On Rad's Radar? - social network Archives

Are You in the 5%?

2013-02-12T16:59:02Z

Recently, LinkedIn sent out an email (seemingly to everyone) to welcome in 200 million users and congratulate those with the top 1% and 5%. It was a great marketing gimmick to get lots of social mentions and website visits.

As this blog explains, everyone who received the email - 5% of 200M is 10M people! - would share it onliine. It reminds me of the Shift Happens video - due to the large number, is it really that special?

It's a numbers game. We feel special from recognition and winning and the mini-celebrity of it all. But as I tell my clients at the end of the day that activity better help you achieve a goal.

Social Media Blurbs from ITEXPO

2013-01-31T16:41:16Z

Startup Camp Comms is tonight. John Sculley is keynote. #asksculley is the hashtag on twitter (which is currently down!) for questions to the former CEO of Apple and Pepsi.

Tomorrow at 11 AM is my session on Social Media #itexpoqa

Gary Vanderchuck has a decent interview about social media on HuffPro.

Lastly, Seth Godin on marketing for small businesses. Make something that is easy to sell!!

Follow me on twitter at @radinfo

The Changing VAR World

2012-10-16T01:44:04Z

Opening evening at UBM's BoB Conference was a panel discussion about the change in the VAR and MSP community. This is a collection of tweets about the panel discussion #bob12.

Social Media (SM) , mobility, are cloud - threats to some, opportunities to some - both to many.

"Behave like a three-year old: fall down, learn something, try again."

How do you scale marketing and lower customer acquisition costs in cloud?

The Channel is hiring sales <-- luv to know where they are finding them.

Amazon has $1bill cloud biz and not even 5 people on the street.

Amazon, folks, offers just 2 services in self-serve fashion.

RainKing, Salesforce, radian6 (social media), data mining to understand clients better.

Vendors need scale, but the channel needs customer intimacy (and the channel needs to build its own brand).

Manufacturers do not like the channel. Channel Partners are not enamored with the the manufacturers either.

Biggest Issue: Mainly vendors don't understand what the channel does. Manufacturers/vendors do not like that channel partners are not exclusive and offer choice to the marketplace. [Telecom vendors are the same way!]

@UBMChannel: Number 1 trouble w/ vendors: they don't understand solution provider business and value. "We are not just vehicles to end customers" #BoB12

@UBMChannel: Marketing has changed as businesses do. Moving from finding customers to how do customers find you? #BoB12

Overall, even as the marketplace is changing, manufacturers are slow to change. Vendors still want the channel to just get them customers, push their products and get out of the way. The Channel now wants to build a brand, retain customers, increase wallet share, and sell managed services (some of which will be their own). Unfortunately, there isn't a huge ROI on that strategy for vendors. In Telecom as well.

A final point by the panel revolved around Gartner pushing the Cloud Services Broker model on VAR's. The panel thought that was a ridiculously low margin business - basically, transactional. It is likely going to become what the VAD (value added distributors like Ingram and Tech Data) will become in some sense.

Here's the flipside to that. Right now VAR's have accounts with both Ingram and Tech Data (and likely at least one other distributor like SYNNEX, D&H, CDW, Insight). When looking for hardware, VAR checks to see who has it in stock, at which distribution center, and for how much. When things switch to cloud services, it is unlikely that VAR's will have accounts at all 3 because they are not going to manage SAAS accounts across multiple vendors like they do now. It will be about going with 1 or 2 plus having their own.

The panel noted that we are in the midst of a change in the VAR business to a completely new organization - structure, personnel, skills, compensation, financing, marketing, sales and metrics will all be different when it is all done.

Sales is changing. Not only what is sold, but to who - IT is not the only buyer in an Enterprise any more. IT doesn't own the desktop anymore due to consumerization of IT. CMO and CFO buy differently from CIO. Can IT sales people sell to buyers other than IT?

Plus sales isn't about low hanging fruit anymore. It's about harvesting the whole tree. Acquiring customers is getting harder and more expensive. Retaining customers will be huge. Acquiring customers is different now. CLIENTS FIND YOU NOW, via blogs, social media, SEO, PPC. Are you involved in that???

The three panelists are making money now on Help Desk, End user Compute Space (which can include VDI) and in Global Managed Services (including help desk).

