Everyday I work with businesses by teaching them how to use tools like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media platforms, and social content to engage with their customers and grow their channel.
What has always struck me is the developing knowledge between the Vendors I work with and their Partners. While Vendors seem to be embracing these new tools, partners struggle to understand the value of social media. They are challenged to understand how social media facilitates meaningful conversation and engages the end-customer; they also don’t understand how new media can build on a traditional strategy already in place.
Another challenge for partners is that they simply don’t have as many resources as do the Vendors they support. There can be any number of reasons for this. Perhaps there is no one on the team in place who is a “Digital Native,” a person poised to understand social media because they grew up with these systems in place. That’s why it’s so important to educate yourself and then your partners on how they can use social media best practices to grow their business and interact with customers.
If you’re curious to learn more about how to motivate your partners to begin using these tools effectively, I’m leading a workshop facilitated by IPED Channel Research and Consulting on March 9th, 2011 entitled “Getting the Most Out of Social Media and Online Engagement: ‘To’ & ‘Through’ Your Partners”
This 8-hour workshop is broken in to two sessions. The first will focus on how to use social media and online engagement work with what you’re already doing within your channel, plus how to use content to enable and engage partners and build social programs. The second session or “Through” session will focus developing an action plan that you can use to inform your partners on how they can Get Found using SEO, build compelling content and make them thought-leaders through social media. It will also teach you how to make your current, more traditional campaigns more social.