January 7, 2010
OPEN Forum Message
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In building OPEN Forum, among the goals we had in mind were: 1) give business owners a place where they can meet and exchange ideas, and 2) help them take advantage of social media. From what I’ve seen and heard from those of you here, the site has exceeded our expectations.
Now, as we enter 2010, I want to share some of our plans for OPEN Forum. You’re going to see more new solutions launched, like the recent AcceptPay announcement by my colleague Mary Ann Fitzmaurice Reilly. As American Express OPEN develops more solutions that extend beyond our traditional products and services, you’ll be able to find out about them on OPEN Forum.
We’re also building more opportunities to make connections that can help you grow your business. We recently opened commenting on the site to the members of LinkedIn. Now, more entrepreneurs and other business-minded professionals will be able to actively participate in discussions on OPEN Forum through their LinkedIn accounts. We believe this can increase the exchange of ideas – and opportunities.
And we’re building more opportunities for you to build exposure both on OPEN and off. We’ve encouraged members to create profiles; recently, we’ve invited you to join Pulse, a platform that aggregates the Twitter feeds of small business owners. We know that the more places where your business is talked about, the easier it is for potential partners and customers to find you.
It was with the growth of social media in mind that I asked Anita Campbell for her thoughts on what’s to come in 2010. “An increasing number of small businesses have a website, a blog, and pages on various social sites like Twitter, Facebook and OPEN Forum. In 2010, they will understand the importance of having multiple outposts at various places on the Web – but they will also have a renewed emphasis on their own blogs and websites. To convert visitors and prospects into customers, you still need a compelling home base to draw them back to.”
I also talked to John Jantsch about his thoughts on the coming year: “The mantra for 2010 will be the convergence of online and offline for the greatest leverage. No matter how wired we get, there will always be a need for face-to-face trust and building engagement. Now that small businesses have moved more online, the smart play will be to find the best ways to fuse the online and offline in ways that make the return on both even greater. Using platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter to create awareness for content that resides on your web site or to drive people to events where they can learn and network in person, will become an essential part of the marketing process.”
This was very interesting to me, as we’re starting to look for more opportunities to “bring OPEN Forum to life.” At the 2010 CES in Las Vegas, we have a number of OPEN Forum authors discussing topics like growing your business or using social media for marketing, and you can learn more at openforum.com/ces. We hope to do this at other conferences and tradeshows in the coming year.
These are some of our plans for the upcoming year, but we’d like your ideas, too. The comments and insights you’ve shared with us have helped us develop new solutions like AcceptPay, and as we move forward, we hope to hear from you even more. As always, you can contact me at marcy@openforum, but you can now also reach more of my colleagues on OPEN Forum: Mary Ann Fitzmaurice Reilly, Michelle Dolberry, and Jason Rudman. Just visit openforum.com/open.
You can e-mail your ideas to me at marcy@openforum.com. I also invite you to follow me on Twitter @marcyshinder and OPEN Forum via @openforum.
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