Everything Channel has brought on Eric Schweitzer to help with its new SharedVue channel content syndication (Syndic8) and marketing automation (Communic8) tools. Eric will fulfill the role of Web Producer. In this position, he will help ensure all of Everything Channel’s SharedVue customers have seamless content updates on their channel partners’ existing websites.

“Eric is a great addition to both the web production and tech teams in general,” says David Ford, Web Production Manager for Everything Channel.  “His new roll as web producer will be pivotal in helping our team spin up new clients more effectively as well as assisting with ongoing and day to day content refreshes of existing clients. He is also an excellent guitarist… which is always a plus.”

Eric’s previous experience as a Web and user interface designer, multimedia developer and Flash programmer will prove invaluable as the SharedVue team creates new channel solutions for vendors and their partners.

Content syndication isn’t about putting as much content on channel partner websites as you can. It is about providing the end customer with quality, relevant content that is specifically tuned for each partner. Ideally, content should be created specifically for your channel partners syndication program, not scraped from your corporate website (unless the content there is already channel-centric). Creating content that stresses the importance of the partner makes you look better because the partner has more incentive to showcase your products and their solutions.

On average, a channel partner’s website has 15-30 pages of content, give or take a few pages. If you decide to syndicate 200 pages of product content, you really warp the partner’s site. All of a sudden, the partner has a huge website with content only about your products and solutions. The partner’s message and content get lost, eliminating the appeal of the joint-value proposition for the partner. When this happens, partners will often stop syndicating content or stop pushing customers to your pages. Thus, the content becomes moot.

Likewise, you don’t want to syndicate content that may not be relevant to the end customer. If your messaging isn’t driving the idea that your partner is the most knowledgeable resource on the subject, customers will go somewhere else — possibly a competitor!

That’s why it is really important to develop your content syndication strategy. Below are a few quick tips to help create a cohesive, strategic content syndication program for your channel partners:

1. Develop a strong content plan. Ask yourself, “What is the purpose of our syndicated content? Do we want to generate leads for partners? Increase our product page views on partner websites?” Write down a few goals your content should accomplish. If you’re using SharedVue’s Syndic8 tool, ask us to help. If you have a content update that doesn’t help achieve those core goals, perhaps it shouldn’t be pushed to syndication. Moreover, syndicating only strategically planned, well-thought out content created specifically for your channel will increase adoption rates of your syndication program and increase sales through your channel in the long run. Content is key!
2. Refresh your content often. Partners love having fresh, up-to-date content on their websites. With content syndication, you have the ability to do that for them. This doesn’t mean creating new pages every quarter. Instead, think about rewriting your existing product content to better fit the needs of your partners. If you’re using SharedVue to syndicate channel partner content, use the metrics and analytics consoles to see how your content is performing. Really make the syndicated content you already have better.
3. Create “content sets” for your channel partners. Not all of your partners specialize in the same areas. Moreover, not all of your partners sell all of your products. Spending time to create different sets of content for your syndication program can help your partners retain and focus on their specific target market. When you start pushing all of your content through to all of your partners without regard to their certification levels or specialties, the value of the content is lost because it isn’t helping the partner sell anything. Also, the end customer is on your partner’s site for a reason, looking for a specific solution. If you give them only the information that is relevant to them, they are more like to become a sale.

End users are already bombarded with hoards of product content. Creating a concise, strong message for your syndicated content with good product/solution descriptions will benefit you more than pushing out tons of product information. Think about what the partners need, then analyze, refine, and syndicate.

Talk to your your Facilit8 Account Manager for more information »

Every channel vendor wants to do more with less, particularly in this economy. One way of achieving that is by being more efficient: cutting out waste, running lean, and employing talented, versatile individuals who can self-motivate and multi-task. When it comes to the channel, self-motivation takes on a whole new meaning in terms of getting channel partners to act and share sales strategies. There has to be a benefit for the partner. That’s why incentive programs are key in pushing partners to act.

