The Virtual Evangelist is a person who’s role is to understand the ISVs offering, ecosystem fit and partnering need. The Partner Evangelist engages the partner community by means of Conversational Marketing (social component of the overall marketing mix – ‘pull’) offering solutions and value rather than pushing product marketing messages. Conversion goals can be defined as: awareness (number engaged), attendance (number directed to events) and affection (number signed up).

Ecosystems and communities are built up of social building blogs. Those building blogs are the multipliers, such as blogs, micro blogs, ePublications/publications, groups and forums. These building blocks for the foundation for the social network, which them populated by its members. Members are either producers or consumers. Some producers may have influence and the ability affect the way that other members think, behave and buy.

ISV can assert influence either through ‘push’ or ‘pull’. Most ISV engage in some degree of ‘push’. By ‘push’ we mean pushing content into the ecosystem and hoping that someone will discover it and be influenced by it. Most marketing agencies have added the word ‘digital’ in their self-description, but what they are essentially doing is using social media in the same way they use other media, by pushing a message. True digital agencies understand the significance of the word ‘social’ in social media and they advocate pull strategies. By ‘pull’ we mean monitoring discussions against predefined filters within multipliers and engaging community members with value insights. Once ‘trust’ is established between the ISV and the community member, then that member can be invited to a fan page or following, but more importantly that member has now been captured in the ISV’s CRM system and that relationship can be cultivated and ultimately converted. Chris Borgan, in his books, labels this as being a ‘Trust Agent’. Push ultimately reaches two degrees of separation from the SIs natural sphere of influence with a marginal net new impact. Pull on the other hand has the ability to be all net new.