1. Post different content forms

Don’t assume content is synonymous with words only. It includes video, photo and audio too. Ensure your content mix is balanced because different community members prefer different content.

2. Update content regularly

Avoid the ‘one content fits all platforms’ temptation. What your community members view on Facebook shouldn’t be ‘photocopied’ to your Twitter tweets. In addition, content, especially tweets and Facebook statuses updates, shouldn’t park in your accounts all day. Update at least thrice a day. Otherwise your community members will assume you are doing a copy and paste job.

3. Associate your business with a cause

One tactic that will earn your social media marketing campaign bonus points (and a surge in traffic, albeit temporary) is by aligning your brand with initiatives like the recently concluded Kenyans 4 Kenya.

Keep content about your participation minimal otherwise you will be regarded as a publicity seeking pig. Instead, ask your community to voice their views on issues unleashed by such disasters such as agricultural policy, irrigation and extension services.

A temporary diversion from brand-related content shows that your business cares about – and desires to – be involved in solving real-world challenges.

4 Massage their emotions

Nothing makes an impact on your community’s emotions than that feeling that your business considers them special. So special that they are the first to know of new products and services and also the first to try out the beta versions, so special that they are the first to be invited to the launch parties, so special they are the first to know of upcoming price discounts, so special that you’re the first to send them birthday wishes, etc. You can never go wrong with massaging your community members’ emotions.

5) Emergency responses

Unfortunately, like all relationships, sometimes you and your community members will experience turbulent times. This situation usually arises when businesses experience disasters and their responses are inadequate. Remember BP’s 2010 PR disaster after an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

You will be tempted to respond with a ‘know-it-all’ reply. Resist that temptation. Respond politely with a line like, “Thank you for your observation, we are doing our best to contain the situation…”  In these emergencies, constant communication is essential, otherwise your community will suspect you are being evasive. Nothing contributes to your community’s alienation (and possible defection) than defensiveness and evasiveness.

Implementing the five social media marketing tactics above is a strong way to anchor your social media marketing strategy on a stable surface.

Despite those and other hazards in your business environment, your SME still has to attract new customers. The current options of radio, print, TV, events, etc to achieve this goal are not only prohibitively expensive for your SME’s short-term financial health, but tracking their effectiveness is impossible. Word of mouth from satisfied clients is an inexpensive way of getting new business, but you can exponentially increase its effectiveness via social media.

Priceless return on investment

That’s why you should consider social media marketing to complement your other marketing efforts. Approximately 4 million Kenyans could access the Internet by June 2011, and a million of them had Facebook accounts, according to statistics from Internet World Stats.

Imagine if you could cultivate a relationship with your target audience on Facebook. The contagion from their ‘liking’ and recommending your SME could extend to their friends overseas: priceless. You’ll be wondering what your competitors are on about when they complain that, “Biashara ni mbaya.” And you haven’t covered other popular social media marketing territories like Twitter and Linkedin yet.

Our social media marketing team at Pamoja Media will be honoured to work with you in compiling and implementing a relevant social media marketing strategy that delivers a return on your investment for your SME. Contact us today.

Last year, budget allocations and ad spending on online marketing surpassed that of the traditional media in the US. This is the direction our region is taking; but at a much faster rate than the West did. Just two years ago, over 60% of the activities carried online in Kenya would only have been considered a myth. The push for online activities have driven the priced for modems and broadband connections drastically down.

Next came the main technological tools meant for Africa; mobile phones. The cost of smart phones and tablets has reduced. The rise in mobile browsers and locally developed applications for Internet-enabled phones provided the needed kick for this sector to grow. Android has a special mention in this sector. Similar to the success Android has had globally in the smart phone market, this operating system has been the leading smart phone OS in the Kenyan market. The affordable IDEOS from Huawei has been quite successful in Kenya.

As a result, local developers have stepped into this new avenue, creating local solutions to local problems in all sectors including agriculture, health, education etc. Locally developed apps and sites provide an invaluable portfolio for brands to showcase and grow markets – reaching a target audience within this region.

The new order in marketing is that of brands following the masses. The power of numbers cannot be better displayed than through the growth of social networks and social media marketing. The Facebook phenomenon has shaped governments and institutions in Africa. The Arab spring that saw the ouster of leaders in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya is a powerful testament to the power of social media. This is the epitome of online communities reaching their maturity, shifting from a “fun and hanging out” platform to a more decisive and impact oriented gatherings. The same decision making and discussions have extended from the politically oriented conversations to products, services and brands. Budgets for online PR and monitoring are slowly increasing now that executives open up to the fact that these conversations are growing. This provides an avenue for brands to lead conversations and threaten their markets.

