I imbibe pretty much every research report that I can get my hands on these days, especially those pertaining to strategy in social media.

There’s a great piece from Forrester Research, from about one year ago actually, that I find really useful in helping think through the potential impact that a social media strategy could have when it comes to business-to-business relationships. The report is called “Making Social Media Work in B2B marketing,” and I suggest that channel managers consider this information not just from the point of view of the ultimate end-user customer but in how you should use social media to engage channel partners more meaningfully than may be possible through existing partner portals or partner relationship management systems.

From Forrester’s point of view, these are the objectives that should guide any B2B social media marketing plan:

• Listening: Sort of like live market research in which you can generate new ideas, prioritize programs that are already in place (or that you’re planning), send up trial balloons about new concepts you are considering or ask out-right for feedback.
• Talking: Create buzz for events, get in front of market influencers.
• Energizing: Share successes or encourage people to attend events.
• Spreading: Share best practices, gather contributions for customization or workflow, figure out appropriate service levels.
• Supporting: Create ways to help teach partners and other constituents; alternatively, create peer-to-peer discussion forums where questions and issues can be addressed quickly.
• Embracing: More formal outreach, such as online training or co-development that will help build skills around your products or services and make people feel good about wanting to use them or represent them.

Of course, you may choose to focus on just one of these elements, depending on your priorities. But rather than getting all hung up on whether to use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or whatever other tool springs to mind, think first of where you need the most help when it comes to the things listed above and then make your decision.

Had the good fortune this week to attend the Fall Invitational held on behalf of the Ingram Micro VentureTech Network, since I will be handling a project for them over the coming months.

Sat in on a great session about the value of social media for high-tech channel companies and wanted to share a couple of the comments made during the session held by Matt Singley, senior director of social media strategy for M80, a firm that counts the likes of Microsoft as its clients. It is interesting to note that Singley is a former Ingram Micro VAR, so he “gets” the channel.

I’m not going to define social media, because I have already written about it several times in this very blog at these links (“Creating Channel Social Business Networks is Not a Trivial Investment” and “How Tweet It Is, Etc.”) But here are some of the observations I found most interesting:

• Among 100 Top companies, the brands that were MOST engaged with social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn recorded average growth of 18 percent over the past year while those that were LEAST engaged saw sales decline by about 6 percent.
• The clickthrough rate for paid search advertising increases by at least 50 percent for brands that engage in social media activities.
• Think less about B2B and more about B2P. After all, business is about relationships between people.
• It is not enough to listen anymore.
• If you’re going to blog, do it at least one to two times a week. (Ouch, I feel this one!) If you use Facebook, visit at least three to five times; if you’re going to tweet on Twitter, you need to do so at least three times a day.
• Remember ethics: If you are writing something on behalf of your company, so say. You need to disclosure context for your point of view. Another point: The Federal Trade Commission is going to start watching social media for unauthorized disclosures of corporate information come Dec. 1, 2009. So be careful that you’re not breaking any non-disclosure agreements when you write about something.

You can  download Matt’s VTN presentation at this link.

AND I highly recommend following Matt on Twitter (@mattsingley) or visiting his Web site (http://www.mattsingley.com/).

Everywhere I look, some high-tech vendor is engineering the design of a private social network especially for its channel partners.

While the overwhelming adoption of networks like LinkedIn or Facebook is doubtless the reason for this enthusiasm, there still really is very little much information about how businesses are using social networks for classic business-to-business interactions.

I should disclose that I’ve been thinking about this in the context of some work I’ve been doing for the worldwide channels group at Cisco Systems. But the move by IBM to establish its own social network with PartnerWorld Communities AND the impending launch of a similar mechanism by Microsoft have got me thinking a lot about this particular issue. This whole conversation reminds me of the huge push behind partner portals a few years back, as high-tech vendors (rightly so) looked at ways of improving communications to and with their channel partners. I ask anyone reading this: How fruitful were those investments?