My Favorite CRM Gets J2'ed

2012-06-25T16:30:15Z

There is a CRM system that comes with dial-in help (as the Optional VIP Sales Assistant Support of the Gold package). That's right! Salespeople can call in to an assistant that will type in the info and ask for whatever info they need from the CRM system. It's called Landslide and it was just acquired by J2 Global which owns eFax.

CRM only works if the salesperson uses it and works it. Landslide has a lot of nifty features including social CRM which means that it can integrate data from Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook directly into their Contact profile. It integrates with QuickBooks, GoToMeeting and an email marketing module.

J2 Global has been adding to its portfolio for a couple of years by buying up Internet fax competitors. J2 now offers more than just efax. It sells virtual phone (like Google Voice), hosted email, email marketing (like Constant Contact), online data backup and kind of a unified communications system that is like Grasshopper Group or Phone.com. Now CRM. They have put together a nice catalog of cloud services for the SMB space. No idea how integrated they are though - or if they are just stand-alone apps.

So Much Stuff I Can't Get To

2012-06-04T15:53:01Z

So many things to write about but just not enough time.

Leap Wireless gets the iPhone 4S under its Cricket brand to sell without subsidy for $500! Let's see how that works. It does come with No Contract though.

A CompTIA study finds surprisedly that "interest in unified communications (UC) remains high, with four out of five companies seeing value in the technology. Large- and medium-size companies and those with a higher proportion of telecommuting workers are most bullish. What's more, budgets for communications and collaboration solutions are on the rise, at 85 percent of surveyed companies." I love studies that state the obvious - or sound like they were piad for by companies that needed to hear confirmation of their projections (and budget allocations).

We have seen in telecom that the master agents and carriers are replacing the search for agents with the slogan "We want VAR's". (This could be partially due to both groups - mastersand telcos - already having the lion's share of telecom agents already.) Now, "IT channel partner programs changing as business models shift," according to a TJS headline.

"With the industry changing and business transformation becoming a must, the channel is increasingly looking for help with how to sell and how to structure their business in new models," said Carolyn April, director, technology analysis, CompTIA. "Many vendors are looking at ways to identify practical partner segmentation and engagement strategies to pull off the balancing act of aligning new go-to-market strategies while maintaining short-term revenue productivity," she explained." Well if they want Go-To-Market Strategy and Sales Training, tehy should give my office a ring at 813-963-5884 or see me at ITEXPO. [use code "BLOG13" for a 20% discount]

Who knew that Best Buy's Geek Squad had a partner program? Not me. Geek Squad just signed 4 partners: Network Solutions Provider, Carrier Access, Inc., Access Media 3, and MACH 4. Now these agents can sell IT services in 50 states.

Social IQ has no price for Oracle. Oracle bought two companies in the last couplemof weeks to add to its SAAS offerings and social media intelligient quotient. "Oracle will acquire Vitrue, a leading cloud-based social marketing and engagement platform that enables marketers to centrally create, publish, moderate, manage, measure and report on their social marketing campaigns and activities on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+," per this press release. And "Oracle announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Collective Intellect. Collective Intellect's leading cloud-based social intelligence solutions enable organizations to monitor, understand and respond to consumers' conversations on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter," per this press release. As Facebook stock price falls, Oracle is buying up marketing automation companies for social media. I guess someone had to.

In Wireline ILEC News:

According to Reuters, "AT&T Inc Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said on Friday that a sale of rural phone lines may be too difficult to pull off because of regulatory hurdles." People have been betting that AT&T would spin off wireless like Verizon did. I figure that back office is such a mess that there isn't any clean way to separate the wheat from teh schaff. Ma Bell still operates the divisions - legacy AT&T, AT&T LD, BellSouth, BellSouth LD, SBC, Ameritech, etc. - under their original systems like in silos. And after that statement Stephenson then went on to complain about not enough spectrum, just like his successor, Ralph de la Vega, told him to.

In related news, AT&T is forcing customers to use U-Verse. No more DSL if U-Verse is available. (I think VZ is doing the same in FiOS areas. What am I talking about? Of course, they are. These guys never do anything original. They probably talk about it over Johnny Walker Blue and cubans at USTA meetings, when the hookers the lobbyists leave the room.) DSLR has the story about the expense incurred in the upgrades - new modems (that are not free) and price increases. Another win for cable -- which I HAVE to believe is the whole point: Let cable win and ask for forbearance. Get out from under state controls and sharing the networks. It has to be the end game, since Wireless and U-Verse/FiOS are less unionized; Next Gen; and less regulated.

