One of the biggest challenges you as channel professionals face is truly enabling your partners to market and sell your solutions. But marketing enablement goes above and beyond just teaching them about products and technology. Partners need marketing resources–and education as well.

Citrix has taken on that challenge by launching its series of Social Media Enablement webinars through UBM Channel’s IPED division. The series for Citrix Solution Advisors involves two training webinars, the first of which was held in June and the second of which will run in October.

The sessions (“Driving Demand Through Online Engagement and Social Media” and “Building Integrated Marketing Campaigns”) help Citrix partners to go beyond just blasting prospects and customers with emails and cold calls. These workshops teach partners to think more strategically about marketing, helping them understand key concepts around social media, search engine optimization, integrated marketing strategy, and campaigns that drive sales, leads, and engagement.

“It’s not just about giving partners a few tidbits of information and basics,” said Lisa Sabourin, Director of Engagement at IPED. “It’s about helping partners understand key concepts so they walk away with the deep understanding they need to build an end-to-end strategy they can implement and get huge results.”

Uptake and registration was great for the first webinar, according to Lori Serure, Sr. Manager, Interactive Marketing and Communications at Citrix.

“Overall, partners were very satisfied with the content, which related to demand generation tools as well as content syndication,” she said. “I knew social was important to partners, but the webinar really brought to light how necessary this training is to their success.”

Practicing What They Preach

In addition to offering webinars and enablement resources, Citrix practices what it preaches by using the very social media sites it trains partners to use.

The company has several partner-facing social accounts across Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn so they can communicate directly to those partners who are already using social media.

And its @CitrixPartners Twitter handle has more than 5,000 followers and is among the most-followed handles at Citrix, according to Lori. She also notes that the partners tag is the most widely used tag at Citrix among all of their blogs – it shows Citrix has a lot to say to its partners and partners are listening.

“It’s so important for us to use, and master, the tools we tell partners are so important,” said Lori. “Not just posting to Twitter or Facebook, but making sure we are effective and engaging, too.”

Interested in attending and a Citrix Solutions Advisor partner?  Register for “Using Social Media to Bolster Your Marketing Success“

Not a Citrix Solutions Advisor and want to become one?

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