While I am a huge fan of social networks and other social media applications, such as the micro-blogging service Twitter, I hope these vendors have the patience and persistence to make these investments in closed channel communities worthwhile. Here’s some context for my concern.

1. A recent study by Forrester Research (“The Social Technographics of Business Buyers,” Feb. 20, 2009) shows the use of blogs, social networks and other so-called social technology decreases “on the job.” So, for now, participation in closed channel social networks is likely to be limited. The survey base included 1,217 people in IT buying and recommendation roles across North America and Europe.
2. As to who actually uses social networks, penetration in the United States is about 35 percent. It’s lower in Europe and higher in some Asia Pacific countries, such as Korea, according to some separate data from Forrester Research.
3. Here’s the clincher for me though: Right now, Forrester Research reveals that 42 percent of U.S. online adults juggle at least two social network identities; and 63 percent also participate in some sort of discussion forum.

I don’t know about you, but considering the time that social networking takes, something has got to give and I’m betting it’s not the Facebook account. The vendors who are building these networks need to remember the following:

1. It takes MONTHS for a following to develop, which means you need to appoint credible subject matter experts who will spend months nurturing the network with great content and helping guide conversations.
2. Anecdotally speaking, many VARs and IT solution providers tell me they’re not all that eager to share marketing or sales tips that could help their competitors. There, I’ve said it. HOWEVER, interestingly enough, systems engineers and support personnel have little problem sharing tidbits that can help make everyone’s job a little easier.
3. Mobility is a big deal. When you’re out at client sites or prospective client sites selling for most of the day, you’re less likely to spend time catching up on social network conversations.
4. VARs and resellers have more than one vendor vying for their time online. Why is your social network the most relevant one for them? Is it because you help them market or sell the entire solution rather than a point product?

Here’s how I think closed social business networks could be VERY useful for a high-tech company hoping to forge closer ties to its channel partners:

• They could be used to create a way for your channel account managers and field teams to interact more seamlessly with partners in their geography. Why limit the “closed” network to your partners? In fact you shouldn’t. This might be a great way for them to be more in touch with teams across your company, to stay in closer step with deals that are in the works or be alerted about local activity that might be of mutual interest.
• Systems engineers could contribute real-world insight into real-world problems. In some cases, social business networks are already being used as a collaboration tool for product development. As a real example, I’ll point you to the case of Chordiant Software, which uses a platform from Jive.
• Success stories (and therefore best practices information) can be shared by your channel marketing team, especially in the form of video. In the brief experiments I’ve done with some of SWOT’s clients, I’ve found that the right video (in the form of a partner testimonial) usually gets more attention than written version of same.
• By adding the right information widgets in the form of RSS feeds, you can all stay on top of competitive threats or developments.

With certainty, I can say that every high-tech vendor SHOULD be evaluating a social networking or broader social media strategy. But I definitely wouldn’t advise them all to build their own platform. Your team might be better served applying some of the concepts I’ve mentioned above to a group on LinkedIn. Personally, I believe Facebook will have a hard time overcoming its roots as something focused on personal connections. I refrain from adding professional contacts there myself, unless I’ve met them at a conference or they’ve been good enough to read stuff that I write (like this!)

If you want to chat more about social networks and B2B social media strategy, I welcome your outreach. I can be reached at this e-mail, or you can find me on both Facebook and LinkedIn.

I learn something new every time I “tweet,” the act of sending out a status update, random thought, link or some other 140-character-limited message on the Twitter social media service.

I am absolutely a Twitter neophyte, someone who only has roughly 220 followers, although that grows by 5 or 6 people every day. One of my ex-CRN colleagues has something like 12,000-plus people keeping tabs on his updates. That’s a lot of responsibility!

I have had many, many debates with vendor channel managers and VARs about the business value of what Forrester Research calls social media. That term covers all manner of things, but I sort of think of it according to the three C’s: Web technology that lets you interact with a Community, Collaborate in real time and participate in Conversations that have relevance for your personal and professional life. As far as I can in my unscientific experience, some VARs, resellers and other IT solution providers are dabbling with social media, but many don’t see how it could possible pertain to their business.

