Back in March we highlighted several manufacturers that do “social” well in the channel. A few weeks ago at XChange I had the pleasure of interviewing Alex Krasne, Cisco’s Global Communications Manager for New Media, WW Partner Marketing who is focused primarily on communicating to partners and educating them on all things Cisco as well as social in general.

Check out our brief conversation on how Cisco is driving social “to” and “through” the channel.

“TO” the Channel

The Cisco team has done something really interesting as she mentioned and instituted governance.  Basically taking a step back and saying, “Whoa, we’re communicating with you Mr. or Mrs. Partner way too much. We need to pull that back and assign our communications a designation so you know when you REALLY need to pay attention”.

I applaud Cisco for that, it’s hard to not think everything you have to say to your partners is priority and even harder to get your internal teams to go along with that. Social media plays a huge role in the new ways to communicate to partners.  Because it allows partners to tune in or not by definition, I feel the manufacturers that use it are creating a more authentic relationship with their channel.

“THROUGH” the Channel

I also mentioned some of the great programs Cisco’s Marketing Concierge (mConcierge) team is doing including social media syndication. The mConcierge team syndicates social media content by providing partners with actual tweets, LinkedIn and Facebook posts through a platform called Structured Web which we reviewed  with a few other channel social platforms a few weeks ago.

Syndicated content is just the beginning though. Cisco’s social media enablement partners actually starts with a “Social Media Road Map—a full education series of videos and guides that provides partners week-by-week video tutorials on how and when to use social tools including Google Alerts, SEO, website analytics, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and my favorite “other”.  By first educating partners on why and how and when to use social before sending them the posts, Cisco has ensured partners will have a foundation in place with complete online profiles and measurement tools before they try to drive followers and connections.  You don’t invite people to your house when it’s a mess right?  Why would you drive someone to an incomplete profile or website when you can’t measure that they were there? “Socially syndicated content has been wildly popular with our partners” says John LeBaron, Global Lead for Cisco’s mConcierge program. “Many of our partners are already leveraging social media to drive loyalty, engagement, and preference with their customers. Social syndication is yet another way to offer value to both our partners and their customers by consistently providing timely, relevant, and insightful content that helps complement the myriad other marketing tactics that partners are leveraging to drive demand.”

How can you Step Up?

Cisco and several other manufacturers have definitely taken the right steps to driving more business through the channel:

1. Engage: Use social to communicate “To” partners so they get used to using it correctly
2. Educate: Use webinars, guides, videos, and blog posts to explain to partners why, how, and when to use social and any marketing for that matter
3. Enable: Provide partners with the resources they need to better leverage social and marketing in general

What are other things we could be doing? How are you helping partners to better leverage social?

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