I had the pleasure of spending some quality 1-on-1 time with dozens of new Closely for Business (C4B) users this week in Bellevue, WA.  The Bellevue Chamber of Commerce has launched an innovative new program called BizNow! that allows local businesses to tap into the power of social media, with Closely being the featured vendor in the program.

Few things ae more rewarding to a product manager than to hear enthusiastic reaction to the product.  So, this trip was VERY rewarding for me.  A number of our value propositions resonated well with the audience including the following:

• C4B’s streamlined dashboard allows the busy small business owner to quickly create offers; manage those offers with capabilities such as Expire, Restart, Duplicate and Edit; and track performance with statistics that are easy to digest.    Add in scheduling and the ability to dissimiate offers seamlessly to FaceBook and Twitter and C4B provides considerable time savings.  Lack of time to devote to disparate social media channels was a big concern for many businesses and they were delighted that C4B addressed that pain point.
• Among our newer features is a website widget that displays all live offers and updates in real time as new offers are created.  How many times have you been to a business website and seen offers that expired months ago?  The C4B website widget provides an elegant way for business owners to pop a small snippet of code on their home page so that visitors will alway see their latest offer.  This feature received rave reviews from the audience.
• The C4B live offer page garnered a few “oohs” and “ahhs” of appreciation.  As one participant said  “I can create something that looks that good from filling out a form?”  The live offer page provides a compelling presentation of the newly created offer and includes social sharing functions for FaceBook, Twitter, Email and SMS.

I gained a wealth of knowledge from the great folks at BCOC and the business owners who came to see our presentation and learn more about how Closely can help them meet their goals in using social media.  I’m looking forward to my next trip (I’m sure Perry has something lined up soon!) and meeting more local business owners.