Social Media Strategies for Partner Development by Francine Allaire

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You may not reproduce, distribute or use the content in any manner without prior written consent. Copyright 2011
Proven Social Media Strategies &
Tools for Partner Development
BAPTIE MARCH 23, 2011

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Today’s Presenter
• Named by FORBES as 1 of the Top 20 Most Influential Women to
follow on Twitter for Business, Marketing & Technology Advice
• Award-winning sales and alliance executive working for global high
tech & consulting companies (Oracle, Ariba, Sun Microsystems,
CSC, KPMG)
• Negotiated over $200M of business solutions & strategic alliances
• Revenue Acceleration Strategist: Help companies develop and
execute business development and partnership strategies and
initiatives that generate incremental revenue growth/sales
• Corporate Social Media Consultant, Speaker and Instructor
• Chair of Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (Orange
County), Social Media and Partnership Columnist for The Examiner

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Clients
• Leading provider of Data Management, Analytics &
Marketing Technologies
• Leading Web Analytics Company
• Largest women’s fitness franchise in North America
• Leading book publishers
• Major fashion, beauty and lifestyle magazine
• Prominent non-for-profit in women’s health
• Leading personal organizer corporation
• One the largest certified training academy for home
stagers
• Emerging small business owners and established
experts

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4 Questions
• Why is it important for companies to
engage in social media.. and with their
partners?
• Why aren’t more companies doing it?
• How to get started?
• Who is doing it well?

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Today’s Agenda
• The New Landscape
• Why Social Media in Partnering?
• The Reality Check
• Setting the Stage for Social Media Success
• How to Get Started?
• Measuring Social Media Success
• Social Examples of Companies Executing Well
• Resources
• Q&A

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Buyers’ preferences and buying
behaviors and patterns
have changed
Your customers and your partners’
customers are buying differently, you
need to sell to them differently and give
them what they want - if you don’t your
competitors will!

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The New Landscape
• 101 million web users read blogs – Comscore
• 17% of time online is spent on social networking and reading
blogs/reviews – Neilson
• 70% of bloggers write about brands organically, almost half post
product reviews – Technorati
• 65% of blog readers access blogs to get an opinion – Synovate
• 92% of people trust user reviews over sales people – Penn Shoen
and Berland
• 52% of readers said blogs factored into the critical moment
they decided to buy – Jupiter Research
• 78% listen to someone else when it comes to buying not the
company – Forrester Research
• Fact or fiction? Most customers seek out deals, discounts,
promotions online – CIO Magazine

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“New” Customer Decision Cycle -
Harvard Business Review – December 2010
Evaluation Stage = Seek Input from
Peers, Colleagues, Friends, Fans,
Followers, Reviewers, Industry Experts
BUY ~ Most powerful influence
is someone else’s advocacy
Consideration Stage =
Selection of Multiple
Brands
Enjoy,
Advocate
and BondEnjoy, Advocate
Bond

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Why Social Media in Partnering?
• Play a critical role in the information gathering process
and in building relationships
• Brand awareness and thought leadership make it easier
to recruit new partners and for your partners to sell and
recommend your solutions
• Provide the ability to demonstrate your expertise and
thought leadership
• Ability to attract new partners
• Engage, energize, educate and empower the channel
community to fuel the conversation, the experience, the
recommendations
• Increase partner sales and reduce support costs
• Help foster partner loyalty

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Why Social Media in Partnering?
• Help your partners sell more – it’s no longer just about
your partners it’s about your partners’ customers – Go to
market strategies must evolve because people and
companies are buying differently today
• Buying patterns and customer dynamics have
changed – companies/people look at the Internet, read
blogs, check forums, online groups, get feedback on
Twitter or other tools, ask friends, peers, colleagues,
industry experts and other trusted sources on social
networks
• Social media is not a fad. Conversations are happening
with or without you, are you listening? Better yet, are you
participating, igniting the conversations? The debate as
to whether or not you should.. is over! The Question now
is how?

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PARTNERS
PROSPECTS
CUSTOMERS
SUPPLIERS
Your
Company -
Social
Business
In the Network Economy Everything is Intertwined!
Your business ecosystem of customers, prospects and partners together are far more powerful than
any individual relation to an individual person. Make your customers talk to prospects. Make your
partners evangelizers of your vision. Let your alliances speak for you. Let your suppliers help you.

