Channel Top 10 -- Channels Go Social Media

Channels go Social Media Social Media – The Channel Top Ten For more information Mike Dubrall http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedubrall or Channels of the Future Community www.gilwellgroup.xeequa.com

“ Channels go Social Media” Series Today’s Presenter Michael Dubrall Managing Director Gilwell Group, LLC Gilwell Group provides research, consulting, and enablement services to help organizations measure, manage, and improve partnership productivity through the use and understanding of next generation products and tools.

Social Media Chaos – So Many Sites, So Little Time

How Resellers Are Using Social Media

Site By Site Review

Some COTF Research Results

Which Social Media Sites Are The Most Important, A Top Ten Countdown

If you are not already active in the various spaces, you may find it interesting to follow:

MIke Dubrall on LinkedIn

@ MikeDubrall on Twitter

Channels of the Future Group on LinkedIn

Today’s Agenda

Social Media Value Pyramid Social Media Impacts All Levels Of The Value Chain Technology vendors are adapting their channel programs in response to the availability of Web 2.0 tools/technologies. Today’s Focus

Social Networking is as old as civilization. It involves the sharing of information among friends/acquaintances to socialize, discuss topics of interest, reduce risks, and make more informed decisions. Social Media is how the internet has changed social networking. It includes the use of Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, video file sharing, and social networking sites like Facebook to expand the reach of social networking and more effectively capture and share relevant information. (Matt Goddard, R2i.ntegrated.com) On-line Communities combine many social media capabilities in one secure place to facilitate communications, collaboration, and networking for social, educational, or business purposes “ Social Media is the collection of tools and online spaces available to help individuals and businesses to accelerate their information and communication needs.” - Axel Schultze Earlier today I was once again asked to wrap a neat definition around social media. It seems increasingly hard to do this without sounding like a bit of a tool. Chris Lake on eConsultancy

Awareness Magazine, 9/08 The speed of acceptance for social media is staggering. 75% of adults now use Social Media to connect with each other. Forrester 400 M social media users Crossing Over Into Business

Some of the largest sites today

Bebo 40,000,000

Classmates.com 50,000,000

Facebook 175,000,000

Friendster 90,000,000

Hi5 80,000,000

Adult Friend Finder 33,000,000

LinkedIn 35,000,000

Orkut 67,000,000

Reunion.com 51,000,000

Tagged.com 70,000,000

Windows Live Spaces 120,000,000

MySpace 253,145,404

Approximately 30% of the one Billion Internet users are now part of a social network. In five years - 400+ million users of social media. This happened with - zero advertising - zero sales - zero cold calls

Entire Ecosystems have developed around the most popular sites pwytter Twitterholic.com CNN has almost 700,000 followers 50 Great Widgets For Your Blog 40+ Tools For Google Calendar SKYPE TOOLBOX: 50+ Enhancements for Skype GMAIL TOOLBOX: 60+ Tools For Gmail

Common Social Media Sites Where Resellers Congregate

Meetups

Blogs-Twitter

LinkedIn - Plaxo

Digg/Delicious

SlideShare – Flickr

YouTube – Yahoo Video

Issuu – Schribd

Podcast - Podcastalley

Branded On-line Communities

Google / Yahoo Groups

MySpace – Facebook

Some Things to Consider

Virtually all large technology vendors have a formal social media initiative (not with channels)

Plus dozens of informal projects scattered across the company

Partner Sales Managers are increasingly spending their time on social media activities

Partners increasingly concerned about how vendors communicate with them and their customers

Already there are leaders and followers among vendors and social media activities

There are a lot of thought leaders on Twitter

This impacts branding and positioning

This impacts your ability to influence channel behavior

What Resellers Are Doing (Or Should be Doing)

Finding New Customers

Improving Proposal Close Rates

Shortening Sales Cycles

Training Employees and Customers

Recruiting Employees

Improving Customer Satisfaction

Building Partnerships with other Resellers

Advertising, Public Relations, building brands, disseminating information, filling webinars, and more