While I think this is short-sighted and somewhat of a generational thing, I can see why. The fact is, many of the sales and marketing types out there in the channel spend a lot of their time in face-to-face meetings or preparing presentations and proposals. To them, social media is a distraction and a time suck. Not to mention the fact that many resellers that I’ve spoken with over the past year about communities and such say they are very reluctant to share what they consider to be “trade secrets” or “their secret sauce” in public forums. I’m not talking about more elite peer groups like Heartland Technology Group. What makes the Heartland Technology Group partnerships work is trust.

Peek over into the technical department, and the story is a little different. Engineers seem to have a totally different ethos when it comes to forums. They are more than willing to share ideas, tips and information that makes everyone’s job just a little bit easier.

My prediction for high-tech vendors that are experimenting with partner communities: You’ll see more traction from the technical sorts at your partners than from the sales types. Plan your content accordingly.

The big factor in community interaction, to me, is this: many resellers are very mobile. They spend most of their time NOT in the office.

Which brings me back to Twitter.

The reason that Twitter might appeal to folks in the channel is the fact that it’s very mobile. Your updates can be sent and received on your mobile phone. Or you can choose to use some of the Web applications that have developed for managing Twitter activity.

Here are three ways you could use Twitter as a channel manager:

• Keep partners informed about new marketing and demand generation tools. You can embed links back to your partner portal for the actual content.
• Share competitive intelligence.
• Alert VARs about technical issues or product news.

And, if you’re a VAR you might want to think about the following:

• Let customers know about new services
• Keep your team abreast of competitive developments.
• Establish yourself as an expert on a topic near and dear to your business.

Finally, I want to direct you to a few bits of extra-credit reading.

Time magazine’s 10 ways Twitter will affect businesses.

A Cisco video blog from this week about how one of its partners is using Twitter.

Coverage of a Twitter seminar.

Older article, but with a great 50 Tips list.

A Twitter primer.

You can follow my own Twitter updates here. Warning: I totally have attention-deficit tendencies, so I ramble all over the place about everything from green technology developments to the fact that I have a robin’s nest, complete with fledglings, outside my bedroom window.

I figure if someone is kind enough to comment on things I blurt out on this blog, they deserve some consideration as far as topics I’m going to explore. So, I’m picking up on Michael Kupfer’s (Black Diamond) request for more information about what I meant a couple of weeks back when I said: “I firmly believe a lot of a solution provider’’s success with an emerging technology comes down to how they handle the evangelism process.”

OK, yes, that was a rather cryptic statement, wasn’t it? So, yes, I can provide some more perspective about what was bouncing around in my brain.

1. I don’t mean salesperson. In some respects, being a good evangelist means being the best kind of salesperson. The kind who LISTENS to their prospect and then (and only then) figures out where his or her company’s message is applicable/appropriate.In the world of solution providers, some of the best evangelists aren’t salespeople at all. They’re the people on your technical staff who live at your customer site and watch what’s working, and not working. These individuals need to be evangelists times two: They need to advocate on behalf of customers needs AND they need to talk up new concepts within their own organizations.I’d be willing to bet that your technical team told you months if not years ago that smart phones were going to challenge IT security in ways we haven’t dreamed of. Or that someone better come up with an archiving policy about instant messaging before one of their financial services customers got themselves into a pickle.
2. It’s a lonely job, but someone’s gotta do it. I recall vividly a conversation I had more than 10 years ago with someone touting the idea of using what was then called “whiteboarding” to give me a product demo remotely. I got really excited by this, because I am inherently a home body who you have to drag out to meetings. Forward (not so flash) to 2008 and the age of Internet conferencing, which still isn’t all that easy for most of us to get our arms around. We’ve gone from “bleeding edge” to approaching mainstream adoption during that timeframe. But if someone had dabbled with Internet conferencing back in the 1990s only to give it up for lost within a couple of quarters, they would have lost out.Getting a new technology concept to take hold will always take at least twice as long as you expect. Start slow and cautious. But jold fast with both your own investors AND your high-tech suppliers, who will be impatient to see results way sooner than you’ll be able to produce them.
3. You WILL lose money. No getting around it. Not only will you need to invest in demo equipment and training for this new stuff, but you’re going to need to spend YOUR OWN money on some marketing. In order to talk about a new technology these days, you have to translate the technical message into one that speaks to solving a business problem. Spout speeds and feeds, and you might as well pour that investment down the drain. Incidentally, sales cycles will be way longer than for something that’s mainstream, so you need to compensate your team somehow while they’re out there taking all sorts of arrows in the back. If they aren’t incented at some sort of long-term strategic level, then what is the point of them talking up something that takes away from their monthly sale quota?
4. You need buy-in. Actually, to build on the previous point about compensation, you can’t evangelize a new sort of technology solution by making it a closely held secret within your own organization. Sure, you’ll choose to focus a small team on the project, but the ENTIRE team needs to know about it and feel a vested interest. Also, this is something at which you need to throw your best people.
5. Plan to succeed. I know many solution providers are skeptical about business planning, but since you WILL bleed while you’re evangelizing a technology, you need to understand your own personal threshold for pain. You especially need to understand what needs to continue to happen in your core businesses in order to support this emerging technology.

