Company: Intel Software Partner Program
Social Media Marketing Team: Ryan Lewis, Bonfire Social Media; Jon Bullinger, ISSP Global Program Marketing Director and Rick Puckett from Intel’s marketing team
Campaign Length: 9 months
Result: 32% increase in overall program participation

The Challenge

Intel’s Software Partner Program (ISPP) works to support independent software vendors using Intel technology. The program provides a portfolio of benefits spanning the entire product life-cycle, including research and planning, development, marketing and distribution of their applications.

The challenge was attracting new participants and getting the word out on program benefits to a segmented group of developers. The ideal participant worked in the B2B market developing software for other businesses. The campaign’s original methods of communication included a quarterly newsletter and a blog with infrequent posts. They were finding it difficult to keep the content in the newsletter fresh as it only went out every 3 months and the blog wasn’t getting much traffic.

They had seen success using a LinkedIn group, but this group proved excessively time-consuming as it required manual updates of information for group members. Intel’s team was overwhelmed with all the communication options available and they were struggling with consistent messaging.

The Solution

Bonfire worked with Intel team members Jon Bullinger and Rick Puckett to develop a social media strategy from the ground up.  The goal was to increase program participation by at least 25%. The key components included a plan for consistent messaging across all distribution platforms; Social Media network automation;  a blog content strategy and newsletter integration.

Creating a Consistent Message

Working with a dozen team members and four chosen distribution channels, Bonfire put together a plan to coordinate efforts and create a consistent brand experience across all social media channels. The first step was to centralize all campaign content on the blog and then distribute the information from there. Using automation tools whenever possible, the message was broadcast consistently at a frequency that made sense to the resources that were available.

Team ambassadors were selected to spearhead each channel and serve as a means for any follow-up communications that were necessary. Throughout the campaign, ambassador social media skills improved for their designated channels and overall headcount was reduced as each team member became more productive.

Social Media Automation

ISPP had a dozen bloggers randomly posting every few weeks across multiple platforms. Bonfire aggregated all blog content and ensured that it was distributed to each social media network. Team ambassadors would then follow-up to respond to any questions or feedback on each network. This effectively cut back on the campaign’s management time and allowed for more content creation.

Blog Strategy

The ISPP team was struggling with new content for the blog. They needed a fresh perspective and some guidelines to help them get creative. Bonfire helped to develop several categories that would appeal to blog readers and help organize the blog content.  These included:

• Information posts – Information on the program, benefits, new member updates
• Repurposed Posts – Press Releases, how-to video tutorials, slideshows, industry articles
• Discussion Posts – Posts that asked the community a question or offered problem solving info
• Report Posts – White papers, quarterly statistics, other data
• Big Picture Posts – Industry trends, world news, etc.

Once the content was flowing, it was time for people to actually see it. Bonfire trained Intel’s bloggers on optimization best practices to ensure their posts received maximum visibility. They learned how to include relevant keywords in post titles and tags and use other proven techniques. These included:

• Social bookmarking
• Call-to-action footers
• Title tag optimization
• Internal hyperlinking

Newsletter Integration

The program team had already established a quarterly newsletter for it’s members. Prior to consulting with Bonfire, considerable team resources were spent developing newsletter content. The primary goal of the newsletter was to build membership and increase program participation. It wasn’t effectively recruiting any new members and was a waste of resources.

Bonfire developed a strategy that utilized existing blog content for the newsletter and enabled the information to be easily shared on social media platforms. This approach helped to expand campaign reach beyond existing members and ignited new email newsletter sign-ups.

The Results

The results have been impressive with dramatic increases in the programs Facebook Fans, Twitter followers and, most importantly, a 32% increase in program participation. The social media campaign was so cost-effective that the program’s overall marketing budget was reduced by shifting funds away from more traditional methods and building upon Bonfire’s social media strategy.

ISPP started with 3 ambassadors for each distribution channel. After just 9 months, that number had been reduced to only 1 ambassador per social media network and productivity had increased significantly. With continued collaboration between Bonfire and  ISSP Global Program Marketing Director Jon Bullinger, the program’s community has continued to flourish.

Result Details

Metrics based upon data at the start of the 9 month campaign as compared to data at the campaign’s conclusion:

• Twitter followers increased 400%
• Facebook Fans increased over 2000%
• LinkedIn Group increased by 100%
• Overall program participation increased by 32%