Churn Predicted by Social Influence

2012-03-02T13:54:45Z

Found this preso this morning on twitter: Social Network Analysis for Telecoms. "A major North American telecom sought to identify factors driving customer churn. We applied social network analysis over several billion call records. We found that customers with a cancellation in their frequent calling network churned at twice the monthly rate."

Social Network Analysis for Telecoms

Most people have 3-5 frequent callers. That explains the Circles and Friends&Family plans.

When one of their frequent callers cancels, they are 7x more likely to leave. Now that's Influence.

What are you doing to retain customers (or re-acquire them)?

Social Media Channel Integration

2012-02-07T22:38:51Z

An ITEXPO panel on Wed. discussed social media integration in the contact center. Sanjay Popli of LiveOps, Manuel Ramirez of Avaya, and Alex Quilici of YouMail spent 45 minutes talking about social media and call centers.

There are five steps a company needs to take to implement social media strategy in a contact center.

Monitor social channels
Decide on Relevance
Assign employees to tasks
Establish Policies
Design procedure for interacting with the rest of the Org

The contact center could be monitoring for leads, complaints or opportunities on social media platforms. These platforms can include twitter, Facebook, Google+, Yahoo groups, forums, LinkedIn or any of the other thousands of online communities and networks that exist.

It is a way for call center to move from a cost center to a revenue center. Not just by following up on sales leads, but by preserving the brand and reputation of the company.

One item that all panelists agreed upon was that the time for response from a company has shrunk from a day to an hour. It's about speed now.

Another reminder from the panel is that conversations about your service and brand ARE indeeed taking place online (like on DSLReports and GetSatisfaction.com). Ignore it at your own peril.

Monitoring or Listening also includes finding out where your customers are hanging out online. Go where they are.

A final note was that previously most online commenters were anonymous. Today, about 70% are very traceable. That means you can identify them and interact with them. There are many books written about creating raving fans out of disgruntled customers. It is possible online as well.

Look for me in Miami Beach Next Week

2012-01-26T17:59:23Z

Next week is ITEXPO East 2012 in Miami Beach at the convention center. I arrive around 11 AM on Tuesday for Editor's Day. There are a number of all-day events going on Tuesday like InsightPRM's Sales Management training and the Avaya seminar.

Not surprisingly, most of the buzz around the show is on Startup Camp Comms, which is Thursday at 4 PM with keynote from Sir terry Matthews, founder of MITEL. Four start-ups will be pitching as well.

I have 5 slots this time.

Wed. night on the show floor at the CVX Expo stage, three agents - Dan Vidal, Josh Anderson and myself (fueled with cocktails) will answer questions from Martin Vilaboy, Editor-in-Chief of Channel Vision magazine about issues facing the Channel. Consolidation, Competition, Commissions, Cloud, UC, and the decline of the PSTN. The fun starts at 6:30. Straight from the Shooters: Candid Conversations on Issues Facing the Channel. Details here.

Wed. at 11 AM, I moderate the panel, Social Media Channel Integration, about contact centers integrating social media into the work station in room B210. The discussion will be about business drivers for social media; 4 steps to utilize social media in the enterprise; and hurdles to incorporating SM in the contact center.

At 2:30 on Wed., in room B116, I will be moderating a panel titled Educating the Channel with Industry Standard Certifications. It's a topic that is close to me because the TCA, which I helped found, is all about educating the Channel and rolled out a certification program last year. This will be a good conversation about how we need to education the sales channels as well as the marketplace in order to sell services like UC, Cloud and managed services.

The fun panel will be on Friday morning at 9 AM: Does Your Business Have a Social Media Strategy? Chief Head of Lettuce Antony Francis is an old pal, who likes to get cranky with me, so this panel will rock. You will leave with more info than you thought possible at 9 AM on a Friday in room B210.

At Noon on Friday catch me at the 4GWE session about Fixed Wireless as a wireline replacement (in room A109). Do you think fixed wireless can replace copper?

Look for my tweets from @radinfo and say HI if you see me.

Are You Going to ITEXPO?

2011-12-28T18:48:18Z

It's just about a month away from ITEXPO East 2012 that starts January 29, 2012. The Lowes Hotel is already sold out in Miami Beach.