It was only fitting that Eaton Corporation, known worldwide for their power management solutions, asked Strategic Insights to develop a contest website to promote the concept of “Efficient Uptime” to its channel partners. Efficient Uptime has been a theme of Eaton’s for a while now—this was the next step in engaging the partners to become part of the message.

“The goal is two-fold,” says Eaton Global IT Manager Brooke Lang. “The Efficient Uptime contest not only reinforces our campaign message, it also encourages partners to share best practices with one another by documenting their success stories for everyone to see. We’re extremely excited about it.”

To enter the contest, a channel partner must describe what Efficient Uptime means to them and how they have delivered it for a customer, including the environmental and cost savings achieved. Bonus points are given for stories that include Eaton Solutions. Stories may consist of documents, presentations, pictures and videos. Eaton will choose two winners who will receive $2500 each.

“It’s really more of a microsite,” explains Associate Creative Director Chris Griffin, “which is not to diminish its importance, but better describes its focus: it’s a website with one purpose. Over the course of three tabs, which serve as sub-pages, visitors can get an overview of the contest, its rules and can upload their materials right then and there.” Partners can then choose to direct judges to a URL or upload content, or a combination of both.

Eaton plans on promoting the contest through email blasts, through its distributors, an online campaign conducted by Everything Channel and through its partner portal, also created by Strategic Insights.

Of the portal, Lang comments, “We’ve seen great results so far. Since its launch, we’ve grabbed an additional share and a half, and have outgrown the rest of the market pretty significantly.”

The important take away from the mini cast study is that just because you create a marketing initiative or incentive for your partners, that doesn’t mean they are going to act on it. You must make partner recruitment just as important as the program iteself.

Framingham, Ma – June 22, 2010 – Everything Channel, a UBM company, announced the release of a new eBook featuring best practices for efficient channel marketing. Developed by cloud marketing experts from Everything Channel’s newly acquired asset SharedVue, the eBook and accompanying webinar entitled, Channel Partner Content Syndication & Marketing Automation: Maintain Consistent Messaging Channel-Wide for More Effective Marketing, seeks to answer a common question, “What could your channel accomplish if you could make it easier for your partners to market and sell your product or service?”

Join the June 29^th webinar and receive a free copy of the eBook »

Webinar Details

Enabling partners is difficult especially with varying channel sizes, partner capabilities and partner adoption rates. By understanding why channel partners struggle to implement new marketing initiatives, vendors and service providers can learn how to enable them with multi-touch marketing campaigns, syndication capabilities and marketing automation tools to be successful.

The eBook and webinar will also address:

• How to help partners succeed in marketing your products
• What methods to use for content syndication across all partner websites
• How to leverage traditional and new media tools to launch campaigns
• How to easily track marketing metrics across the whole channel

“Many companies recognize the need to improve marketing and sales functions, but in today’s dynamic marketplace how to go about doing so is not always an obvious answer,” said Robert Faletra, CEO of Everything Channel. “By focusing on content syndication, technology vendors and solution providers will be able to lay the foundation for more successful marketing initiatives today that will lead to channel revenue tomorrow.”

Webinar details:
Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Time: 9:00 am PT/ 12:00 noon ET
Duration: 60 minutes
Register Here »

About Everything Channel & UBM

Everything Channel

Everything Channel is the premier provider of IT channel-focused events, media, research, consulting, and sales and marketing services. With over 30 years of experience and engagement, Everything Channel has the unmatched channel expertise to execute integrated solutions for technology executives managing partner recruitment, enablement and go-to-market strategy in order to accelerate technology sales. Everything Channel is a UBM company. To learn more about Everything Channel, visit us at http://www.everythingchannel.com.

United Business Media

UBM (UBM.L) focuses on two principal activities: worldwide information distribution, targeting and monitoring; and, the development and monetization of B2B communities and markets. UBM’s businesses inform markets and serve professional commercial communities – from doctors to game developers, from journalists to jewelry traders, from farmers to pharmacists – with integrated events, online, print and business information products. Our 6,500 staff in more than 30 countries are organized into specialist teams that serve these communities, bringing buyers and sellers together, helping them to do business and their markets to work effectively and efficiently.

