Economy in a tailspin? Now’s the time to leverage your partners.

From the “This might seem obvious” department …

from TwitPic: Suksy. Thanks Mary S (Sobie) for the image!

If you’ve been on the fence about creating a partner ecosystem and leveraging it to help you sell, this is a fabulous time to make it happen.  Small businesses especially are all in the same boat - fear of the future but a real need to keep their name out there. Tight budgets and even tighter bandwidth should NOT be the reason you sit still.

Food for thought: make a list of professional friends, family, and business associates who target the same general audience as you. Consider what you do and where there are points of intersection between your mutual customers. Do you write newsletters, publish blogs, create brochures, offer programs? Think about how you can build up alliances that generate results. 

One quick way to do this is to act as a resource by providing business cards in your shop or on your virtual storefront. Ask your new customers/prospects how they heard of you.  Create simple programs that reward your best references (discounts on service, invitation to lunch, referral bonus).  

You can of course get way more complicated than this … but start with leveraging your friends.  Be a visiting expert on their website or contribute to their newsletter.  Include a short bio/business description/reference. Cite examples of how these partners make a difference and ask them to do the  same for you.

Spin up the conversations that grow your business one new customer at a time.

Making the point — way better than making it perfect

or not.

Turns out all those years of being a perfectionist are finally behind me. for real. Returning from Podcamp Boston - a fantastic conference featuring some of the most intelligent, compelling people I’d never heard of (more on this … and them … later), it’s been driven home that making the point really is better than making it perfect.

Podcamp Boston: Learn - Share - Grow New Media Skills

This fits in great with marketing and partner development conditioning … that making the connections is what matters. Giving people a sense of the VALUE of something, and giving them examples (of which there were so many at PCB3) to chew on, and resources to call on, is the best way to move forward.

Also, creating communities who call on each other to share, explain, validate, collaborate, critique, and of course laugh (the thing that makes most relationships work is that shared laughter). I’m starting to finally ‘get’ Twitter because it lets people reach out to strangers and easily become friends.

Anyway, it’s been an interesting couple of months with AIIM, Enterprise 2.0 and finally Podcamp 3 behind me. Time to bring it all home. Stay tuned … I have some fantastic people and information resources that I look forward to sharing. The goal? help others accelerate their own efforts - whether it’s investing in social applications to bring people together, creating & enabling effective (and mutually beneficial) partnerships, or just sharing really useful tips, tools and insights I collect along the way.

By the way, a huge THANKS to Dan Keldsen

for being in the right place at the right time, and giving me the opportunity to blog about what Enterprise 2.0 means. Sounds like a school homework assignment, but what it was for me was a chance to put myself in stellar company at next week’s fantastic program (a conference pass was the prize :o).

Check out more about Dan, Director of Market Intelligence at AIIM (helping to spread the word about ECM and Enterprise 2.0. You can see them there or learn more about Dan and Carl Frappaolo’s E2.0 exploits. Get in touch with them, get on their radar, and check them out at the big show. And take a look at their awesome report on Enterprise 2.0 - download the white paper for free.

The Proof Is In The Pudding - building a directory of E2.0 Successes

OK. Enterprise 2.0 is coming to Boston next week. My mission has become clear … and with it, my opportunity. Here goes. Let me know what you think, and feel free to start providing your own stories. You’ll see what I mean in a second.

So, I’ve been in the ECM business for 20 years now (how is that possible when I’m only 27, right?!). I am so excited about how Enterprise 2.0/Web 2.0 builds  on that to enable companies to be more socially responsible, relevent, and capable of supporting the real communication, collaboration, and WORK that people do. By giving the outside world a way IN, and the INSIDE world a better way to create and share content, a whole bunch of new opportunities arise.

The piece I want to own is this one … collecting the stories of those who have successfully implemented E2.0 solutions — traditional content, socially oriented platforms, SaaS-based solutions that let even the smallest companies realize the huge potential of WCM internally and customer-supplier-partner facing.

I’m going to travel around E2.0 with my handy dandy camcorder and interview as many people as I can about their success with E2.0, focusing on it’s value to them. Do I care how things work?? Not so much. Do I want to capture the essence of users implementations so someone who’s on the fence about E2.0 can feel more confident about their decision to move forward. ABSOLUTELY. Logos and contact info/links to your own blogs are welcome. Let’s push this agenda forward together!

So stay tuned. This will be the blog. The content is forthcoming. Feel free to start by sending me a comment that includes your name and company (or some legally acceptable, reasonable facsimile), the problem or opportunity you used E2.0 to address, and a short description of what you did, what problems you overcame, and a note or two about your solution (let’s give credit where credit is due). I’ll ping you back if you need more info, and I’ll be eternally grateful for your support in helping me build this valuable directory.

Thanks!

Flimping to get out the vote

I’m fortunate to live in the wonderful community of Ashland, MA.

