Brian Cuppett, Vice President Of Sales, ScanSource Communications

Its that time of year.  Halloween is one of our favorite holidays here at ScanSource, and we had our annual extravaganza this past Friday with more participation with costumes and kids trick or treating than ever.  It was a great event and we used many different social media channels LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube — to promote the event this year to share the excitement.

So are you Trunking (SIP) and Tweeting this holiday season?   SIP trunking continues to grow in our industry. Many telecom agents and VARs are successfully migrating customers over to SIP-based solutions.   I attended the Broadsoft Connections event in Arizona earlier this month.  I spoke with many service providers at the event and they confirmed many successes they are seeing with partners in this SIP Trunk space.   This was great news, but my concern is that I am hearing it mainly from the Service Providers; these successes arent nearly as visible from the channel itself.  How can we increase the visibility of our successes? Can we leverage social media channels to better promote our successes?  You always hear about the outages (thats expected), but I think we need to continue to promote our successes, which is going to help our industry continue to transform.

Are you leveraging social media today in your business?  The short answer from most businesses focusing on the SMB channel is Yes.”  I have a Facebook page, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.  But when you peak behind the mask,” most businesses have these basic social items, but are not truly embracing social media. We should really be asking them, Are you maximizing your social media efforts?”  Its not enough to just have a page or an account. Being active, although difficult because were all so busy, is one of the secrets to success in social media.  

Its hard.  Ive been a reluctant blogger myself, but Im now starting to blog on a regular basis. I have started expanding my Twitter following and I am making a conscious effort to use these powerful social media tools to help spread the successes of our business. If all of us would take that plunge and just start embracing these powerful tools, we could really promote the great things were doing in our industry today to EVERYONE! So make a friend or follow someone in your industry today. Promote a success youve had in the past month to your list of followers and then repeat that again with another great success story in a few weeks, and then youre on your way.

Happy Halloween!  Trick or Treat!

Twitter: @ScanSourceBrian

Brian Cuppett, vice president of sales for

ScanSource Communications
, formerly served as director of business development for the company.  Cuppett has more than 13 years of experience in distribution. He joined CTI Authority in 1997 as a sales engineer.  CTI Authority was purchased by ScanSource in 1998.  In 2001, Cuppett began the field business development team for what would become ScanSource Communications and in 2008 was named director of business development.  Prior to joining the distribution industry, Cuppett was a partner in a software company and a cost accountant for a freight car manufacturer. He also is a member of the

2011-12 Channel Partners Conference & Expo Advisory Board
.