Common Social Media Sites for Resellers

Industry Blogs

Twitter

LinkedIn - Plaxo

SlideShare - Issuu - Flickr

Digg/Delicious

MySpace – Facebook

Meetups

Common Social Media Sites Where Resellers Congregate

Tactical Sites

SlideShare – Flickr

Issuu – Schribd

Podcast - Podcastalley

Dual Presence Sites

MySpace

Facebook

Experimental Sites

Twitter

Digg/Delicious

Training/Communication Sites

SlideShare

Blogs

Networking sites

Meetups

LinkedIn - Plaxo

Tactical Sites Used for Convenience

SlideShare

Flickr

Issuu

Schribd

Box

Podcast

Podcastalley

Many More – Google Search Free File Sharing

SlideShare

Flicker Posting photos for tech support and on-line use EMC = 18,639 on Flickr Hewlett Packard = 43,507 Microsoft = 211,098

Flickr

ISSUU Posting documents for on-line use

Scribd - Posting documents for on-line use

Podcast (Podcastalley) Posting podcasts for easier access

Podcast

Dual Presence Sites

Facebook

MySpace

Facebook

Personal Branding on Facebook

MySpace

Experimental Communication Sites

Digg

Delicious

Twitter

Digg/Delicious

Explanation and example of Reseller Use

Twitter

The world’s biggest

communication chain

Twitter

#Virtual Chat Rooms

Twitter

Sites Used for Training/Knowledge Transfer

SlideShare

Yahoo Video

YouTube

SlideShare

Sites Used for Training

YouTube

Yahoo Video

SlideShare

YouTube Videos, Channels, Playlists IBM – almost 10,000 videos

Sites Used for Networking - Sales

LinkedIn

MeetUps

Yahoo Groups

Google Groups

Branded Communities

LinkedIn Prospecting 153 results for Dow Chemical, Vice President Sales 115 results for John Deere, Vice President Sales

LinkedIn Groups 14,667 results for cisco partner 44,356 results for microsoft partner 3,844 results for value added reseller 48,488 results for channel partner

LinkedIn Research

LinkedIn Profiles

Meetups 964 in Santa Clara

Meetups

Google/Yahoo Groups

Branded On-line Community Systems

Tying Branded Communities Together Reseller A Reseller B Reseller C Reseller D . . . . . . Reseller N Master Consol Distributing smart, non advertisial content such as blog posts, events, white papers, news, video clips to hundreds or thousands of partner community systems. Partner communities Allow selected vendors to syndicate content with their customer community. Getting content directly to the existing installed base Customer Base Customer Base Customer Base Customer Base Customer Base Like AdWords for “smart content” With a distribution system that is transparent and Channel aware

Channels of the Future Research Personal Activities – Reseller Employees participation in the following kinds of Web 2.0 sites, where 1 is no participation and 10 means you visit daily LinkedIn 3.78 Industry Blogs 3.52 MySpace/Facebook 3.08 YouTube 2.65 Twitter 1.93 Second Life 1.41

Channels of the Future Research Reseller Needs from Vendors Rate your interest in having your vendors provide the following social media tools to make you and your company more successful, where 1 is no interest and 10 is extreme interest. On-Line Product Demos 6.75 E-marketing/Storefronts 6.50 Internet Advertising 6.03 Help with SoMe 5.03 On-Line Communities 5.00 Testimonials on YouTube 4.41

Channel Top Ten

On-Line Communities (Branded and Open)

LinkedIn

Blogs

Facebook

MySpace

YouTube

Yahoo Video

Twitter

Flickr

Tactical Sites (SlideShare, Issuu, etc.)

Channel Top Ten

Branded On-Line Communities

LinkedIn

Yahoo and Google Groups

YouTube

Blogs

SlideShare + (podcasts, files, pictures)

MySpace & Facebook

Twitter

Digg/Delicious

?

Free Resources

Webinar on April 24 ( http://xeeurl.com/A0884 )

Report Summary at http://xeeurl.com/A0885

Channels of the Future Breakfast on May 6

Channels of the Future Group on LinkedIn

Channels go Social Media Social Media – The Channel Top Ten For more information Mike Dubrall http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedubrall or [email_address]