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 ...
Tag: Social Media
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 t...
Salesforce’s Dimdim Acquisition–Adding to a String of Collaboration Pearls
The SMB Group has followed (and used!) Dimdim, which has provided innovative, easy to use Web conferencing services in a freemium model with very liberal terms of use, for a couple of years. In January, Salesforce.com acquired Dimdim for $31 million. Immediately afte...
HubSpot: From Breakthrough to Breakout
I’ve been very impressed by HubSpot, which helps small and medium businesses (SMBs) optimize and streamline their inbound marketing programs (see my 2009 interview with HubSpot Marketing VP Mike Volpe) for a while now. Looks like others are impressed too—as evidenced by HubSpot’s announceme...
SMB Group Top Ten 2011 SMB Technology Predictions
Here are the SMB Group’s Top 10 SMB Technology Predictions for 2011! A more detailed description of each follows below. 1. Mobile Commerce Lifts Off 2. SMBs Demand that Vendors Bring Order to Social Media Chaos
Four Top Technology Solution Trends and How They Can Help Your Small Business
A couple of weeks ago, I was a presenter at Ramon Ray’s Small Business Technology Tour in Cambridge, MA. My presentation focused on top technology trends, and how small businesses can take advantage of them. A few people have asked me to post the presentation, so I’m providing it
A Clear Message for Vendors In the SMB Technology Market
We recently wrapped up the SMB Group's "2010 Small and Medium Businesses Routes to Market Study”, which uncovered quite a few interesting trends about how SMBs discover, learn about, evaluate and buy technology solutions and services. We are publishing free research briefs on the SMB Group site on some ...
Dell 2.0: Top Takeaways from Dell’s Virtual Era Event
A couple of weeks ago, I attended Dell’s Solutions for a Virtual Era analyst and press event in San Francisco. At the event, Dell unveiled its new strategy to help companies more readily and easily provision ...
Getting in the Social Media Management Game
Social media management for small businesses is a very hot area. A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about social media management solutions available to help small businesses manage their online and social presence more efficiently and effectively. While this is still a very nascent...
Relevance of Marketing Tools/Media in Customer Acquisition
The topic of lead generation and the role of various media solutions in the lead generation process draw significant conversation. From a survey of small businesses done in the summer of 2009 and detailed in my blog, '