How do you approach the unknown? E-mail SWOT Management Group’s Heather Clancy at hclancy@swotmg.com.

This post goes with the one from a few days ago about what gives a VAR a profitable edge. While I firmly believe a lot of a solution provider’’s success with an emerging technology comes down to how they handle the evangelism process, there are several areas that have got my personal attention right now when I look several years into the future. These are the five game-changing trends I’’m watching closely.

1. Wireless and Mobility: Surprise. Not. Actually, I am really surprised about how few VARs have adopted solutions that make use of smart phones. I know the model for getting the client devices isn’t well-mapped into the traditional IT sales channel, but you risk being left in the dust if you can’t accommodate these sorts of applications. Or, at least work with them. Some numbers to ponder: A couple of years back, one of the big research firms (either Gartner or IDC) predicted that mobile phone sales would surpass 1 billion by 2009. Well, they actually surpassed that number last year on growth of 16 percent. Even more intriguing: IDC predicts that 75 percent of the workforce will be in some way mobile by 2011.

2. Web 2.0: Like it or not, this consumer trend will mean a lot for collaboration, community and conversation between businesses and their customers, employees and business partners. More than half of enterprises are considering some sort of Web 2.0 deployment, according to Forrester.

3. Software as a Service: The blog that I’’m creating this on is a service, as is the application I use to submit my hours for SWOTmg. SaaS is especially interesting to small businesses that haven’t been able to automate certain applications. The numbers: Gartner believes SaaS revenue will reach $19.3 billion in 2011, triple the 2006 mark. Many VARs are leery of this trend, for good reason: Many vendors including good old Microsoft are building massive data centers and taking sales direct. I get that, but there is still money to be made in customization and integration, especially for any company that is creeping into midsize stature.

4. 3-D Computing: I recently wrote a story about 3-D printing, something I have never heard of that managed to generate slightly more than $1 billion in revenue last year. When I step back to consider why, I see a richer picture. Although last year’s stories of Second Life and other virtual worlds have been bumped out of the hype-lines by green computing (see my next trend), the interfaces with which people expect to interact with technology are changing. Just look at the amazing iPhone screen. As for 3-D printers, they have all sorts of applications in manufacturing, where they could be used to create spare parts. Who knew?

5. Environmentalism: Some people still make fun of me for getting so excited about green technology, which I blog about regularly for ZDnet. <http://blogs.zdnet.com/green> But here’’s one for you: Forrester just reported that half of all companies now use green criteria in their IT procurement process and that factors such as energy-efficiency or how easily a piece of equipment can be recycled. As a solution provider, how aware is your technical team about those criteria. Even if you’re not pushing green IT services, the procurement thing will affect you. Will you have a plan for it?