The VAR’s Role In Social Media

Compared to packaged collaboration tools, social media is the wild, wild west. So where does the channel make money?

By Colleen Frye 

Market research firm the SMB Group studies trends affecting the small and midsize business space. Partners Laurie McCabe and Sanjeev Aggarwal discuss the impact of social media on the collaboration space and implications for the channel.

ChannelPro-SMB: Are SMBs adopting more collaboration technology, and if so, what kind?
McCabe: Most SMBs are using some kind of email/calendaring, and doing something to share files. When you get into project management and Web conferencing, it’s lower penetration. When you get to social networking, it’s growing like wildfire. In a way social networking tools are easier, more accessible, more powerful.

In surveys we’ve done, the use of social media and networking tools are on the rise in small business, from blogs to Twitter to multimedia sharing sites like YouTube, and social bookmarks like Delicious. But in a lot of cases it’s “let me just jump in,” as opposed to “these are the jobs I want to do, so let me map the right tools to the jobs.” It’s not a strategic, deliberate thing going on in small business, whereas people did think more about calendar and email. SMBs are using social media in a blended way, sometimes for marketing, sometimes for collaboration.

ChannelPro-SMB: What impact does this have on the channel?
McCabe: Collaboration is the only task that everyone at work in every company does every day. If [the vendors] can hook in, it’s powerful leverage to grow their business. Right now they all have different channel models.

The Google model is interesting. They finance partners if they want to resell Google Apps; the partner pays that up-front to Google. Usually when you sell as a partner, once the deal is signed you start getting some cut, but they’ve turned that model around where you are fronting the money for those subscriptions. They credit you, and you don’t make your money until end of year. The reason, according to Google, is that partners like it because partners do the billing themselves, so they keep control of the customer billing relationship.

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