Social media is here to stay.

And it keeps. On. Growing.

The three major players, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, continue to garner the most users in both the B2C and B2B arena. ReadyTalk customers often conduct large webinars on a regular basis for several purposes, such as online training, new product launches, and most often, lead generation and qualification.  This is where social media and webinars marry, since our customers are constantly looking for ways to easily engage with their audiences and increase registrations prior to their event, especially with tools they already use.

To continue our focus on the marketing user, ReadyTalk has added the following social media features to Conference Center to help our customers leverage their own social networks, as well as those of their audience) to expand their reach and drive more qualified leads:

• LinkedIn Integration for Scheduled Meetings (ReadyTalk already offers automated promotion through Facebook and Twitter)
• Enable your participants to easily share your upcoming webinar on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn through the registration page and event emails

As a chairperson, you have the option to turn the ability for your participants to share your event on their social networks at any time.

And that’s not all. We’ve also added the ability to add an upcoming meeting to Google Calendar, to help increase the efficiencies for both the chairperson and participants.

Remember to refer to last week’s blog post to learn about some of the user interface changes!

Beth is a Product Marketing Manager and works with our customers to understand their needs as they relate to event services and our conference center, which is used to setup the details of our clients’ upcoming meetings. Outside of the office, Beth loves to spend time with family and friends, cook, and hit the slopes.

Kelly Valdes, our newest marketing intern, started just last week. She’s writing weekly to document her experience in working with Marketing and other departments at ReadyTalk. Stay tuned for further antics from Marketing and to experience our great culture through an intern’s eyes.

My name is Kelly Valdes and I am the new Marketing intern at ReadyTalk. I am excited for this new opportunity to join the web and audio conferencing world. I look forward to learning more about the dynamics of Business to Business Marketing and further expanding my industry experience here at ReadyTalk.

Here I am about to conclude my first week here at ReadyTalk, and it’s just in time for Marketing happy hour. Getting to know my co-workers and continually meeting new faces has been so much fun. Allison Wolfe [the other marketing intern] was so helpful on my first day. She was so nice and did a great job teaching me Salesforce and showing me the ropes, and not-to-mention where to find all the yummy snacks in the kitchen. I discovered on day 2, after spending $20 for parking, to never neglect checking the Rockies schedule for day games. Sarah, the awesome office manager, luckily hooked me up with a Light Rail pass which will be a life-savor.

I experienced my first meeting with the marketing team regarding Dreamforce and man am I jealous that everyone is at San Francisco! The meeting was filled with jokes and laughter, clearly signifying how closely knit the marketing team is, but bottom-line, I now understand all the dedication and teamwork it takes to plan a business trip and creating a booth at a conference. Melanie, the events coordinator, has done a great job with getting everything organized and ready to go.

It’s great having Mike McKinnon [senior demand generation manager] around who loves lacrosse as much as I do and played both collegiately and professionally. He is doing an excellent job incorporating me onto the marketing team and helping me with Salesforce. I did a few mini projects for Tracy [channel marketing manager] this week and have learned more about the research that goes into target marketing and sales.

It’s been fun catching up with old friends from high school and college randomly on the 16th Street Mall. I feel so grownup going to happy hour or dinner with my friends and family and telling them about ReadyTalk. I discovered last night that my neighbor across the street uses our audio and web conferencing software and loves it. Naturally, everyone is jealous of the fact that there are kegs in the kitchen and the great location of the office.

Being in an office with people who encompass such high energy and positive attitudes is refreshing and motivating. It is evident how much ReadyTalk employees enjoy their jobs and work environment. There’s a clear “work-hard, play-hard” aura in the building. Overall, I am extremely happy with this opportunity and first week at ReadyTalk. I am happy to have Teresa Lawlor [director of marketing] as my boss and to work with such an excellent team.

The contextual interviewing process continues! Last week, Scott (aka Skippy) discussed some of the simple rules we are following as we learn more about what our customers face on a daily basis, and ultimately, how ReadyTalk can help.  In the past few weeks, several folks across ReadyTalk have been preparing and conducting interviews with some of our most important customers.