Traditional media has become congested and thus more expensive. Companies are now looking for a cheaper, more effective option of reaching out to a highly segmented audience. The low entry barriers for marketing online coupled with intensive tracking and analytic tools have proved to be most resourceful for selling brands online. This is especially true for SMEs and start-ups that have to muscle their way to the top using the most cost-effective means. The audience has also become more segmented through specific platforms and communities based on age, geographic location and interests.

Some leading global Internet brands have set up shop in Kenya with the country pegged as a leader in ICT across the African continent. Internet search and marketing giant Google has its Africa headquarters in Nairobi and held the GKenya conference earlier in September 2011 for the second time running. A key strategy for the company is to grow the number of businesses going online and eventually using their products.

The final blow is the youth. In search of income while studying, college kids nowadays spend time online to find research writing jobs thus end up creating mini-BPOs in their rooms. Upon graduation, these youths have gained an understanding of how the online scene works. This means they graduate into other money-making ventures by starting e-commerce sites or running community-based platforms. Both of these require highly developed skills in interacting with people online. It is this naturally acquired skill and experience that companies are now tapping into to execute online marketing campaigns and grow their brands.

We are therefore witnessing a positive growth of internet marketing in Africa. With 25% of the population with access to the Internet both through PC and mobile devices, we are optimistic about the growth of the industry.

One of best websites you should definitely include in your social marketing efforts is Facebook. This social network currently boasts 750 million active members worldwide. Half of them spend approximately one hour daily updating their statuses, posting photographs and video links, and commenting on their friends’ statuses, etc. More than 30% of Facebook users use their mobile phones and other hand held devices to browse this site. One tactic you should begin with is creating a profile page for your business free on Facebook and then requesting your friends, suppliers, employees, etc to ‘like’ it. But that’s not enough, you have to keep the page fresh by updating content regularly and responding to your customers’ comments, complaints, and so forth. These measures will allow your initial base of users to recommend it to their Facebook friends who will then recommend it to their friends…

Twitter is another popular social media marketing website you can’t ignore in your optimization efforts. It currently has more than 250 million users worldwide. Again, it’s free to create your account there and then begin posting content also known as ‘tweeting’. Follow that up by asking your friends, suppliers, employees, etc to follow your business. But that’s not enough, you have to keep the page fresh by updating content regularly and responding to your customers’ comments, complaints, and so forth. These measures will allow your initial base of users to recommend it to their Twitter followers, who will then recommend it to their followers… Just remember to keep your tweets at 140 characters maximum, otherwise the excess copy won’t be published.

Another great website to include in your social media marketing planning is YouTube. It’s the world’s most popular video sharing website, with over 3 billion videos viewed daily! You can record a video explaining your company’s goods and services and then upload it on your account. Follow that by up by sending the link to your Facebook and Twitter friends and followers respectively to get the account on its feet. But that’s not enough, you have to keep your account fresh by updating content regularly and responding to your customers’ comments, complaints, and so forth. These measures will allow your initial base of users to recommend it to their Facebook and Twitter friends, who will then recommend it to their friends…

If your business needs a social marketing strategy that will nurture and grow your business and complement your other online marketing efforts and contribute to your return on investment, talk to Pamoja Media http://pamojamedia.com/services/online-services/social-media-campaigns/ like yesterday.

The innovations and online start-ups that have emerged in the past few months have made a major difference in the traditionally perceived use of the web. Talk more of an entire world of online communities, web strategies and as a marketing platform for businesses. The entire post will cover the expectations in social media, client relationship management, web design practices, online marketing & advertising, interactive strategies and some bit of mobile technology. Thats the introduction, so lets dig in….

Social Media Marketing & Online Communities
The trend was already set in 2009, picked up pace in 2010 and I highly doubt this year will be any different. It’s almost a surety that there will be an increase in the use of the current main social media platforms namely; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Blogs by both individuals and organizations. The trends of an increasing Internet access due to the penetration of mobile web speaks for this. The Egyptian revolution story will make more leaders aware of the power of social media and the highly unpredictable youth who dominate the platforms. More leaders (and companies) will look to tap into this steadily growing and highly responsive market.

In Africa, the growth of social groupings around products, services and a common interest will spill over from the US and Europe. New jobs titles such as Online Community Managers and Social Media Managers will become more ‘normal’ in boardrooms and hallways conversations across the continent will be extended to online social platforms thus grow the communities in terms of numbers and content.