I’m also fortunate to work with some pretty amazing technologies that help people work, collaborate, and get things accomplished better, faster, and/or more cost-effectively.

So when I heard that Ashland’s school libraries were in jeopardy if the Prop 2 1/2 override didn’t pass, I knew just what to do to support ‘Keep Ashland Strong‘, the grass roots organization dedicated to getting out the YES vote.

I would enlist the help of talented friends and neighbors to produce an interactive video campaign, based on the FLIMP* platform, to help educate … and hopefully motivate … the community to vote for the override.

Here’s the result. Go ahead!! Launch the FLIMP, learn about the override, and let me know what you think!!

* For those of you who like technology and want to know more, FLIMP stands for Flash Interactive Microsite Platform. It is an amazing way to bring rich media, messages, and calls to action together to enable people to respond immediately to what they have just seen.

To learn more about Flimps, please call me at 508.881.1519 or drop me a note at melinda@msmstrategicmarketing.com! Thanks!

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Caring for Our Parents (and others), and the partnerships that make it easier

I received an email this morning that really drove home the power of alliances — between the internet, brilliant technology, thoughtful people, public television, a corporate sponsor, and a marcomm/PR agency that brought it all together. This alliance promotes an issue that potentially impacts all of us — caring for our parents.

Thanks and kudos to Sandy Lish (co-founder of The Castle Group and fellow alum of UMass Amherst), for helping to get the word out on such an important issue and providing access to some great resources that can help. Check out Sandy’s message:

( Friends and colleagues:

Recently, one of our Castle clients, HouseWorks, (www.house-works.com) sponsored a public television broadcast that many of us here found to be highly informative and moving. “Caring for Your Parents,” which ran locally on WGBH-TV, featured five families all dealing with the challenges of caring for their aging parents.  Following the documentary, WGBH aired a panel discussion which covered many of the issues involved, specifically, caregiving and related financial, interpersonal and health challenges.

As someone who, a few years ago, had to address an aging parent’s changing health and housing needs, I personally found this insightful and helpful to watch.  I know many of my friends and colleagues can relate to this issue, and if you haven’t dealt with it already, may have to eventually.  So I send this as a “public service” to those of you that might need guidance and insight.

The program is on WGBH’s website (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/caringforyourparents/).

If you are in a caregiving role yourself, or are concerned about someone who is, you may also be interested in visiting www.lotsahelpinghands.com (another client), which provides a tool for online caregiver support.

Sandy

Personal note:  Lotshelpinghands ROCKS. Not only do they help caregivers organize their own efforts and help them focus on giving care instead of managing the details, they eliminate huge hurdles and provide an incredibly easy and unobtrusive way for us on the outside to assist without getting in the way. How powerful is that ?! Check ‘em out.

             

FreshBooks: Partnering, Web 2.0 and social networks to find great talent

 

FreshBooks is using US to help THEM find great talent!! 

Partnering with the web-connected world to virally promote their needs is a smart option indeed for FreshBooks, a rising star in the web-based services-on-demand world. Their use of Social Networking tools to find an ace developer for their online billing solutions, and a finder’s fee to those who serve up the winning candidates, seems to be working - they’ve had thousands of views of their video on YouTube alone!

Not only is Mike McDerment (CEO/Founder) using Web 2.0-ishness to push his agenda, he’s using the community!!

To me, this is a no-brainer. I love the fact that FreshBooks is using their blog to find talent, and they’re showing a fun, personal video (hosted on YouTube) to promote the FreshBooks way of life. I’m a huge proponent of SaaS (software-as-a-service), hosted services, and Web/Enterprise 2.0 solutions too, and FreshBooks is using all of these to put the right content out there, for the appropriate audience, so it can be useful, actionable, and valuable.

Great solutions, low barriers to entry, fun and people-friendly tools to explain what they do and actually help people be successful using their stuff…

Wow!! I’m glad I found you. Keep up the great work and let us know how it goes!! I’d love to hear from you re other cool partnering initiatives FreshBook (and others) are running to drive business, communities, and growth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebyj_idJbgc

Thanks! Happy Spring!

Melinda

Spinning It Up! Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my new blog. It’s my way of sharing all the great stuff I’m learning about every day, and helping to support the creative, smart, fun, energetic people out there creating synergy through well-planned and smartly-executed alliances.

I’m a person with a 20+ year career working with applications and technology solutions that make life easier - at work, at home, at play.  A creative bent, a well-honed ability to focus in on the different values between and across participants, and a serious interest in being a power user of the apps that I work with every day, has evolved into the “me” that I am. Well, the ‘working’ me, anyway.

I’m hoping that this blog will serve as another way to share and gather insights, meet some of you great people out there, and start ’spinning it up.’ After all, the best results come from the energy we put into our work and our lives.

Thanks for stopping by. See you soon!

Melinda