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Every organization selling through a network of partners; be they resellers, system integrators, agents or franchise holders, struggles with partner engagement. And, one of the main areas of challenge for them is to make a partner log into the partner portal for content consumption and program awareness. There are multiple reasons why partners don\u2019t use a vendor\u2019s partner portal (please see our earlier article on How to Make Your Partner Portal More Partner-Friendly); however, there are simple techniques that you can use to increase partner portal access by multiple folds. One of the main techniques that is underused, or not used consistently - is social media marketing.\nWhile most organizations selling via a channel tend to use social media, our conclusions after observing multiple deployments are that social media is more often treated as a mechanism for publishing snippets of information rather than a holistic medium for partner engagement and marketing. The use of social media in the B2B space is fundamentally different from how it works in the B2C space, because of one primary issue; lack of available time for content consumption by the target audience. Most vendors tend to push news and other types of content via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and even sites like Pinterest but the key to increasing partner portal adoption is to make sure there is a holistic publishing strategy. This is how it works.\nAssuming that an organization has an overarching strategy for using social media for end-user marketing (both in the B2B and B2C spaces), and since content marketing has become the de facto norm today, it is important to ensure that your strategy for driving partner portal usage is integrated within your overall plan. There are a few simple ways of doing this.\n\n\n \tSegment content - Channel partners may follow an organization through various channels on the same social media sites, so you need to avoid mixing different types of information in your feeds. For example, if you use Twitter to promote company news and events, you need to make sure you don\u2019t muddle this channel by delivering technical or product releases, bug fixes, or other tactical announcements that you have already posted in your partner portal. Also, if you have inbound engagement via any of the channels related to support, partner or customer complaints, it\u2019s essential to direct that conversation to the correct social media site, for example to your customer support portal. Actively managing the type of content and where it\u2019s viewed is a critical part of segmenting content appropriately, and driving relevant traffic to your partner portal.\n \tLocalize engagement - Partner portal usage tends to be highest in the English language, partly due to the prevalence of English in the technology industry but also due to lack of localized interfaces and content for non-English-speaking countries. This assumes you have picked the right partner management platform (please see our earlier article, Must-Haves for Your Partner Portal). It is important that you only promote English-language content where it can be understood, and local-language content only in the appropriate country channels. It makes no sense to push an English-language globally when you know very well that in certain countries like China, Japan or Korea it will be wasted. This thoughtfulness is critical in making sure that the reach of social marketing is not abused and engagement is strategically planned and managed.\n \tReduce overload - Not every news item or sales program is relevant to partners, so they don\u2019t all merit a push via social media. Selecting what\u2019s critical to know and strategically valuable in social media engagement is crucial if you want to rise above the noise. So, if you have a big announcement \u2013 like a company acquisition, major new product launches, or mega price reductions, use social media to push that news out and drive traffic back to your partner portal. However,