Everything Channel has hired Jessica Lee to take on the role of Account Manager for the SharedVue content syndication and marketing automation division. As part of the cloud marketing team, Jessica will provide day-to-day support and serve as the primary point of contact for new customers. In addition, Jessica will provide customer and technical support for vendor resellers and partners.

“Jessica has extensive experience in planning and directing campaigns that help clients understand and reach their target audiences. Her experience with brand building and corporate events also fits nicely into SharedVue’s core solutions – Syndic8 and Communic8,” says Sara Bryson, Director of Facilit8 and Projects.

“I want to focus on building relationships and offering support to SharedVue’s current clients,” says Jessica. “I’ve always enjoyed developing communications plans and hope to apply my experience to help innovate my accounts’ syndication programs.”

SharedVue is the marketing technology division of Everything Channel, providing cloud marketing and lead generation tools that help companies maximize sales through channel partners and direct sales.  SharedVue clients include:  Cisco, HP, Salesforce.com and VMware.

Cloud marketing enables channel partners to become better marketers of enterprise companies’ products by using Web content syndication and automated marketing campaigns.  It combines traditional marketing techniques with the technology of software-as-a-service.  SharedVue combines marketing and technology expertise to develop cutting-edge Web marketing products that enhance companies’ relationships with their customers and generate leads.

Everything Channel today announced that it has acquired SharedVue Inc., a leading cloud marketing solutions provider, to better serve its customers and prospects by integrating Web content syndication and automated marketing campaigns into the “Complete Technology Channel Solution”.  The new integration addresses the current market need for a comprehensive solution to effectively execute and manage end-to-end marketing campaigns, and underscores the significance of content syndication and marketing automation to achieve measurable and significant results. Technology vendors and solution providers alike will greatly benefit from the union of these organizations to drive sales and increase brand awareness.

“We are excited about the new capabilities SharedVue brings us,” said Robert Faletra, Everything Channel CEO. “By adding this technology to our solutions we can offer our vendor customers the ability to syndicate content across thousands of partner websites in multiple languages instantly. If a vendor changes product information on their website, SharedVue’s product Syndic8 immediately populates those changes on every one of its solution provider partner websites so that all sites have the most current marketing message to the end user,” Faletra noted. “In addition, we can provide incredible reporting capabilities with SharedVue’s product set. This will allow us to tie syndication and marketing automation together with demand generation capabilities to accelerate sales for vendors that work with us and drive more revenue through the channel.”

Reid Overcash, CEO of SharedVue said “We are thrilled to combine our products and technology with the resources of Everything Channel. We believe we have a best of breed solution here that solves a real set of problems faced by manufacturers as well as their solution provider partners.  Everything Channel can help customers deploy this rapidly and in such a way that it drives sales for partners and suppliers alike.”

“HP’s partnership with SharedVue has enabled us to help hundreds of our partners strengthen their messaging alignment with HP through the HP Solutions Showcase.  Together we have made it easier and faster for channel partners to leverage the critical HP content and transform their websites into more successful demand generation engines. ” Says Katie Spence, US Partner Marketing, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, Hewlett-Packard.

A proven market leader for more than 30 years with customers spanning all industries, Everything Channel offers the tools necessary to build an effective channel strategy, recruit and enable partners, and accelerate technology sales.  With this announcement, SharedVue customers will now have access to Everything Channel’s global brands and market intelligence to better execute effective marketing campaigns.  Current SharedVue customers who struggle to maximize the value of the tools due to lack of resources, will benefit from direct access to Everything Channel’s dedicated team of field sales & marketing and demand generation experts to alleviate the drain on time and resources.

“A lot of people confuse content distribution with syndication, but most don’t really understand what true content syndication is,” said Faletra. “Some publishers and media companies talk about distributing content like whitepapers through their various web and email platforms and call that content syndication. That’s just content distribution. Content syndication is the ability for companies to engage their channel partners to create a direct pipeline for their valuable web content to those partners’ websites and, as a result, their partners’ ultimate customers. And then when those marketers change or alter that content through the SharedVue administration console, it automatically changes on their partners’ sites dynamically, as well. That’s Content Syndication.”

