Key Themes from SAP TechEd 2011–How Do They Relate to SMBs?

As the name implies, SAP TechEd offers technical education, such as hands-on workshops, deep-dive lectures and sessions with SAP technical experts about all things SAP. That said, TechEd isn’t for everyone, and it’s no wonder that most of the 6,500+ attendees at SAP TechEd 2011, held the week of September 12 in Las Vegas, were [...]

6 Tips to Maximize Twitter Event Hashtags

Originally published in Small Business Computing, 8-29-11.
Recently, a client asked me for some tips about how to get the maximum mileage out of Twitter event hashtags. Creating Twitter hashtags for your business events is a great way to multiply conversations about what you’re doing, and there are also lots of ways to maximize the impact [...]

Recap of Joint Social Business Webinar with Radian6 and CRM Essentials

Today I had the pleasure of joining David Alston from Radian6 and the legendary Brent Leary of CRM Essentials for a webinar live from CRM Evolution. We had a lively conversation about some of the key social business findings that the SMB Group and CRM Essentials uncovered in the 2011 SMB Social Business Study, which [...]

Sage Summit 2011: Tackling the Sage NA Branding Challenge

A couple of weeks ago, I attended Sage Summit 2011, Sage’s first combination partner and customer event. I’ve been attending Sage partner, customer and analyst events for several years, observing and commenting on its ongoing attempts to unify it’s corporate brand across multiple small and medium business (SMB) solutions. Earlier this year, following Sue Swenson’s [...]

Is Your Business Suffering from Social Media Denial?

Kevin Casey, intrepid journalist for InformationWeek, rang me up this week for input on his article, “Do Nonsocial SMBs Know Something We Don’t?” In the article, Kevin’s ponders whether SMBs that haven’t bought into social media have good reasons to hold off. Certainly an under-represented angle on this topic, especially when you consider that more [...]

Pervasive Puts Its Galaxy Integration Community Into Orbit

–by Sanjeev Aggarwal and Laurie McCabe, SMB Group
At its annual Metamorphosis conference earlier this month, Pervasive announced Pervasive Galaxy, which merges an online integration marketplace and community into a single, streamlined platform. Pervasive has designed Galaxy to remove boundaries between buyers and sellers and make it easier for end-user customers to understand options, review vendors, [...]

Social Media: How Does Your Small Business Stack Up?

Social media offers small businesses an inexpensive, relatively friction-free way to accomplish different business functions, from generating new leads to getting input for new product development. Consequently, it’s not surprising that small businesses are rapidly moving to take advantage of it.
How far along the social media curve is your business compared to your peers? We’ve [...]

Is There a Method to Social Media Madness?

By Sanjeev Aggarwal and Laurie McCabe, SMB Group, and Brent Leary, CRM Essentials
SMB adoption of social media for sales, marketing, product development and customer service is on the rise – but how are SMBs tracking, analyzing and measuring the success of their social media endeavors?
In our joint SMB Group/CRM Essentials “2011 Small and Medium Business [...]

Changing Customer Service Channels: The Gap Between Social Media Haves and Have Nots

Co-authored by: Laurie McCabe and Sanjeev Aggarwal, SMB Group, and Brent Leary, CRM Essentials

How quickly is social media catching on as an engagement channel for SMB customer service and support? It depends on who you ask—and has significant implications for both SMBs and traditional CRM vendors.
In our joint SMB Group-CRM Essentials “2011 Small and [...]

Social Business: Why Having a Plan Matters

Co-authored by: Laurie McCabe and Sanjeev Aggarwal, SMB Group, and Brent Leary, CRM Essentials
Good plans shape good decisions. That’s why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true. Lester R. Bittel, The Nine Master Keys of Management
This seems to be especially true when it comes to getting business value out of social media. [...]