This blog series explores topics laid out in our free white paper:? 12 Essential Tips for Socializing the Channel
Social media is easily the most over-hyped marketing channel? since the beginning of the web. But strip away all the hype and you still have a revolution underway. People are genuinely changing their decision-making behavior, and businesses are genuinely changing the way they market their products, based on data and interactions generated by social media. This is no less true in the channel than it is for markets at large, and social media offers huge opportunities for channel marketers to gain a competitive edge.
When we say “Socializing the Channel” we mean a deliberate process of elevating your channel marketing approach from managing many 1-to-1 relationships between you and your partners to managing a digital community in which you and your partners are all contributing members. This involves both the adoption of social media tools to enable engagement, and the adoption of community programs and methods to drive it.
With so many emerging social networks and tools, so many pundits and promises of some new path to success, it’s hard to keep your head straight about what’s going on and how best to participate. So let’s start this blog series with the most fundamental part of socializing the channel: why is it worth the investment?
Simply stated, socializing the channel offers:
- New ways to engage and motivate partners
- New ways to differentiate and promote your brand
- New ways to measure partner potential and performance
- New ways to drive leads and grow revenue
If that sounds too good to be true, just look at the companies that have succeeded in social media and ask why it should be any less an opportunity for the channel. If you can leverage emerging technology to shift the relationship you have with partners to one that is more dynamic and engaging, you can build a more effective channel to bring your products to market. The key is not to focus on the technology and pundits, but to focus first on the core imperative to build community with your partners to help them succeed, and then to choose the tools and methods that support that objective.
To see all the posts in this series, click the “social channel” tag below.?