VARTECH 2014: 9 Social Media Tips For VARs

By Jim Roddy, VP of Marketing, RSPA

Do you recall the 1939 version of The Wizard Of Oz when a fearful Dorothy, played by Judy Garland, exclaims, “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”? Today, solutions providers — especially those old enough to remember the 1939 version of The Wizard Of Oz — are saying “Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, oh my!” as they face an avalanche of social media options.

At VARTECH, the annual partner conference hosted by value-added distributor BlueStar, a 90-minute session Thursday was designed to help VARs cut through the confusion and understand how to effectively use social media. Leading the discussion were James Korte, BlueStar’s digital marketing manager and the editor of BlueStar’s VARTECH Nation Blog. I co-hosted the discussion in part because Business Solutions’ social media efforts have resulted in nearly 3,500 followers on Twitter and over 4,000 BSM group members on LinkedIn, many who spark great conversations and share important channel-related information.

Following are the top nine social media pearls of wisdom for solution providers shared during the VARTECH session:

1. Join the conversation on social media or you will miss out on insights, information, and potentially new customers. Journalists, industry experts, and thought leaders for the channel are offering useful information through social media every day.

2. It’s more important to have an engaged social media audience than a large one. To create genuine engagement, you have to share pertinent information your audience cares about and respond quickly to any questions or requests.

3. Determine your primary business outcomes before diving into social media. Do you want to drive traffic to your site? Engage with customers and prospects? Gather feedback? Just build brand awareness? Warning: If your plan is to make direct sales via social media, brace for disappointment. Social media activities lower the fruit for new sales, but you still need to do heavy lifting to close the deal.

4. Don’t be afraid to reveal your business is comprised of actual human beings. Whoever manages your social media accounts should be able to reveal some personality. Don’t be boring. Be genuine and likeable.

5. Along the lines of being likeable, avoid sociopolitical commentary. Believe it or not, everyone doesn’t agree with your beliefs and most everyone doesn’t want to hear it. You are likely to inflame or offend a large percent of people if you shout from your self-appointed soap box.

6. There is no holy grail formula for social media success. You need to test what is most effective for your organization, and then determine how to execute those activities most efficiently.

7. VARs should explore efficiency tools such as Hootsuite, CoSchedule, Oktopost, and If This, Then That. Some of these tools have free features, and they will save you a ton of labor. Many offer the ability to post on several social media platforms with just one mouse click.

8. Use social media to build up good will with your customers, partners, and prospects. “Like” what they post on Facebook and LinkedIn. Retweet their Twitter messages. But don’t “like” and retweet everything. You have to be genuine with this activity; only like or retweet something if you legitimately find it valuable.

9. You can make yourself famous if you tweet during industry events you attend and use the event hashtag. You will gain followers relevant to your industry and could create new relationships with experts you didn’t bump into during the live event. I picked up several channel-related followers by using #VARTECH leading up to the conference.

VARTECH 2014 is being held Sept. 18-20 in New Orleans at the Hyatt Regency and the Superdome. VARTECH, the annual conference for value-added distributor BlueStar partners, focuses on data collection, point of sale, mobility, digital signage, RFID, and security. For more information on BlueStar and VARTECH, go to www.BSMinfo.com/solution/InsideBlueStar.