Overcash adds, “The value of content syndication and marketing automation to the channel is illustrated by the exponential adoption our manufacturer clients are seeing from their solution providers.  Many of our clients see a 200-400% increase in solution providers using syndication and marketing automation.”

In today’s economy, most organizations are forced to do more with less without compromising on quality.  By integrating syndication and automation solutions with innovative field sales & marketing resources for managing and accelerating technology sales, Everything Channel and SharedVue will enable manufacturers and solution providers alike to better connect with and service their end-users.   Highlights of the new integration include:

• Everything Channel’s veteran Field Sales & Marketing (FSM) Team engages with partners to enable them to fully benefit from SharedVue’s Syndic8, to seamlessly and automatically update product content regularly to channel partner websites to ensure accuracy and timeliness.
• Everything Channel’s experienced Demand Generation team can assist in creation of marketing campaigns to populate SharedVue’s Communic8, a web-based partner console to promote products and services through the channel while the FSM team provides ongoing tele-support for campaigns to ensure proper execution and alleviate drain on time and resources.
• Manufacturers and solution providers can then measure campaign success and manage their syndication output through a SharedVue Facilit8 program, to assist with organizing and managing the solutions on an ongoing basis.

With the addition of SharedVue products, Everything Channel customers will benefit from a cloud-based infrastructure to become better marketers of enterprise companies’ products, help build greater market awareness and forge lasting and meaningful relationships.

Learn More About Everything Channel (www.everythingchannel.com, www.channelweb.com)

Everything Channel, headquartered in Framingham, MA, is a technology marketing and sales solutions company. Through its “Complete Technology Channel Solution,” Everything Channel offers the right business tools to accelerate technology sales. From branding and recruiting to marketing and sales, Everything Channel offers technology marketers the unmatched breadth and depth of global brands and market intelligence combined with unparalleled audience loyalty and credibility serving all technology sales channels through an extensive database. Everything Channel provides innovative field sales and marketing solutions to the sellers of technology to achieve measurable and significant results.

About United Business Media Limited

UBM (UBM.L) focuses on two principal activities: worldwide information distribution, targeting and monitoring; and, the development and monetisation of B2B communities and markets. UBM’s businesses inform markets and serve professional commercial communities — from doctors to game developers, from journalists to jewelry traders, from farmers to pharmacists — with integrated events, online, print and business information products. Our 6,500 staff in more than 30 countries are organised into specialist teams that serve these communities, bringing buyers and sellers together, helping them to do business and their markets to work effectively and efficiently. For more information, go to www.ubm.com.

About SharedVue

SharedVue is a marketing technology company that provides cloud marketing and lead generation tools that help companies maximize sales through channel partners and direct sales.  SharedVue clients include:  Cisco, HP, Salesforce.com and VMware.

Cloud marketing enables channel partners to become better marketers of enterprise companies’ products by using Web content syndication and automated marketing campaigns.  It combines traditional marketing techniques with the technology of software-as-a-service.  SharedVue combines marketing and technology expertise to develop cutting-edge Web marketing products that enhance companies’ relationships with their customers and generate leads.

SharedVue, Inc., a leading cloud marketing solutions provider, has added Dug Wilson to its IT development team.  Dug will focus on  enhancing SharedVue’s Syndic8 channel content syndication tool.

Syndic8 creates an information pipeline between companies and their channel partners’ Websites that automatically updates product information. The new enhancements will include quicker content updates on partner Web sites, improved metrics tracking, faster set up for new clients and easier integration with companies’ other programs like customer relationship management.

“Dug brings a decade of IT experience developing custom applications,” said SharedVue CEO Reid Overcash.  “His skills in developing B2B applications will be especially valuable to our clients.”

Dug holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This week, an account executive from SharedVue attended EverythingChannel’s annual XChange Solution Provider conference in Las Angeles. In a recent email, she and I discussed how she should proceed with talking to VARs about SharedVue’s cloud marketing services. I mentioned that she should simply try to differentiate as much as possible from the other vendors at the conference.

