If you’ve seen me speak about Twitter, you know I have a love-hate relationship with it. I love Twitter when it’s done right, unfortunately very few people use it right. There are thousands of businesses out there using the platform but not leveraging its power. New users, check out our blog post on Twitter basics. Here are five mistakes you may be making with your company’s Twitter strategy:

1. Avoiding a Human Face Behind Your Tweets: Twitter users are more likely to engage with users who have personality. While news and business related posts are important to tweet, it is also valuable to add something to your regular Tweet schedule that makes your fellow Tweeters feel like they’re ‘getting to know you.’ This could include pictures from the office, tweets with reflections on events attended or references to what your team is reading up on. Also, make sure you turn off auto-DMing after users have chosen to follow you. This makes your account seem particularly automated and impersonal.
2. Protecting Your Tweets from Marketing Success: LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook all let you choose who to share information with. Twitter does too. If you haven’t yet, head to your Settings then go to Account and unclick ‘Protect My Tweets.’ With your account now open, start putting yourself out there. Network. Connect. Share. Engage.
3. Keeping Your @ Replies a Secret: If you open a tweet with an ‘@’ as a response to someone, the tweet will only appear on that users’ Twitter screen. While sometimes you want to keep these private, typically it is key to let users see how you’re engaging with other companies and fans on Twitter. To share your @ replies with everyone put a period before the @ (i.e. ‘.@’).
4. Missing Sales Opportunities: While tweeting your news, updates and photos is essential, there are certain sales opportunities missed by businesses on Twitter. I wrote awhile ago about Dell‘s sales successes by running coupons and specials on Twitter. If you have the capacity, I highly recommend leveraging your followers in the sales sphere. Just make sure you’re not doing it so often that you look like Spam.
5. Your Following/Followed Ratio is Imbalanced: When users on Twitter decide who to follow, most look at the ratio between how much someone is being followed and how much they’re following. You ideally want this at an even balance where it looks like if someone follows you, you reciprocate. Otherwise, if you have too few followers it looks like you’re overactive on following without offering valuable content. If you have too many, it looks like you post but don’t engage with others’ content.

For more of my thoughts on this topic check out a previous blog post on Harnessing the Business Value of Twitter. What mistakes have you made on Twitter? Are there major ones you’ve caught not listed above?

When it comes to marketing their solutions through the channel, most vendors offer their Partners marketing materials from corporate. I’ve written before about Channel Programs that are investing in their Partners more strategically, moving away from just corporate generated marketing solutions into Partner centric marketing programs. These programs keep vendors’ solutions top of mind for their partners and if done right, benefit both the vendor and the Partner along the way. At the heart of these programs is solid Partner training.

Why is training essential? Imagine handing over corporate marketing materials to your Partners regardless of their marketing resources or knowledge.  Some will know how to build a stronger list, launch a landing page, use Google Analytics to measure visibility and leverage social media to drive more demand. Most Partners we’ve worked with, however, are new to strategic marketing, especially online marketing. They are eager to learn how to better market themselves and your solutions but aren’t sure where to start. Integrating valuable marketing training into your Channel Program increases loyalty among the Partners you invest in and ultimately increases sales to their end customers. So, how do you do it correctly?

Here are a few things to keep in mind when training your Partners:

• Are you only sending corporate marketing materials to your Partners without guidance on how to use them? If so, think about tailoring these materials to better meet your Partners’ marketing needs. Then begin strategically planning trainings on how to use them.
• Schedule monthly marketing webinars or trainings on a variety of marketing topics. Use the materials you supply that month to lay the framework for your talk.
• Keep in mind what is feasible for your Partners’ to maintain. Stick to the basics instead of assuming they have a large marketing team with a lot of bandwidth to deploy new strategy.
• Be sure you’re including online marketing trainings in your calendar. This includes trainings on LinkedIn, Twitter, SEO and overall web presence.
• Consider providing Partners with One-to-One Marketing support where someone works personally with a handful of your Partners to train them in marketing strategy while also amplifying both their online presence and your solutions.

Teaching your Partners how to better marketing themselves is a win-win investment: their loyalty to your solutions increases and so does their success in selling them. Everyone’s online presence is also amplified and more deals get closed. So what are you waiting for? I say, go train! We’re here to support you if you need it.