I am moderating 4 sessions this time. Here they are:

2/1/2012 @ 11:00-11:45am - TRACK: Customer Engagement -- "Social Media Channel Integration"

2/1/2012 @ 2:30-3:15pm - TRACK: Next Gen Service Provider -- "Educating the Channel with Industry Standard Certifications"

2/3/2012 @ 9:00-9:45am - TRACK: Customer Engagement -- "Does Your Business Have a Social Media Strategy?"

At 4GWE on Friday the 3rd at Noon, I will be moderating "Wireless Access Open For Business" where we will be discussing fixed wireless as a last mile access choice. Then we will have an open discussion, kind of an Un-Conference.

You can register for ITEXPO or MSP World or Cloud Comm Summit for $99 until 12/31/11. You can register for 4GWE here. CVX for Agents and VAR's is no charge.

Asterisk workshop on the 31st is free (with any registration).

Julius Knapp, Chief of the Office of Engineering and Tech at the FCC, will be one of the keynotes.

Another keynote is Terry Matthews, chairman of Wesley Clover, MITEL, Newbridge and Counterpath.

Let me know if you are attending so we can meet up for coffee or for the Gathering Dinner.

Sprint's Spending on Marketing

2011-12-12T17:35:59Z

According to Adage, Sprint has a new CMO, Bill Moyer, who fired the old agency for a new agency to handle the $1.4 Billion ad spend of Sprint. I looked at that number and my jaw dropped. Sprint spends more than 1 billion in marketing dollars?

Surely there is a better way to spend that money than more black and white ads of Dan Hesse.

Yesterday, I asked some friends - all in marketing of one flavor or another - if they had seen the new Rocket Man VW ad. All said no. One said, "AH! But you remember it." Yeah. I like the Elton John song. I thought it was creative. But I would never buy a VW - even if it is a great stereo system. And this is VW's second creative commercial.

There are many elements to an effective commercial. It has to be creative or innovative or original. It has to be memorable, which is usually tied to an emotional response or connection with the viewer. Linking an emotion with a brand is HUGE!

However, today, we see that companies want more than "just" branding. They want - no, need - to move the needle of sales with their marketing spend.

Some companies are migrating ad dollars to social media. Too many get caught in the trap of social media numbers, while still others view social media as just another broadcast channel. Both miss the whole point.

Branding is important, especially in a commodity market. VW seems to be spending its time featuring features - the stereo and the remote start. More success could come if the brand centered around the customer experience. Customers own that car for 5 years and own that cell phone for at least 2 years. What are those years going to be like dealing with the Brand?

There are thousands of companies selling Hosted PBX. Call it anything you want, it's hosted PBX and it's fast becoming a commodity because everyone is selling it - Parallels, Intermedia.Net, Broadsoft's 400+ customers, Metaswitch's client base and more. To differentiate, it won't be about the features since you all have about the same ones. It will be about the Customer Experience, the Quality of Service and the Integration. At the end of the day, the marketing will have to demonstrate to your market what it will be like to have your service. Get there first. (Want help? Call me.)

Just Like Fishing

2011-10-28T19:40:06Z

I was reminded this morning while speaking to the STC that Marketing is just like fishing or hunting. You need to know what you will be trying to catch; what bait you will need; and where to hunt or fish.

Just like fishing, there are going to be some people just sitting in the boat catching nothing but a buzz and a sunburn because they are using the wrong bait (message) or there are no fish in that area.

Online marketing and social media really take that into account. Your message on Facebook (mainly a B2C play) will not work the same as it will on LinkedIn (mainly B2B) and it will be received on twitter or Google+ differently as well.

Marketing - online, offline, social - boils down to where are your prospects hanging out? What message will they respond to? How many times and how many ways can you touch that prospect with the appropriate message?

The Future of Media

2011-09-30T15:29:16Z

The buzz is that email is dead. Oh, voice is dying also. And if you believe all the hype, sell your airline stocks since video conferencing and tele-presence will replace travel.

"A company's corporate website is the top source of new sales leads--second only to personal connections and referrals, and more than seven times more effective than social media, according to a 2011 Demandbase National Marketing and Sales Study released today by marketing technology company Demandbase and online business network Focus, according to an article in the Tech Journal South. Yet the buzz says it's all social media.

Voice isn't dead either. If it was the contact center space would be folding up tents. Granted robo-calling is annoying, but it still won't end any time soon. (It just may get more challenging to reach humans instead of voicemail.)

Email is still my number one communication platform. Project management, clients, prospecting and more all happen via email. Notifications end up in email. When companies talk about unified messaging, it's about one inbox - the email tray.