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Make Social Your Business™!
• IBM conducted a study with 1,600 CEOs worldwide
• Number of CEOs who are now crowd sourcing with
partners and customers, outside of their firewall, has
increased by 60% year over year
• 50% of the outperformers leverage their ecosystem of
partners, customers, suppliers and employees
• The net net: when you go outside of your firewall your
build higher brand loyalty, increase your level of
influence, add value and gain a competitive edge

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Going Social May Be
Common Sense but it’s not YET
Common Practice for Everyone!

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Survey Results
• Has your company adopted a social media strategy?
Yes 90% No 10%
• Are you personally engaged as a company social media
spokesperson Yes 0% No 100%
• Are you actively engaging in social media to recruit partners
Yes 50% No 50%
• What tools/strategies are you using? Combination of Linkedin,
Twitter, YouTube, Facebook
• Are you actively engaged in social media to communicate with your
current partner community? Yes 41.6% No 58.4%
• Are your competitors using social media to actively recruit and/or
engage with their partner community? Yes 50% No 25%
Don’t know 25%

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How Channel Marketing Executives
View Social Media
Reference: Responses were derived from 10 channel marketing execs in hi-tech Fortune 500 companies
John Walker – Hawkeyechannel.com
http://blog.hawkeyechannel.com/index.php/2011/03/social-media-and-the-channel/#more-1068

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The Reality Check
Some of the challenges in adopting social media
• Many companies don’t even have a solid partner marketing
organization, infrastructure and programs already in place
• Social media takes time and require new skill sets
• The emphasis is on near-term cash generation and survival “not
community”
• Lack of fully understanding the shift in marketing channels,
customer dynamics and relevance to B2P
• Lack of an effective social media marketing strategy and integration
into an overall channel communication strategy
• Measuring and proving the ROI of social media programs
• Getting the budget and resources social media deserves
• Finding experienced and proficient social media marketers
• Management resistance to sharing information online

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Setting the Stage for
Social Media Success
• Develop a comprehensive strategy – don’t jump in without proper
research / listening
• Don’t fixate on technologies but on defining clear objectives
• Set guidelines and policies for using social media – internally and
with partners http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php
• Use internally first to train and teach people - ROI internally to
Showcase the value of social
• Don’t treat social media like a campaign with a beginning and an
end – social media requires consistency and commitment
• Listen, Monitor and Analyze before doing anything else
• Measure, Evaluate and Adjust constantly
• Think of Social Media as leverage, influence and adding value

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80% THE PLANNING, STRATEGIES, OBJECTIVES SET, PRIORITIES
Your Success Depends on…
20% TECHNOLOGIES, DEVICES, TOOLS

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Nail the Strategy First
• Set clear goals, objectives and priorities (recruit new
partners, improve partner loyalty, increase # of leads,
sales volume..)
• Align your online efforts with your strategic
objectives/corporate/partner initiatives
• Spend budget more efficiently and effectively
• Reduces overwhelm & keep you focused on your goals
• Helps you determine what works and what doesn’t work
• Recruit your social media team – resources from product
management, engineering, channel marketing, channel
communications, Marcom, sales, customer service
= integrate social media into your channel marketing,
channel communication strategy, branding, traditional
marketing and PR

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How to Get Started?
First Listen, Monitor and Analyze
• Establish a baseline, analyze the landscape
• Listen to what your partners are saying about you, to you
and for you - Spend 50% of your time listening - be
aware and mindful of the conversations
• Monitor #Hashtags
• Observe and Monitor - create a list of search phrases,
keywords and influencers:
– Partners, competitors, industry experts, your brands,
products, companies…
• Segment, Profile and Rank Your Partners to craft
messaging and programs to the right partners

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LISTENING is Free but the Information is Priceless
The good, the bad and
the ugly
(let’s hope not),
You NEED to know.
SocialMention.com
GoogleAlerts.com
Tweetbeep.com
Search.Twitter.com
Tweetdeck.com

