SaaS: Who's Driving Your Community?

People say that marketing for "cloud services" are really over the top right now - selling a lot more promise than can be delivered. If that's true, social media is somewhere out in the stratosphere of hype - pushed into orbit by leaders like Twitter and Facebook - I've heard many people say if they were trying to avoid reading yet another article on the wonders of connecting to "communities" on the web. I'm looking forward to this conversation because social media is still a widely misunderstood subject among SaaS and Cloud Service providers. Many see everything social as an unnecessary and noisy "distraction" that is a waste of resources and time. I understand their point of view because if they come from traditional software marketing, support, and sales environment, they are part of a legacy that rarely focused on end-users or tried to foster communications among them. And if you've ever tried to sip from the Twitter fire hose, you can probably understand their discomfort with jumping on the band wagon. If that's the case for you - I hope you'll set your prejudice aside and listen to our podcast this month on Haut Tech Conversations on December 30th at 10am Central. We're going to be talking with Jonathan Hyland, the Client Relationship Director for iCIMS, a leading SaaS provider of "Talent Management Systems." Jonathan is deep in the trenches of the user community at iCIMS because he is responsible for managing the client renewal pipeline, user satisfaction, user advocacy, and maintaining visibility of the value proposition their services deliver. Joining Jonathan on our panel will be Jessie Kliza, the Business Development Director for Apprenda and Peter Cohen of SaaS Marketing Strategy Advisors, who also happens to be one of our fraternity of Haut Tech Irregulars.