It’s September! We cannot believe how fast the summer flew by. The fall is bolting in at full speed, and now planning should really be coming into focus. We have been doing our best to prepare our users for the most successful Q4 experience. It’s time to move on to our next step! While still in the preparation phase, you should be in consistent communication with your marketing team about what methods work best for your business. We’ve talked about planning, networking, and posting, but now it’s time to dive into thinking about your internal team!

With the world changing by the minute, and the internet becoming more utilized by audiences of all ages, you should always be thinking about what can make your strategy the Next Big Thing. Collaboration and teamwork are of utmost importance when planning for success. Collaboration is key because it promotes a wider range of ideas, consistency, and a community feeling, all while gathering alternate perspectives from a diverse range of individuals.

The Importance of Collaboration

Wider Range of Ideas– Team collaboration provides the opportunity for everyone to bring something to the table. Not every person has the same way of thinking, meaning the more diverse your team is, the more ideas will be created. Most people will not have the same shared experience, this alludes to the workplace and personal life. Maybe one of your team members has a passion for social outreach, and another team member likes to crunch numbers and analyze data. Having team members who have different focuses provides a larger opportunity for more ideas to be produced.

Consistency– Working as a team provides the means for consistency with planning, and execution of the plan. Having team members on the same page is important for efforts to not be duplicated. This can pertain to network sharing, making sure your audience isn’t getting bombarded with multiples of the same content. You also don’t want to post something completely out of left field and then have your audience wondering what they are reading. Having an overall consistent purpose helps maintain a clear future path. Audiences often rely on consistency, meaning they are relying on your team to provide that. Be consistent!

Community Feeling– A feeling of togetherness is super important for productivity, responsibility and overall atmosphere. Having shared responsibilities means holding each other accountable. This provides more flexibility, as well. You can monitor bandwidth, distributing workloads as needed. Team members will have the ability to step up and take tasks off each other’s plate. This helps with productivity and efficiency. A sense of community ensures mindfulness, helping team members finish tasks on time, because they care about the implications even if it doesn’t pertain to their individual self. This will overall create a healthier work atmosphere.

Alternate Perspectives– Perspective is important. Collaboration presents the chance for multiple perspectives to be taken into consideration. Do you have employees from different locations across the world? Take time to listen to their beliefs and viewpoints. All cultures operate differently. Your marketing plans for the United States may have to be different from your plans for Southeast Asia. Take others experiences and implement them into your strategies. Prepare to educate yourself with understanding and empathy. Everyone is different, so different responses are permitted.

Luckily, our platform can help you with learning team collaboration! We provide “Download This” assets for your internal team. These assets consist of pitch decks, pro-tips, and other helpful resources to help your marketing team become more efficient with knowledge in the products you sell. Use the “Download This” assets as a conversation starter with your internal team! Keep resources and expertise flowing while you collaborate alongside each other.

Visit our Knowledge Base to learn more about Pro-tips and Downloads. Use these resources with your internal team to get ahead of the curve!

Fall is the perfect time to start making and managing connections. For some, this might mean being more present in the work atmosphere since kids are heading back to school. For others, this might mean vacations are over, and it’s time to refocus on end-of-the-year goals. In our last update, we encouraged you to get ahead of the game with our Networking 101 advice. We are back with more insight on how to make connecting even easier!

The PartnerOn Journal team understands how busy quarter 4 is for most companies. This could entail having endless to-do lists and follow-up meetings, all while preemptively beginning to plan for the new year. Finding time to fit marketing strategies into your planning can seem like a struggle. We are here to provide a diligent, but swift way to continuously connect with your audience and networks without the stress of having a constant physical presence. 

Our platform provides an automated posting feature that can cut down on posting time and make your work-life less stressful, while keeping your audience engaged. With this feature, you can be as selective as you would like! Do your best to figure out what days, times, networks, and channels work best for you.

Pro Tips:

Days/Times- When figuring out which days and times work best, think about your audience. Do you think people are more or less likely to look at your posts first thing in the morning? Do people usually browse during lunchtime? PartnerOn Journal recommends Tuesdays and Fridays for posting. Tuesdays are great because the Monday rush is gone. Fridays are great because people are more relaxed and open! Timing is key.