What other suggestions did I miss?  How are you training your partners to be more successful?

We’ve all heard enough about social media.  Though we’ve figured out how to use platforms, SEO, online engagement for our companies, how does it apply to the channel?   The truth is your channel programs, channel communications, and co-branded demand gen could use a little social media love. There are ways to stand out from the crowd so your partners and  joint customers hear you louder than the other messages coming their way. Social media is also a powerful way to keep connected with your partners to stay top of the mind as they’re closing deals.

So where do you start? Or how to do make sure your current approach is correct?

We’re excited to be working with IPED again to bring you Social Media Certification Channel Workshops. Here, we’ll be working through these questions in a day and a half session that will leave you ready to take on social media strategically.

In the workshops you’ll learn how to:

• Communicate with multiple RTM channel partners to stay top of the mind
• Ramp your channel programs’ reach by integrating social media elements
• Enable your partners to increase your revenue.

The workshops will take place in San Jose in February, Orlando in April* and Boston June*.

Right now, your corporate marketers are probably doing a great job engaging your end-customer with social media. By attending these workshops, you’ll learn how to integrate social media strategy into the foundations of a solid partner program with the same end goal these corporate marketers have in mind: closing deals.

To save your spot or contact us with questions, email Lisa at lisa.sabourin@ubm.com to save your spot. Hope to see you there!

* Early bird pricing available for April and June sessions if you book now!

Right about now each of us is thinking of our New Year’s resolutions for our body, our mind, and our business.

So if “The Channel” decided to come up with resolutions what would they be?  Go to the gym more?  Stop working 80 hours a week?  Probably not.  Here’s what I think “The Channel” would commit to for 2012, what do you think?

1. Learn to Communicate Better: Many of the vendors I speak to have a goal to better communicate with their partners.  Not more often, not via flashier means, but BETTER.  What the partners want, where and when they want it.  Whether that’s via a newsletter, LinkedIn, webinar, Twitter, or smoke signal; figure out what/where/when/how partners want to be communicated with and do just that.
2. Stop Wasting Money: Whether vendors spending money on resources for the partners or channel partners spending money on demand generation activities, test, test, test.  Don’t go all in until you figure out what your
   audience wants.  It’s fine to try a small sample or here’s a thought….ask them!  You have loyal partners, you have some loyal customers.  Ask what resources they would like or how they would like to be communicated with.
3. Trim Some Fat: Vendors, we all have those partners that contribute nothing but still take some of our resources.  We want to say we have so many partners but if 10% of those partners bring nothing to the table you’re not doing yourselves any favors.  Partners, the same is true for you.  Do you have some vendor products you brought on because a customer asked for their products years ago?  Get rid of them.  Both of you are better off focusing on the partnerships that are mutually beneficial.  Where 1+1=3.
4. Be Proactive: Every single one of us, channel or not, are so incredibly busy and find ourselves fighting fires instead of being proactive and thinking how we can grow/change/develop our business in 2012.  We think how we can keep our head above water, not how we can plan for the future.  This year, resolve to take some time to think, to create, to innovate.

We’re taking our own advice especially #4 so look forward to some cool innovations and announcements from Channel Maven in 2012. From the Channel Maven Consulting team have a very Happy New Year and a Happy Channel to all in 2012!

Do as I say, not as I do.  How often do I say that on this blog?  Last week we launched our seasonal newsletter for the first time since last January.  Yes, we haven’t been as current as we’d like but while we’re busy kicking off great newsletters on behalf of our clients we let ours fall by the wayside a bit.

So how can you launch a more successful newsletter?  One your partners and prospects will actually want to read.  What a novel concept, a newsletter with actual news.  Here are some tips for launching a newsletter your prospects or partners will actually want to read and *gasp* possibly pass on to others via “share”.