As you may recall, we originally identified two types of use cases within our customer base: The Marketing User and the Collaboration User.  After some additional discussion, using the Value Innovations process, we discovered that our most important customers are the Marketing User and the IT Specs/Contracts User.  The Marketing User is primarily responsible for driving new customer leads and/or continuing engagement with existing customers, while keeping a strong focus on their company’s products and services. And consequently, they are heavy users of ReadyTalk webinars!  The IT Specs/Contracts User is responsible for administering several technical and operational solutions across their company, including web and audio conferencing solutions. Each of these users has unique needs within their roles, but both often greatly depend on a reliable solution.

So what have our teams been up to exactly?  The team focused on the IT Specs/Contracts User is in the process of identifying the elements of value for this type of customer, and getting the first round of interviews on the schedule.  The Marketing User team has held some interviews and is starting to identify some of the common themes of what keeps our customers up at night.

Looking for a sneak preview on what’s important to the Marketing User?  Here are some of the major themes:

1)  My customers are exposed to so much information in our industry, how do I become more effective at getting our message across?

2)  What are the best methods of following up with customers and prospects after a webinar?

3)  How do we create a community within our customer base?

4)  I use several tools and platforms in my role, how do I integrate these to make me more efficient?

Stay tuned for a preview on what we are learning from our IT Specs/Contracts User and what we can expect from the 2^nd round of contextual interviews!

Beth is a Product Marketing Manager and works with our customers to understand their needs as they relate to event services and our conference center, which is used to setup the details of our clients’ upcoming meetings. Outside of the office, Beth loves to spend time with family and friends, cook, and hit the slopes.

ReadyTalk attends several industry trade shows every year. There is one in particular that we attend time after time and that is the International Franchise Association (IFA). The IFA is the oldest and largest organization representing franchising worldwide. The mission for IFA is to protect, enhance and promote franchising through government relations, public relations and educational programs.

Cultivating the relationships with the franchises is a priority at ReadyTalk and in the past nine years ReadyTalk has exhibited at the Annual conference. This year the conference is in Las Vegas and Josh White and Mike Ligon will manage the ReadyTalk booth. This event is a great opportunity for Josh and Mike to reconnect with customers and build relationships with new prospects. The show is a smaller scaled event with approximately 2000 attendees and 200 vendors.

It would be great to see old and new faces. Please stop by booth #149 at the IFA Annual Conference. Mike and Josh would be thrilled to show you some new features in the pipeline for ReadyTalk services.

Melanie is rounding her third year at ReadyTalk. She works closesly with the sales department to coordinate and excute ReadyTalk’s tradeshow presence. She’s also the goddess of ReadyTalk schwag and party planning. In her free time, you’ll find her spending time with finacee and dog.

Last week’s Dreamforce conference had people talking. From Steve Wonder to Bill Clinton, it was an action-packed show chalked full of useful Salesforce tricks, tips and apps.

ReadyTalk used the show as a platform to solicit feedback for the upcoming launch of ReadyTalk for Salesforce.com, an integration that will save ReadyTalk customers time and make web conferences and webinars even easier.

For marketing managers who run webinars and use Salesforce.com, ReadyTalk’s integration will be able to:

• Automatically capture registration & attendance data—no more manual imports
• Get instant visibility into key metrics right in Salesforce and speed follow-up on webinar leads
• Send up to 10,000 polished email invites through ReadyTalk or use a third-party provider

Salespeople who schedule and run audio/web conferences and use Salesforce.com will be able to:

• Schedule and start virtual meetings directly from a SFDC Lead or Contact record
• Automatically document and measure key sales activities in SFDC
• Invite prospects to marketing webinars through their Lead record as you speak with them
• Get instant visibility into webinar attendance data for your prospects and clients

Want to learn more about ReadyTalk for Salesforce.com? Sign up for a free demo and give us your feedback on the soon-to-be-released feature.