Networks- The auto-post feature lets you pick which social media networks you’d like to share content on. Think about where your audience is. Refer to our Networking 101 article to ask yourself probing questions about your audience. Is your audience only on LinkedIn and Facebook? Great! Our auto-post feature will allow you to pick one or more networks to post to.

Channels- Figuring out what content fits best with your companies’ narrative on each network is going to be beneficial when you start auto-posting. Are you inclined to only post Microsoft Azure content to one network, and IBM Cloud content to another? Then we have a solution for you! The auto-posting feature allows you to toggle channels on and off auto-post, allowing you to control what your audience sees. We recognize that some content might be more relevant or useful than other content, so pick between auto-posting an entire channel, turning off auto-posting for other channels, and manually scheduling out certain assets on others!

Other suggestions:

• Make sure you take time to think about what you are promoting and selling. Set aside a few minutes every Monday to look at the current week’s content, decide what you want to post and where to, and schedule it out. Managing your week’s worth of content within a couple of minutes will cut down your planning time exponentially. Spend the rest of your week worrying about other work obligations. 
• If you are using auto-post to the full extent, check up on the platform every so often to make sure everything is going as planned. Are your networks still connected correctly? Is everything displaying as intended?
• If you decide to turn on auto-posting and not worry about timing, messaging, etc. then do not worry! We have your back. Our platform provides pre-scheduled times, with suggested messaging just for you. Just turn on auto-posting, customize what networks you want your assets to be visible on, and you’re good to go!
• Check back for weekly stats and reports to see what your audience is engaging with and if you need to modify your content. Taking a Monday morning to plan and analyze your content will provide you with a thought-out plan, leaving you the rest of the week to refocus your energy!

Check out our Knowledge Base articles on Automated Posting Basics, and Automated Posting Customization for more information. Become stronger with your preparation, while finding a healthy workload balance!

Planning your fall marketing strategy can be stressful. Here at PartnerOn Journal, we want to provide you with multiple strategies that can help make your experience run as smoothly as possible. This week we will explore networking with your audience.

In our last article we asked: Who is your audience, and where is your audience? Dive into the Network Connections section of our platform to figure out which posting options are best for you. Are you easily accessible to your audience?

We want to push our users to think about how important networking is, not only with their current audiences, but with potential prospects.

Networking can be one of the most difficult aspects of marketing. We understand the ambiguity of wanting to put yourself out there. Our platform makes it easy to provide you with ways to connect. With the click of a few buttons, you can have content ready to post to hundreds of people.

Answer these questions, and you’re ahead of the game.

Who is your audience? First, finding out who most of your audience is can provide great strides in getting where you want to be. Is your audience other professionals in the marketing industry? Users of products who rely on quality experiences with companies like Microsoft, IBM, Lenovo, or others? Personal contacts? People you have maintained relationships with on LinkedIn, or in the outside corporate world? A mix of different people? This question is not only important to your professional workspace, but also in other aspects of your life. You should always know to who you’re presenting your information.

Where is your audience? Are they on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or other social media? Do they read your website or blog? Are they reading emails? Are they on a mix of platforms? Do they rely on you to be posting to one of these platforms consistently? Figuring out where you may have the most following can make it easier for you to connect with your audience. You don’t want to be posting to an empty Twitter feed.

Are you easily accessible to your audience? Are your usernames and handles simple enough for someone to memorize or search? Are people going to be able to find you on Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms? Are your blog and website links easily findable and accessible? Do you post them anywhere so they are reachable? Does your intended audience even use social media or blogs? Are your emails going to be buried in someone’s inbox because of obscure usernames or subject lines? Making it as easy as possible for someone to search for you on different platforms will help you reach a larger audience. 

Luckily, our platform provides integrations to some of the largest social networks, blogs, and email solutions. If there is a platform you do not see, you can always try our Generic Connection options, or recommend to us new integrations we can provide! We always strive to make our users happy, which means taking careful consideration of all requests.

Want to learn more about Network Connections? We are here to help! Please visit our Knowledge Base for more information about Network Connections and how they function.