1. Is your News actually News? Sending out a newsletter with a bunch of announcements about awards you’ve won or events you have coming up is just self promotion at its worse.  It’s important that your readers get something out of reading your newsletter.  Certainly you can mix this type of content in but it’s important you are giving them a reason to keep reading, something to help them solve their own pain-points without hiring you.
2. Layout Does Matter: If you came to the New York Times website and all you saw was a streaming page of copy with the occasional headline in bold would you keep reading?  It’s a good idea to call out the most important information, to have a section that tells readers what else they can find in the newsletter and to provide readers with a layout that is easy to navigate.  Just like a web page make sure you put your most important message for content above the fold.
3. Content is King (or Queen): Be sure to link from the newsletter to pages within your website or valuable content you’ve created.  While I mention in point #1 to make sure there is actual news, obviously the point of your newsletter is to promote your business.  Make sure the content actually solves prospects’ pain points and that it’s interesting enough where they’ll keep reading.
4. Give them an Out…or an In: Provide an ‘unsubscribe’ link for those who no longer wish to receive your newsletter and respect that.  Take them out of your CRM system or mark them unsubscribed so if you change your marketing automation tool you haven’t lost track of their request to unsubscribe.  That said, if someone decides they want to receive your newsletter, allow people to opt-in on your website.
5. Stay on Schedule: Don’t over promise and under deliver BUT make sure you can stick to some kind of schedule.  I know this is my do as I say, not as I do moment but try to at least stick to quarterly.  Start of less frequently and make the schedule tighter as you are able.  In other words, don’t start a weekly newsletter if you can only keep up with quarterly.  Once quarterly is no big deal, go to every 6 weeks, then monthly and so on.
6. Stats tell a Great Story: Check out your stats, are your open and click-through rates going up or down?  If they’re going down is your list stale?  Which links are people clicking on the most?  Do you need to rejigger your headlines?

Newsletters are a great way to stay top of mind with your prospects and partners but make sure they are getting something out of it.  Always support your newsletter or any communication with social media by posting out to LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook.

Channel Maven Consulting is growing and we’re looking for some hard working, fun loving (while working or not), smart people. Below is a high level job description, does it fit you? If so we’d love to hear from you. Please send your resume to info@channelmavenconsulting.com or connect with Heather on LinkedIn.

I’ve talked a lot about how to grow your brand online. We’ve chatted blogging tips, banner design, LinkedIn and even pursuing email leads. This video, produced by Varvid a video agency focused on the channel, highlights my thoughts on one of our services, Campaigns In-a-Box. It’s also a perfect example of a great way to increase engagement in a blog and through online networks, via video:

Varvid’s VENUE packages are perfect for increasing your channel engagement. VENUE stands for Video Editing Network and User Education. It’s a DIY video production program pioneered by Varvid which they sum up with “you shoot it, we edit it, they see it”. Varvid provides all the necessary training to get you started with capturing your own raw footage, the VENUE staff edits the files and then helps you post these videos to your social media sites. Additionally, with higher tier packages for VARS, and the VENDOR packages (ask Varvid staff for details), Varvid will shoot a handful of videos for you a year, then support your work optimizing them and attaching analytics before you deliver them to your channel. The option seems perfect for capturing on video everything from how-to’s for channel partners to new product introductions.

Videos not only personalize your company and your work, they can also help you maximize your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Google now treats video content like any other content and it has been found that including videos on your site that are well formatted will up your SEO. To do this, Varvid recommends you:

• make sure you post your videos in YouTube (Google’s preferred video engine)

• place them on as many pages as you can on your site

• name and tag them wisely with relevant keywords

• write a full description of the video where necessary

• and change your featured videos often

While YouTube is ideal for connecting with the broader consumer market, I recently discovered, BrightTALK, who provides webinars and videos for professionals and their communities. Their webinar and video platform is ideal for those of you out there looking to differentiate yourselves and generate leads with webinars and video as part of your channel program. It’s also a powerful platform for connecting with potential partner leads and professionals looking for wisdom like yours. BrightTALK’s webinar and video channel allows you to easily create, manage, distribute and measure your webinars and videos. You can embed your BrightTALK channel on your website and start generating leads through the in-built one-time registration. You can also chose to distribute your webinars and videos on BrightTALK to generate leads for free. BrightTALK’s software is sales and marketing oriented, with a dashboard that shows you who is viewing what, for how long, what questions they asked and what they thought of your content.  Solution providers who have a BrightTALK channel are successfully generating leads and seeing an increase in lead to meeting and meeting to opportunity conversion rates.