Dana proceeded to tell me that her favorite presentation of the conference thus far has been from Steve Burke (@stevenjburke) of Everything Channel – Hot Vendors of 2010. His talk focused heavily on how to differentiate vendors from their competitors. Several ideas were tossed around, such as cloud computing, unification, and centralization. All of these provide overall solutions through the channel, but nothing that can help differentiate.

The panelists focused on the fact that technology is lead by the thought process of vendors and the channel. One of the trends that the panelists agreed on was that in order to succeed and prosper as a vendor, you must increase operational efficiency while exceeding customer service expectations. Thus, customer service is the critical differentiator. For the VAR/Vendor relationship, skill will never be beat out by intimacy. If you allow your process to be granular enough to encompass great customer support, you don’t necessarily have to sacrifice the ability to be nimble. The bottom line is delivering a consistent consistence response that is both accurate and personable.

If you take customer service as the differentiation point for vendors today, then the advice I gave Dana wasn’t that far off. Don’t just make yourself appear different – be different. When it comes to channel resellers, vendors must be accessible and helpful to the consumer. By making the VAR look good with superior customer service you  are able strengthen that relationship. The last thing a vendor should do is pass the blame to the VAR. After all, the VAR is your representative to the customer.

I just read an article posted at AdAge.com talking about how brands have “gone rogue.” This means that a brand has deviated from the norm or been misused. The article goes on to claim that social media is a “disruptive technology that radically changes the game.” The author also feels that the old method of branding no longer applies.

Social media has changed the way brands are managed on the internet. But this is not a nuance by any means. Blogs and forums (private social networks) have been around since nearly the beginning of the internet. In addition to that, the Web is by nature a social institution. Many companies have been incorporating sharing/social aspects for years online. Cisco, for example, has been federating content to channel reseller websites since 2006, allowing for easy sharing of marketing content, tech specs, and downloadable assets by consumers. Thus, I say that the traditional method of branding has been successful even with the advent of modern social media practices and still applies today.

In addition to that, brands have been in charge of personal relationships with customers for almost as long as marketing/advertising have been around. With things like memberships, workshops and events, and VIP rewards programs, brand managers have had direct contact (and probably more efficient) than any traditional one-way media communication outlet.

However, if you look at it from a cloud marketing technology standpoint then you can claim that the publishers have been in charge the whole time. The “technology” of direct mail and other publishing methods makes it seem that the brand is not in control; the medium is the message. Still, if you look at how brands use social media today then very few are in control. Only a limited number of brands use proprietary social networks as a method of communication. Instead, most use existing platforms such as Wordpress, Facebook, or Twitter to communicate with customers. This means that the publisher (the technology) is still in charge.

What has changed, and I believe author of the AdAge article hints at this, is that the method of content creation has become more streamlined. I do challenge the idea, though, that brand management has become more difficult. Instead it seems to me that brand management is easier. Now you can rely solely on the brand manager. Companies no longer have to worry about involving a 3rd party publisher. After all, the more a message changes hands, the more convoluted it becomes. That being said, social media is not the hammer for pounding traditional marketing into the ground.

The question, however, is still unanswered. Who is in control of the brand, the publisher/platform or the corporation?

SharedVue’s cloud marketing solutions team is proud to add Billy Pomarico to its Web marketing and channel support group, called Facilit8.  As part of the Facilit8 team, Billy works with clients to develop innovative ways to share enterprise content with clients’ customers and provides technical support to the channel marketers of SharedVue clients.

“Billy’s strong project management skills and customer service orientation are key assets for the clients he serves, including EMC, Salesforce.com and VMware,” said SharedVue CEO Reid Overcash.

Billy holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Billy’s additional responsibilities include consulting SharedVue’s clients’ channel resellers on cloud marketing and lead generation techniques to help  maximize their sales. By combining traditional marketing techniques with the technology of software-as-a-service, Billy and the rest of SharedVue’s marketing team enable channel partners to become better marketers of enterprise companies’ products. SharedVue’s unique Web content syndication and automated marketing campaign tools are at the center of all client cloud marketing initiatives.