Social Business Community Blog
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January 17, 2013 - 9:00 AM
The Microsoft partner network is a great colleciton of companies, all wokring hard selling or advising on Microsoft enterprise products. Microsoft provides many great tools to help these partners, as do some third parties. But something is missing, partners deserve more. This is where PartnerPulse comes in. We think PartnerPulse (our new community of MS partners) is addressing an area that needs some urgent attention).
PartnerPulse has now been live for a couple of months. Things are slowly ramping up, partner numbers are increasing every day, and our marketing plans are gaining momentum. So far so good! Then it struck us the other day, we’ve never actually done a post explaining exactly what we are trying to do. How are we helping Microsoft partners, and those trying to find them?
Who is the site aimed at?
We have identified two audiences that would benefit from PartnerPulse:
1. People trying to find Microsoft partners to work with
These people probably work in the IT or marketing departments of their companies. They have been tasked with finding a Microsoft partner by their employers. They might want a new SharePoint Intranet, a new Dynamics system, or some Windows hosting. They are looking for a trusted Microsoft partner to work with. They might already know a few, but are keen to look at the wider market.
To these people PartnerPulse is a search tool, possibly even a simple directory that they visit from time to time. It is a way to quickly find a company nearby. Once they have located a company, they can find out all about them and even get in touch through the site.
We have worked hard to make PartnerPulse easy to use. That’s why we have a big search box on the homepage, and a really easy way to enter a location (just type!). Search results are presented on a map, so it is nice and clear where partners are. Read more about our search tool here.
2. Microsoft Partners themselves
Our second audience is of course Microsoft partners themselves. We see PartnerPulse as a platform that they can use to promote themselves to the wider world. This ‘wider world’ includes our visitors, but we are increasingly seeing some really impressive SEO benefits for partners. A good profile improves our partners presence in Google, which is good for their wider brand recognition.
Partners on the site have a wealth of tools available to them, and we are constantly working hard to improve profiles.
Benefits for partners
So exactly what do partners get when they create a profile on PartnerPulse? Well ultimately we hope contact from potential clients, new business, and eventually sales. We are trying to connect those looking to buy Microsoft enterprise services and products, with companies providing those very things. A good profile is the start of all of this.
Microsoft provides a number of (very good) tools to partners. We touch on the key one – PinPoint – below. And of course there are sites like LinkedIn, FaceBook, and Twitter. But nothing out there is currently doing what we are doing.
Firstly the likes of LinkedIn are not dedicated to Microsoft partners. As our partner numbers increase, and our traffic does likewise, the site becomes a very useful ‘one stop shop’. Being dedicated to Microsoft partners also means we can react quicker and smarter to their unique needs. Need a specific feature? Tell us. If we like it, we will build it. We did this recently with our brand new ‘Product and Services’ pages. More on thosehere.
Secondly none of the existing community/profile sites (and we would include PinPoint in this) offer the rich social experience that we do. Profiles on PartnerPulse make use of rich text, images and embedded videos, blog posts, and twitter feeds. Profiles are dynamic, well designed, and rich in useful information. Although obviously a little of this relies on the partners themselves adding compelling content!
Profiles also feature our unique ‘Pulse’ functionality. This means anyone can post a comment, message, or link, on a partners page. These Pulses (as we like to call them) could be announcements, threaded conversations, or simple updates. It is a way for partners and site visitors to interact. And it is integrated with Twitter! We like it so much we wrote a dedicated post on it here. Check it out.
So partners profiles have lot to offer in their own right. But as we touched on earlier we are also seeing PartnerPulse benefit partners with their SEO (search engine optimisation) efforts. A good profile, one updated regularly with useful relevant content, is exactly what Google is looking for. SEO is a difficult game, but it seems PartnerPulse is a useful tool.
And what does all of this mean for visitors to the site? Well good profiles mean a richer more rewarding experience for those viewing them. This in turn means more visitors to the site, which is good for partners themselves. Everybody wins!
What about PinPoint?
Ah yes, Microsoft PinPoint. This is the Redmond giants own tool, to help people find Microsoft partners. Many people have asked us since we launched “How are you different to PinPoint?”. Good question, and the simple answer is – “In lots of ways!”. Hopefully by this point in the post you could almost answer that question yourself.
First and foremost we see PartnerPulse as a very interactive, dynamic, and social site. People may well come to the site to find a partner, grab the phone number, and leave. But we hope to foster much more than this. We hope users will review a partners profile, have a look at their blog, watch a video on their services, and post a few Pulses on the page.
PinPoint is aimed at at slightly different audience, and actually seems to be evolving. Microsoft has already launched several ‘marketplaces’ based on the platform (e.g. The Dynamics marketplace) so a kind of ‘store’ certainly seems to be very much Microsofts thinking. With the launch of app stores for Office 2013 and SharePoint, it doesn’t take a huge leap of logic to see PinPoint itself morphing into some kind of app store.
We actually think we are a great complement to Microsoft PinPoint. Users may come to us in the first place, treat us as a search tool, a place to talk to or even compare partners. Having found someone of interest they may well head over to PinPoint to purchase an app or service directly. ParterPulse will always be social, never an ‘app store’, so we hope we can work well with PinPoint long into the future.
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This post and comment(s) reflect the personal perspectives of community members, and not necessarily those of their employers or of AIIM International
