I think it’s a little of both. While I can’t do anything to help the market rebound…other than shopping…here are some suggestions for finding or becoming a quality channel professional:
1. Remember ALL of your audiences: you don’t just have one customer like your corporate counterparts. You need to worry about the end-customer and their pain points that will drive sales of your company’s products as well as your partners and what will help them sell said products.
2. Find your joint value proposition: While your company may have the best widget in the world, your partners aren’t just going to promote that product without wanting to highlight their own value proposition as well. It’s important in any programs or support for your partners, that you make space for the JOINT value proposition. Your product with their services or your product with their product or your product with their product and services or….you get the idea.
3. Never create programs in a bubble: if you’re developing tiers, communications, incentives, or sales programs and you haven’t spoken to a partner in months…STOP. Get out there and talk to partners of all types and sizes. Surveys are also a great way to get a ton of feedback. If you’re looking to change your program entirely make sure that survey includes solution providers outside of your current eco-system.
4. Quality over Quantity: It’s funny to me when vendors brag about how many partners they have. Okay great! So from the partners’ perspectives there’s that much more competition. When recruiting be sure to get the right type of partners who will enhance and grow your business not just grow your number of partners. If you do have a ton of partners in one specialty or region, make sure each partner knows how they are going to be successful even with the large number of competitors.
5. Know your partners: similar to the first point it’s important to understand your partners and their business. If you make it a requirement that all partners run national integrated multi-touch marketing campaigns and 20% of your partners are tech geniuses but wouldn’t know an email campaign if they tripped over it, then no one is going to be successful.
It’s so important that channel professionals truly “get” the channel but with so many brilliant marketing, sales, and management people out there on the market I think the channel DNA is something that could and should be taught!
What do you think? Any success stories of turning a marketing/sales/management person from corporate into a channel guru?