Universal Log in and security
The expected growth in use of the Internet (mostly through the increased penetration of web-enabled mobile phones and the current battle among Smartphone manufacturers) will be the main jolt needed for the establishment of a universal one-user multiple accounts login credibilities such as Google’s Friend Connect and FacebookConnect, MySpace’s Data Portability and the Twitter authentication options. Maybe this will lead to an all-out-war for popularity in the use of the authentication options. This generates the question of a unified legislation on online security. The recent attackers by Anonymous in support of Wikileaks showed how organized hackers are and how quickly they can get behind a cause. I wonder if they can also come together and with the same solidarity develop a regulation for themselves. With the current shift in focus by hackers and virus writers from the Windows OS as the main target to mobile devices, never before has there been a much necessary need for an effective online privacy and security protocol to be implemented worldwide.

Exclusivity and Segmentation
Is there more space for new social platforms to be created? Exclusivity provides the answer. Like it has happened in all societies, the projected increase in the population of social media users will create a need for redefining of niche groups to maintain exclusivity. This has already begun to happen with the emergence of more oriented social platforms that focus on specified areas of interest. Talk about the likes of Quora, Jumo, VC4Africa who basically end up using the default login credibilities from the main players such as the FacebookConnect and Twitter OAuth options. Some of these start ups with a niche target will have to come together and merge in order to increase capacity, enhance features and maintain relevancy in the escalating social platforms jungle. A further segmentation of the global social networks will be brought about through the development of apps which basically provide an improved version of the current features we have now come to know as groups and forums.

Online Marketing – African burst
This is more of our turf and positivity is the word. It not just about being optimistic, but the numbers tend to point towards an increased ads spending on online marketing and client engagement via social media marketing across the globe. There will be a global growth in online ad spending but the most significant growth will be in the African online scene, both from the organizations and the publishers. More and more publishers will discover that there actually exists better ways to monetize the portfolio than just running Google Ads. Not that am against Google Ads, but I am sure many bloggers can attest to this. The returns one gets from running the ads for weeks are meager, unreliable and it may just not do justice to the overall site design you had initially visualized. An upsurge of partnerships between corporates and bloggers, local ad agencies will make a dash for the available portfolio coming up with each new website cropping up. Social media will take the forefront as the main delivery vehicle for online marketing and client relationship management.

Ad spending
Local content has been on the fore-front of promoting Internet activity in many African countries. This mainly entails development of more websites thus more virgin space for online marketers. The industry is currently at a starting point but the realization of the potential and rate of ROI in online advertising is growing. The big online markets (SA, Kenya, Nigeria and Egypt) are expected to record a big chunk of the global projected online ad spending stats at the end of the year.

According to a report by eMarketer, the total expenditure in online advertising has finally surpassed newspaper ads with an estimation of $25.8 billion for online ads against $25.7 billion for newspapers. “In each of the following four years, Internet ad spending will hit new peaks…….. It may seem counterintuitive, but marketers’ concerns about the ongoing economic turbulence are driving more online ad spending. This trend reflects how most forms of Internet advertising are now seen as more of a ’sure thing’ than most traditional media.” said the firm. Well, obviously in Africa it will not be a complete shift from the traditional media but rather sizable jolt in budgets to online ads. Just enough to turn corporate heads.

Apps and Ads
We just cannot stop the development of apps. That train left the station long ago headed to an exciting but unknown destination. Are apps killing the web? According to Wired’s editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, the web is already dead and has given way to slicker and simpler online services via the highly vibrant and futuristic Internet. Leading the pack in the new online order are smart gadgets; mobile phones and tablets through apps.

What role will apps play in online advertising? In 2010, out of the total ads spending statistics in the US, in-app ads accounted for 5% of the total value. This will most definitely rise with the development of more smart phones by Windows Mobile and Android. The newly released Android version, Honeycomb is optimized for tablets thus it is expected to further boost the development of the gadgets by manufacturers. This means more apps, more ad space. I think the guys at Google had a dream about this. They acquired Admob in May at a cost $750million with all the intentions of recouping their investment plus lots of profits. Google have taken the platform global and at the moment, the in-application ad network is currently getting over 2 billion ad requests each day thanks to both Android and iPhone owners.

(Image courtesy of Abul Hussain)

Once again the guys at Opera have released the ever impressive and highly comprehensive mobile-web use statistics; State of the Mobile Web (SMW) report. Unlike the one released in June that primarily focused on Africa, the October 2010 edition provides a more global look at the trends and usage statistics of mobile web. “Over the course of three weeks, more than 300,000 Opera Mini users responded in what we believe is the largest global survey of mobile web users ever conducted.” says Jon von Tetzchner (Co-founder, Opera Software).

This report provides interesting information on how the current mobile community uses their mobile to access the Internet via the extremely popular Opera Mini phone browsers. In general the number of Opera Mini users experienced about 7% increase in users as compared to the previous month (September 2010). More information on the trends in the rest of the world can be found here.

