With an ever growing amount of SaaS applications in every industry and function, many today ask, how can my solution standout?  Your SaaS application has its differentiator, the niche is there, but how do you get people to know about the solution and care?  Sometimes it is just as simple as getting your name out there with a little swag.  Vindicia is using this method through Twitter.

Get ready for the 2nd annual Vindicia holiday Twitter campaign!  Who is Vindicia?  Why should you care?  Vindicia provides billing solutions that help digital leaders optimize customer retention and acquisition through integrated marketing best practices.  Would you have looked them up on your own?  Quit possibly.  Now if you heard about free giveaways and signed up to follower their Twitter, you might think twice about your company's billing solutions and Vindicia might just pop in your mind down the road when you are looking for a change. 

are the ones that work.  

Here are my favorites, and why they work so well.

1.  Share personal stories about your life with complete strangers.

You can't just talk about authenticity; you have to reveal it.  This is the only way you will build a fan base for your blog or social media pages.  This is your reality show.  Sure, you can be shocking and over the top, which is entertaining.  But unless your name is Fred and your audience is little kids, my recommendation is to just use some social media wizardy and pull back the curtain.  

Read more at http://www.soldlab.com/news/2011/9/1/the-craziest-rules-of-social-media-to-read-more-sales.html

1) Link to inactive social networking accounts: So there’s a prospect, interested enough to check out your Linkedin profile. They click on your Twitter link thinking “Cool, I spend more time there anyway” then they discover your account either has zero tweets or the last time you tweeted was back in late 2009. I’ve seen this with inactive blogs and even websites. Please go back and update or report to the Principals office folks. Inexcusable!

2)    Dancing the “Linkedin two step”. This is when you 

Read more at http://www.soldlab.com/news/2011/8/30/12-ways-to-screw-up-a-virtual-first-impression-to-read.html

If you are tired of getting emails telling you that you have a new follower on Twitter and yet you want to know who you should or shouldn’t follow back, here is a quick tip. 

Watch the video http://www.soldlab.com/news/2011/8/25/easy-twitter-follow-tip-video-to-read-more-sales.html

A friend of mine called me up earlier today and said “Can you tell me about this hashtag thing? I really need to understand it for my business, and havenrsquo;t a clue where to start.” Rather than keeping the information between “just the two of us,” I decided to write a quick post and show you just what hashtags are capable of doing.

Read more at http://www.soldlab.com/news/2011/8/16/hashtags-demystifiedhellip-to-read-more-sales-news.html

Recently, July 29th, Brian Hopkins (@practicingEA) a principal analyst with Forrester Research hosted a Tweet Jam (hash tag #forrtttj) based around these 10 hot technology topics, identified from a previous survey.

Top 10 Topics from Forrester’s Report

1. Business intelligence to include predictive analytics, data mining, content and embedded analytics, big data
2. Mobile applications
3. Application platforms including software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service
4. Master data management and data governance
5. Application integration (transactional, batch, real-time, event-driven, web services, etc.)
6. Infrastructure-as-a-service, including public, private and hybrid cloud
7. Mobile platforms
8. Collaboration and social platforms- internal to your company
9. Collaboration and social platforms- with external entities such as customers
10. Business process modeling, management and automation platforms

Brian then dissected this chat traffic and through his blog, created an informative graph showing the buzzwords and most popular topics discussed. Why is this of interest to us at We Are Cloud you may ask? Well because Cloud and Business Intelligence were two of the hottest topics at the event.

I like social media. I spend some time out here, and I have developed some nice relationships. Some of those relationships have turned into real personal relationships. Some of them have turned into business relationships.

The idea behind social media is connection, engagement, and sharing. It’s about winning friends, and sometimes it’s about influencing people. Some people struggle to understand this, mistakenly believing that they need to tear others down.

When I was first exposed to Twitter, I was not just negative, I was militant. The idea that a 140-character message was an effective form of communication was ridiculous. The time-suck of all-day blathering about my life, my wife, my meals, my dog, and on and on was offensive to my mid-west work ethic. Worse, I found the constant reading of everyone else’s details and their pandering for micro-fame in the digital ether numbing and nauseating.

My marketing partner is a nag. A twenty nine year-old, social-media-addicted...Read more at http://www.soldlab.com/news/2011/7/28/tweeting-my-off-7-tips-for-using-twitter-to-make.html

You guessed correctly – it's both.

Social media networking and marketing requires both creative and analytical skills. And few of us are proficient at both. 

Left brain thinkers tend to be more linear and analytical.  Right brain thinkers tend to rely on more circular methods of organization and creative solutions.  A tip to keep the two straight is to associate the "L" of linear and left, and by deduction you know the right brain relates to the creative and intuitive skills.

Today I had a conversation with an association exec who was...Read more at http://www.soldlab.com/is-social-media-left-or-right/

ocial media is one of the most measurable and engaging online compliments of marketing tools available. With that said social media is a rabbit hole that entire teams can dive down. It hurts your brand, it hurts your real world relationships and it wastes your resources. It’s time to get real about our habits.

Social media, particularly my blogging, Twitter and YouTube activity has brought me...Read more at http://www.soldlab.com/news/2011/7/7/10-hard-questions-about-your-corporate-social-media-use.html