Google is starting to edge its way into what would normally be considered the traditional IT business. It’s delivering both personal and enterprise applications, from office productivity to e-mail to data storage. And, it’s generally charging very little or nothing at all. For small businesses especially, Google is making a variety of IT options available at extremely low prices. If this trend continues, Google could begin to erode the markets that currently belong to traditional IT manufacturers and value-added resellers.
This week, we’re running a series on the enter:marketing blog – Five Reasons to Watch Google in 2010. Stop by every day to learn how the search engine giant is moving into other aspects of the IT industry … and how this can affect your business. To discuss ways to bolster your competitive strategy in regards to this challenge, please contact us today (opens an e-mail message).
Through Faceted Search, dynamic facets are generated automatically based on your query results. Eight facets, which arise in real time, are available to help you target your search – and extract marketing results you can use.
If you are using LinkedIn to market to IT buyers either by inviting members to groups or for personal outreach, Faceted Search enables you to identify the contacts most relevant to your efforts and in less time.
See the video below for more information on targeted search, and contact us for more information on how to market using LinkedIn.
If you aren’t thinking about cloud computing yet, it’s time for you to start. Now. Seriously. Sure, there’s been a lot of buzz around this for a while, and IT buyers are starting to buy into cloud computing services (especially in the small and medium-sized business segment). Services are popping up from some of the strongest brands in the IT industry, including EMC’s cloud-optimized storage, VMWare’s vCloud and Cisco’s cloud computing overlay for unified service delivery. But, the most interesting indicator of cloud adoption is that IT departments are hiring for it.
Your clients are so committed to exploring cloud computing that they are adding to their departments – in a tough market. According to a report by InfoWorld, mentions of “cloud computing” in job posts on Indeed.com are up 350,000 percent since January 2008.
Even with 60 million people riding it, there’s still room on the Twitter bandwagon. While you’ll never care about most of these people or anything they have to say, there is a rich exchange of IT ideas occurring on this service. Check out “virtualization,” “cloud computing,” “data security” and “green IT” to see what I mean. And, most of the OEMs have active Twitter presences, including VMWare, Citrix, Cisco and EMC.
So, Twitter has marketing potential: relevant audience, reach and intelligence/analytics (we can help you with this last one). With a touch of common sense, it’s hard to do anything “wrong.” However, it can take some planning to generate a marketing impact you can measure by ROI. The first step is to understand what Twitter isn’t.
Alert: Five reasons to watch Google in 2010
Google is starting to edge its way into what would normally be considered the traditional IT business. It’s delivering both personal and enterprise applications, from office productivity to e-mail to data storage. And, it’s generally charging very little or nothing at all. For small businesses especially, Google is making a variety of IT options available at extremely low prices. If this trend continues, Google could begin to erode the markets that currently belong to traditional IT manufacturers and value-added resellers.
Even with 60 million people riding it, there’s still room on the Twitter bandwagon. While you’ll never care about most of these people or anything they have to say, there is a rich exchange of IT ideas occurring on this service. Check out “virtualization,” “cloud computing,” “data security” and “green IT” to see what I mean. And, most of the OEMs have active Twitter presences, including 
