Channel Manager's Playbook 2016

Epilogue:

Using Social

Media Effectively

The best way to stay top of mind with your channel

partners is to offer concrete examples of your services.

Social media can help with that.

Today, content marketing is the new SEO (search en-

gine juice). And re-purposing of content is also becoming

an automated process. For example, one long article can

be parsed out as several Facebook posts, as paragraphs

or quotes.

The most important thing to remember is that your

Internet home base should be something you own, similar

to a blog or company Web site. LinkedIn groups, Facebook

pages, Twitter or similar are not properties that you own.

Rules change on these social networks, often in order to

increase revenue for the owners (and stakeholders) of the

networks.

You should own your own “Hub,” your home base, your

Internet HQ. [Side note: I break my own rule on this, as

I blog on TMC’s site and on blogger. However, all of that

content feeds to

I recommend blogging, but most people freak out

about blogging – the commitment, the blog ideas, etc.

It is a long-term commitment. There are no shortcuts to

growing a loyal fan base. Sorry.

Now, a blog post doesn’t have to be 750 words. It can

be 200 words if the thought or idea is complete. For ex-

ample, if I was blogging about the latest hosted PBX sale,

I could simply state:

“Our partner recently closed a 50 seat HPBX sale to

a real estate office in Tampa. The main factor was the

find-me-follow-me function for the agents as well as the

unlimited voicemail boxes and extensions for agents, bro-

kers and property descriptions. This replaces a premises

system that was aged out.”

Short and sweet. I could go into more detail by add-

ing, “The partner will help with the deployment on-site

and training will come from the company on turn up

and 90 days later. Polycom and Yealink phones will be

deployed along with an Edgewater IAD and about 40

THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S

PLAYBOOK