Before working with Varvid and BrightTALK, I was already a big proponent of videos and their ability to bring your online presence to life. I now know that video is another essential component of increasing your SEO rankings. I’m also excited to see how we can use BrightTALK to grow our clients’ channel programs through innovative webinar and video channel strategies. So, keep an eye out on here for more videos. And in the meantime, what are you waiting for? Go on and get your cameras recording. I’d love to hear how video grows your online presence as you test out the waters.

The most successful organizations all have two things in common; they have great leadership and clear communication.  In today’s organizations, however, leadership has been hard to come by.  As Jon Wortmann, leadership coach and author, states in his eBook The Best Leader In the World “The faster the world moves, the more disasters happen everywhere, the more we put our heads down to just keep our organizations functioning. We’ve gotten really good at tasks.”  Really good at tasks?  So we have.  Over and over again I hear about planning for the short term; this quarter, this month, this project.  But when are we talking about our long term strategy?  When do we innovate, when do we revolutionize, when do we lead?

As vendors and solution providers in the channel we have the opportunity to grow businesses or revolutionize channel program and offerings.  But how many are?  We’re so busy with tasks that the idea of leading, of innovating has been put on the back burner.

So what can we do?  How do we commit to leading and evolving our organizations while empowering our teams?  In Wortmann’s book “The Three Commitments of Leadership”, he and his co-authors outline how leaders who commit to paying attention to the clarity, stability, and rhythm of leadership create teams people beg to be on.  What are the 3 Commitments true leaders make?

A few months ago, I ate my words when Dell announced an enhanced partner program. While I thought they’d never understand how to do this, they proved me wrong by launching quite the partner program based on a solid year of research they did with their partners before going live. Back at their launch, I applauded Dell for bringing more profitability to partners who showed investment in their offerings by designing a tiered program. I also was excited that Dell was thinking about their end customer’s needs when building the partner program.

Fast forward a few months down the road and Dell has stuck to their word. Again, I’m eating mine. They’re doing what I believe is essential in developing strong partner programs: keeping the partner and the end customer in mind.

What are they up to?

Late last week, Dell announced on a call with their partners the launch of a handful of new Small Business Server Bundles they can offer customers. These bundles are perfect for entry-level businesses and are business-ready, prepped with the software and power small businesses need. Even better? Dell knows that in this economy small businesses may be hesitant to make larger tech investments. Because of this, they have created a financing option channel partners can offer customers.

What’s the purpose of these bundles? How do they help partners?

We know it doesn’t do partners well to engage in a partnership program where they don’t see the growth in their business or feel supported in helping their customers. Despite this, company after company repurposes what they produce for their direct sales team before sending it onto their partners. Partners only thrive by growing their customer base and providing solutions they can support. They need end customer centric trainings and offerings from vendors to thrive as channel partners.

Dell has caught onto this. Instead of perceiving their partners as competition in closing deals, they’re creating solutions that their partners can easily sell in response to their customers’ needs. By offering their newly announced small business bundles, Dell’s partners now have a handful of options that speak directly to their customers: fully equipped and ready to go bundles, a variety of price levels and options for financing.

So, as a vendor, what can you learn from this?

I’ve said before that partner program benefits like these bundles and trainings on how to sell them are often perceived as partner perks not givens. The truth is, investing in your partners’ sales success means your success as a vendor. The better your partners do selling to their end customer, the better your bottom line.

Dell has taken a big step forward in their partner program by focusing on helping their partners more easily close deals. What can you learn from this? Focus on your partners’ customers’ needs and then help them sell, sell, sell. In the end, Dell’s showing us it will do you, the vendor, well.

Who else is doing this well?  As solution providers, are you engaging with Dell or others?

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting the Cisco Channels Social Media team to do a Virtual Velocity video for channel partners.  This team has way too much fun helping their partners learn new ways to drive business.  The video can be found on their Partner Velocity site along with a few other topics including Nancy Duarte’s “How to Persuade Any Audience” playback and next months “Igniting Performance” with Nilofer Merchant.  All topics really touch on how to be more successful in business and I love to see manufacturers like Cisco really going the extra mile for their partners.

There were so many great questions, I’ve added the link to Cisco’s Virtual Velocity Broadcast Recap and happy to answer any further questions here.

Any points I missed?  Would love any and all feedback!