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Get Engaged
• Determine your Keywords – Relevance is everything
• Join Linkedin Groups and “Like” Facebook Fan Pages –
observe – add comments and value when appropriate
• Create your circle of influence on Linkedin – Find them,
Make an appropriate connection with them and start
building a relationship
• Open your own Twitter account
• Discover who cares about your niche, products/brands –
find them in groups, networks, forums
• Search comments, forums, discussions
• Track sentiment
• Start Blogging on your company blog

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How to Measure Success?
– Create a Social Media Dashboard (free or use paying
tools like: Radian6, IBM/Cognos Consumer Insight)
and measure everything
– Track # of inquiries, leads from social campaigns,
from Twitter and other social sites
– # of leads provided to partners
– Measure engagement and loyalty –how much do they
engage, how many conversations
– Track sentiment
– Track Conversion to sales revenues

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Social Marketing Objectives and Metrics
Social Marketing Objectives
• Increase number of leads
• Increase partner engagement
• Increase product awareness
• Improve brand reputation
• Increase product education
• Increase information sharing
• Increase number of
participants in events
• Increase traffic
Social Marketing Metrics
# inquiries/leads/qualified leads
# of new discussions/comments
Reach
Track Sentiment
# of content downloads
# RSS, tweets, posts, comments
of blog posts, RTs
# of registrations/
Inbound links, sharing
# of unique visitors,
RSS feeds

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EXAMPLES

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IBM – Partner Event
• Results: Partner Event - Reach 40% of their total event
registration goal in 72 hours all through social
engagement
Goal # 1 To increase registration/participation of new
and existing partners
Used Twitter and Linkedin (asking and answering
questions), in their Private Groups, giving offers of 1:1
meeting with their CTO and other incentives, create
#hashtag for event

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• Goal # 2. Create a perpetual community beyond the conference
where partners would continue to contribute, connect and co-
create. UGC is rank the highest of SE, at the event, energize the
channel through the use of Flickr and YouTube. Ask attendees to
upload their videos answering the following questions: At the event:
Why did you come? At the end of the event: What did you like best
about the event? After they had returned home: What are you going
to do to stay engage with the community?

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Goal # 3 Improve Consumption and Conversion
Created a
Widget:
syndicate IBM
assets and info Live Person
- Drives leads by more effective
listening & responding
- Accelerated lead identification and
progression

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Intel Partner Site

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Intel on Facebook

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Intel – Facebook Deals

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Intel – Software Partner Group

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Intel on Twitter

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Intel – Company Page - Linkedin

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RESOURCES

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Resources - Case Studies
• Jive Software – B2B
http://www.jivesoftware.com/customers/case-studies
• Womma http://www.womma.org/casestudy/
• Social Marketing Results from 93 companies (Book
$19.95)
http://www.socialmedia-marketing-results.com/Social-Media-M
• Very comprehensive list of books, sites and case studies
http://www.interactiveinsightsgroup.com/blog1/social-media-e
• Social Media Examiner
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/category/case-studies/

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Resources – Companies, Blogs
• Few companies to model: Cisco, Intel, IBM, Dell, SAP
• Great blogs to follow:
– Sandy Carter - Vice President, Software Group Channels at IBM
http://socialmediasandy.wordpress.com/
– Michael Stelzner http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/
Look of case studies- like How Social Media Helped Cisco Shave
$100,000+ Off a Product Launch
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/cisco-social-media-product-
launch/
– Social Media Today http://www.socialmediatoday.com
– Mashable http://www.mashable.com
– Brian Solis http://www.BrianSolis.com
– Chris Brogan http://www.ChrisBrogan.com
– Mine soon http://www.FrancineAllaire.com

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Linkedin Groups to Join
• Social Media Channel Partners
• Alliances and Channels Friends
• Channel Partners Network
• Channels of the Future
• Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals
• Linkedin Directory
http://www.linkedin.com/groupsDirectory
• Follow Companies on Linkedin – Existing Partners, New
Partners, Competitors

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Q & A

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Connect with Me
• For questions or for information on how I can
help you, email me: AllaireFrancine@gmail.com
• Follow me on Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/FrancineAllaire
• Connect with me on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/francineallaire
• Visit my website at:
http://RevenueAccelerationStrategies.com

Social Media Strategies for Partner Development by Francine Allaire

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