Engage in PR

Deep Packet Inspection?
Content-Aware Network Devices?
10Gb per second testing capabilities?
…oh my…

When I was on the agency side new clients were coming at you at a ferocious pace. One week you are dishing with InformationWeek about application security and the next you are pimping The Howard Stern Show about the opening of a brewery (true story, but you it must be told over a beer, that you buy me). That is certainly a wonderful aspect of agency life, but I had forgotten how much deeper you must get when you go corporate. It is not only a necessity to you, but certainly the folks you work with, inside and out, will expect you to be fairly intelligent concerning your company and, in my case, the technology.

One question I always asked candidates during an interview was how they ramped up on new clients. 99% of the time I would get the stock answer of “Reading the web and magazines”. Sure the answer expanded over the years to reading blogs or maybe Twitter, but the typical candidate would hardly mention the most important constituency to talk with; the user! The user is a critical person to get to know when trying to learn about any new product. Diving into how they use the product and why can answer so many different questions and give you the appropriate information on how to further communicate with the user.

Fortunately for all of us actually talking with users has become a lot easier with the advent of social media. We can talk with them on Twitter, in Ning, on Facebook, using easy tools like SurveyMonkey and in our online community (soon to be public!). All of this data has not only helped me educate myself, but quickly give informed opinions on all of the work we are doing whether it be messaging, website copy or a news release.

Beyond users, how do you learn about a new product (technology or not)?

–Kyle Flaherty

The B2B Lead Blog published a guest post from me that was originally based on my post “The Impact of Words: Using Tag Clouds”. This time however I talked a bit more about how you can use Tag Clouds to enhance and increase sales leads.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

–Kyle Flaherty

More than a year ago we met, and at first we both were a bit nervous, interacting every now and again. We had both been hurt in the past and we didn’t want it to happen again. Our summer was exciting and as we entered the fall our relationship really hit overdrive. Everyday, sometimes all day, it was you and me. Intense? Certainly. But it was all such a positive experience, helping to lead me to expand my own social media lifestyle.

I know this is uncomfortable, but during the past few months we’ve lost touch. We just aren’t talking as much and when we do it simply seems cluttered or confused. Then you go and give me the silent treatment, which certainly hurt. And you had a bit of an issue with sharing private conversations. Yes, I know, this wasn’t your fault, but still, it makes me wonder.

Twitter, I’m willing to work through this, but we have a LOT of work to do to get back to where we once where. I’m going to keep trying, what are you going to do?

–Kyle Flaherty

The question that is currently battering around in my head is “Can I find my community or will my community find me?” I’m in a completely new role now and one of the activities we are pushing towards is the development of an online community in which to engage with our users. The folks we are talking with are network engineers inside R&D labs and QA…these are incredibly smart folks and they are not exactly a ‘dime a dozen’, in fact they are tremendously unique and hard to find. Sounds like a difficult challenge for building a community, right?

Yes, I agree. This is going to be a tremendous challenge, one which I’m looking forward to, but as we push forward I certainly grow anxious. Paul Dunay posted something similar at Marketing Profs, writing at one point:

Ok, here is something I’m wrestling with: Can a community be successful with low brand awareness? If you are a big tech brand like Dell or Microsoft, you have no problem launching a community. In fact, many of these organizations have several communities.

But what if you are a small SaaS vendor? Forget costs for one moment, and resources for another (chuckling) – can you attract enough community members to make it go?

Paul reflects exactly what I’m facing; I know the folks are out there, but do you go out and find them, or create a terrific community (blog, wiki, etc) and they will find you? To be honest I think it is a matter of both and here are the steps we are taking:

1. Engage the current user base to discover what they want to discuss, how they want to communicate, their likes, their dislikes…essentially building a “community advisory board”;
2. Evolve our blog to discuss the overall industry, openly looking at the competition, unveiling our product roadmap for insight and more;
3. Leverage our star power;
4. Worry more about our content than the social media apps we are using;

I believe this follows the POST method that Forrester discusses, most recently in a terrific webinar sponsored by Mzinga. I’m focusing the next few weeks primarily on People, Objectives and Strategy. The Technology is an after thought, at this point.

Tell me, is this how you would attack this challenge? What am I missing?

–Kyle Flaherty

This is for the guy at the deli counter in Austin who asked if I was from New York and my answer was simply, “New York wishes…I’m from Boston.” Also don’t watch this if you don’t like violence in your sports…sorry, needed to post something outside of my regular scope! Thanks to the best Sox blog out there for giving me the heads up.

–Kyle Flaherty