I'm really starting to get excited (yes even more excited) about JoomConnect 1.1. Over the next few weeks while in beta we are going to leak some of the new features. Hopefully you will be as excited as we are. Keep reading to learn how we are sharing how to do this for free.

You can use ConnectWise to run your entire referral campaign, “Quick Referral” for JoomConnect 1.1 is coming soon - MSP Website Marketing Infrastructure at its finest!

We grew a lot in 2009.  This is a great thing but it has also exposed a lot about our company that we want to improve on. It's pretty obvious what we need to work on to support the growth we expect in 2010 and beyond.

While this isn't a complete list, here are 10 of the things we are going to focus and improve on this year. They are in no particular order:

Directive has had the pleasure of working with David Mann for over 10 years. David owns Alta Log Homes in Upstate NY. Alta is a leading manufacturer of Log Homes. David is an expert in building Green, Energy Star dream homes and a great guy. His website is http://www.altaloghomes.com We set him up with the Ultimate Social Media Rig a few months ago along with some coaching services to get him started. He's been pretty religious about posting and using it.
He sent me an email asking what recommendations I'd have to get more out of it now that he's "warmed up" and has a little more experience with Social Media. These 14 tips were plucked from my response:

1. Implement a better routine for posts (schedule them in Hootsuite) and layer on random posts when you feel like it.

2. Use your personal profile publicly, use your own picture. Get personal, share with your friends more.

3. I would go full out and try to make a every fan a friend and every friend a fan. We live, eat and breathe what we do for a living, they almost can’t be your friend if they are not a fan of your business. :)

4. Suggest your page to all your friends, ASK them to suggest your page to their friends. Suggest it multiple times over a long period of time for those that don’t become a fan (don't be annoying with it). Sometimes people won’t realize it’s your business, or they will clear everything out because they had so many invites etc. Give them 2 or 3 opportunities at least to become a fan.

5. Run some contests/giveaways (i.e. like a gift certificate or dinner for two worth $50 at least. We see a big difference between a $25 prize vs $50).

6. Now that you've got some fans and posts going make your Twitter and Facebook addresses really obvious in all advertising. This is where /usernames come in handy. My favorite is to use cnames like "twitter.yourdomain.com".

7. Make it clear in your existing advertising (when it won’t be tacky) there’s a reason to tune in socially. Like special information, news, tips and or discounts you can only get on your companies social networks.

8. Find a peer group(s). The IT Industry has awesome peer groups so I'm a fan of this. Most industries have these types of organizations. Find one that fits you, invest in it. It’s important, it keeps you on your game and you will learn so much. Take what you’re really good at in your business and share it with all your peers, develop friends and contacts this way and get involved with them in social media. We’ve made so many friends this way, not for the sake of having friends but I mean people I really enjoy talking to and sharing with. We improve and or motivate each other’s businesses every day.

9. Put links to your site, blog and social media in your email signatures, for everyone in the company.

10. Get a blog up and running, develop some content. You're an expert, share your expertise. Post regularly. Don't do it if you will never post.

11. Share the resources, blogs, and articles in your industry you’re probably reading all the time anyway. You’d be surprised that those sites will sometimes reciprocate with posts or mentions etc. If you value these resources, this is also great way to help them out too.

12. Be authentic. I have to add this because some of these tips on the personal side only work if you actually take a real interest in people’s lives. I only click like, if I really like it etc. You never want to do just because it’s good for business. Be yourself.

13. Develop a social media policy for your company. It's just common sense.

14. Delegate some responsibilities to your staff. You might be surprised how talented they are at writing for or using social media. Perfect professional "copy" is not required, social media is personal.

For details on how to setup the Ultimate Social Media Rig visit:

Just wanted to give you guys a sneak peak at something coming in 1.02 shortly (less than two weeks).

You can now assign marketing groups and tracks to prospects when they register on your website!!

Recently, I was asked to speak at a breakout session called Jumpstart Social Media for your IT Business with Erick Simpson (Managed Service Provider University) and Mary McElwee (ConnectWise) at the 2009 ConnectWise Partner Summit. What a great event, we learned so much for our MSP practice, we are still implementing!

Some of the power point slides from the breakout show our ConnectWise Project Plan for rolling out our "Ultimate Social Media Rig". We promised to get the project plan posted on the site. Rather than post just screen shots, we made it easier for you to get started and typed it up too, copy/paste ftw.

JoomConnect 1.01 has been released. We also whipped up a quick video on how to Upgrade to 1.01 in 7 mins flat. There is a few tricks and apps we use and explain in the video below. Check it out!

P.S. In future releases we plan to automate as much of the installation as possible so you won't have to perform these tasks because lets face it this is a pain in the butt, hopefully the video helps!

It's been two weeks since we launched JoomConnect. We agreed internally to always blog about the good AND the bad. So...

I've been very pleased with the sales and responses we have gotten, even though our website launch sucked!  Getting to talk with so many partners and learning about their businesses has been amazing and overwhelming. Loving it!

Why did I say it sucked? Things we've learned:

After careful consideration and feedback from some of our fellow ConnectWise Partners, we have decided to switch to a flat yearly subscription model. Hurray for simple!

http://www.joomconnect.com/order/overview.html
Let us know what you think.

This is officially my first blog post, I mean ever. Directive currently manages about 25 Social Media Accounts for clients on a weekly proactive basis. So we've helped a bunch of clients write blogs and we've integrated them to their Social Media circles and refrigerators, but I never wrote one for my own company. If you consider Facebook and Twitter and social media in general mini blogging, as I do, then I guess I've mini blogged.

Being the first post I feel a little pressure. I feel like I must say something amazing. Since I'm not personally much of a writer, I figured it's best to talk about something amazing. So I'm going to share what has gone on today as I think it's pretty exciting. I don't mean that JoomConnect finally launched after a year of development either. Instead I'm talking about what's to come.

We cannot believe today is the day; the launch of JoomConnect.  The Directive JoomConnect Team has been burning the midnight oil to ensure a smooth launch of our website. It's going to launch with some content we really wanted to get done like some videos and a few other things, but we'll get them up a within a couple days after the launch.