When I started at EMC two years ago, the role of partner marketing for the Americas was in transition. I had a great team and an opportunity to start with an almost blank slate. We created a new strategy, changing the way we serve our partners in the Americas. We’ve gone from executing with you to empowering you to achieve the goals you’ve set for your organization and yourself. We understand that for EMC to succeed, you have to succeed.

Last year, we were the first manufacturer to pull off a major product launch solely through our global partner community. We downplayed traditional analyst and  media relations and used the strength of you, our partners. It turned out to be one of the most successful launches in EMC’s history. That’s how powerful we are working together.  Here is a picture of me at our partner PC Connection; they were one of the seven key partners in North America to help us successfully pull off this launch. As you can see, I was having a lot of fun!

As I blog, I hope to collaborate with fellow partner marketers out there in learning how to excel in marketing - not only based on some of my experiences and expertise from around EMC, but I want to glean insight from all of you.

This blog will let us learn from one another. We’ll examine long-term and short-term marketing, budgets, campaigns, career advancement and organizational responsibility. If it’s important to you and your growth, we’ll talk about it here – success and challenges.

I want to pull back the curtain here at EMC and let you see how we conduct our marketing efforts and how we are evolving as an organization, even showing some examples of what doesn’t work well. Sometimes you actually learn more and have future success from a post-mortem analysis of an initiative that doesn’t quite hit the mark.

We’ll also dig into an area that I know we all struggle with – social media marketing and social selling. This new era provides tremendous opportunity but also poses so many challenges as this is about everyone in an organization getting involved, not just marketing. We’ll dissect those obstacles together and figure out how to solve them. Hopefully, social media is already an emphasis in your organizations, but for some it’s still a big question mark and everyone wants to know how to make it most effective.

My hope is that we will have an open dialogue using the platform of this blog. Let’s start the conversation by sharing your biggest marketing challenge. What keeps you up at night when it comes to getting visibility and sales for EMC solutions and services? Chances are your peers are encountering the same hurdles and together we can overcome them.

If you'd like to continue the conversation on Twitter as well, follow me @AnnaDorcey.

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