Everyone has their preferred method of communicating: email, voice, text, chat, FB, twitter, and more. It is getting more baffling for people to keep track of conversation threads as they bounce from one medium to another - text to email to FB. But it all comes back to email - maybe mainly due to the inbox and inbox organization that we are used to. Texts, chats, notifications and more can all come back to an email inbox to be stored, organized and searched. That's why email will be around a while longer. Longer than you think anyway.

The future of media will be fractious at best.

Want an interesting look at new media?

The 1st CMO Summit

2011-09-14T06:49:42Z

I hope you were one of the hundred people in the room at the 1st CMO Summit at ITEXPO! Rich Tehrani kicked off this TMC special event at Fago da Chau with some opening remarks and introductions of the two speakers: Shawna Vercher and Brad VanAucken, who spoke about branding and online marketing strategy. A big hand to the speakers, the awesome team at TMC that managed every detail, the sponsors - CRE Group, RAD-INFO INC and Marketo - and the marketing heads that attended.

Integrating new media

View more presentations from RAD-INFO, Inc..

The Blake Project slides on Branding.

Building brand leadership

View more presentations from RAD-INFO, Inc..

What To Do in Austin Next Week

2011-09-06T17:19:38Z

Next week is the first time the ITEXPO West will be in Austin, TX. It's my first time in Austin (or Texas for that matter).

Once again, ITEXPO will be the home to a lot of great content. This time I am moderating two panels under the Social CRM Expo. Top 10 Tips for Online Marketing on Wed. at 2 PM with Shawan Vercher, Kyle Flaherty and Rusty Shelton. Then at 3 PM, Does Your Business have a Social Media Strategy? with Ronan Keane, Mike Langford, Simon Salt and Sanjay Popli. Following those 2 must attend sessions is the networking reception followed by Startup Camp from EMBRACE, where Robert Metcalfe will be the keynote address. Awesome! (I hope you registered for it already!)

There are many sessions going on at the same time all week. Check your program carefully or you will miss some good content and speakers.

The emphasis this year was to bring in more C-level presenters as well as some experts from outside telecom (like on my panels for instance). The CMO Summit on Tuesday night is for C-level execs to learn about branding and online marketing while mingling with their peers. (Be warned: no substitutes - CEO, CMO, President or VP of Marketing only!)

Another C-level networking opportunity is the Cloud Communications Summit, where EMBRASE has assembled a C-level cast of speakers plus a Social Networking Lunch & M&A Keynote.

The Channel Vision Expo will be happening on the show floor - a good place to learn how to sell this cloudy stuff. (Build it and they will come is a broken myth; you have to sell this stuff.)

Besides selling Cloud Comm, you have to on-board the customer properly. Katie Butcher at B-Lynk will be moderating an all-female panel of experts on on-boarding Hosted PBX customers.

If you can only make one day, make it Wed. Startup Camp, my sessions and the party!

Looking for the Gathering Over a Meal? That's Monday night. Looking to have a coffee and talk about the Industry, social media or your business? Email me or find me in the press room. See you in Austin!

ITEXPO in Austin Will Be Hot

2011-08-04T22:04:52Z

Taking a cue from Jon Arnold, here's what I have going on at ITEXPO West 2011 in Austin (a move from Los Angeles in previous years):

While I will miss the chance to hit Manhattan Beach for some beach volleyball, this will be my first time in Austin.

It's also the first time that there will be a CMO Summit at ITEXPO. My company and my pal's company, CR8 Group, in conjunction with a great team at TMC - Dave, Anna and Mike - are bringing in 2 speakers to discuss Online Branding. Rich Tehrani wrote about it today. CMO, CEO, President or VP of Marketing only. 75 execs in charge of marketing to network and learn. Apply for a ticket now!

I usually have a panel for Reseller Day or under the ITEXPO banner for VoIP, but this year I am moderating 2 panels for the Social CRM Expo. Keeping with the CMO theme of online marketing, my panels run from 2-3:45. At 2, Top 10 Tips for Online Marketing with Shawna vercher on the panel. At 3, Does Your Business Have a Social Media Strategy? Both should be pretty informative. (Wait until you see the panelists!)

Then over on the show floor, the Channel Vision Expo will be happening. Get ready for a Channel Manager Round Table!

Startup Camp is at 5PM on the 14th! That is a don't miss session.

If you will be in town, let me know - I woould love to have coffee, a drink, dinner or interview you for the blog. Email me for a time!