Lets focus on Africa
South Africa and Nigeria are the only representatives of the continent on the top ten list of Opera Mini users globally while Kenya has since slipped to the number 16. With impressive statistics like 121% increase in page views, 67.6% unique-user growth and 83.1% in data transfer since October 2009, South Africa leads the pack followed by Nigeria who even better growth statistics. Despite the drop in ranking, Kenya still leads in main statistical areas such as page views per user (651), amount of data transfered per user (7MB) and data transfered per page view (10KB).

The tops sites across all the three featured countries were Facebook followed by Google. Yahoo, Mxit and Wikipedia take the remaining top 5 positions in number of visits. Nokia still maintains its top position as the most popular device but this month we have seen an impressive increase in the use of Samsung devices.

This report basically provides a rather unique and really important insights on how big and fast the Africa mobile market is growing and the potential it presents in terms of digital marketing and social media.

The‭ ‬18th of November‭ ‬2010‭ ‬saw the first ever CIO 100‭ ‬awards take place at the exclusive Safari Park Hotel where the top ICT personalities and organizations were recognized for their contribution.‭ ‬The CIO100‭ ‬is a premier awards event that brings to the limelight the innovation and hard work done by Chief Information Officers‭ (‬CIOs‭) ‬in the East Africa region in improving the communication and interactive processes in the organization to add business value and I was privileged to be one of the judges.

‎“‏It has been a very interesting journey for the CIO‭ ‬100‭ ‬team,‭ ‬we have seen excellent applications from various companies across East Africa,‭ ‬and I can confirm to you that businesses in the region are now starting to look at ICT very strategically,‭”‬ said Harry Hare,‭ ‬Publisher CIO East Africa‭ (‬www.cio.co.ke‭) ‬the organizers of the event.

The event was kicked off by a golf tournament that was followed by a‭ ‬3-day symposium that saw the participants and eventual winners make presentations and showcase the impressive and innovative ways in which they had implemented IT in solving some of their business problems.‭ ‬The main event was the dinner gala that saw Safaricom,‭ ‬Kenyatta University,‭ ‬AAR Health Services Tanzania,‭ ‬Makerere University,‭ ‬Nairobi Stock Exchange and Equity Bank emerge as‭ ‬the some of big winners of the inaugural CIO100‭ ‬Awards Competition.

Some of the guys who have made it work…

The main thing that caught my eyes was that many of the impressive technologies submitted by the companies and were in the finalist were mainly mobile-based.‭ ‬Safaricom’s M-Pesa emerged victorious as not just been innovative,‭ ‬but having positively impacted both Safaricom as a company and its more than‭ ‬3‭ ‬million users.‭ ‬M-Pesa has changed the way people do business today by making payments easy and convenient. ‭

‬The NSE was also recognized for implementing the Automated Trading System‭ (‬ATS‭) ‬making it one of the most advanced stock trading houses in the region.‭ ‬But what caught our eyes was the third placed M-Kesho technology.‭ ‬Close as‭ ‬2nd runners‭ ‬up was M-Kesho by Equity Bank which takes the advent of mobile money to a new level by integrating M-Pesa with its banking services thus allowing M-Pesa users to have and run bank accounts through their mobile phones.‭ ‬It morphs the new and the old to bring‭ ‬mobility,‭ ‬mobile banking and traditional banking to its customers.‭

Coca Cola East‭ & ‬Central Africa bagged the manufacturing sector category based on their submission of the new mobile based system developed by Virtual City that seeks to streamline their chain of distribution.‭ ‬This is basically the same application that emerged top at the Nokia Apps competition earlier in the year.‭ ‬Kenyatta University was mainly recognized for its implementation of the smart cards for students and staff but with one had to‭ ‬mention the use of mobile technology by students in accessing information such as fee balance.‭ ‬and exams results.

Think about it…

I can write an entire series to highlight and mention numerous case studies on how organizations in Kenya‭ (‬and Africa as a whole‭) ‬have successfully used mobile technology in increasing efficiency in their business processes.‭ ‬The above are classic examples of how African companies and industries are coming of age in implementing technology to increase business value and CRM‭ (‬Client Relations Management‭)‬.‭ ‬Its impressive how much mobile technology have been adopted across the continent but at the same time its rather heart breaking to count how many other firms are still promoting Neo-Luddism‭ ‬by taking a back-step in the moving forward with technology.

This blog post was only meant to open the minds of company executives in Africa to the possibilities of technology and show that it can be done rather well in Africa.‭ ‬the diverse industries shown in the examples above are a testimony‭ ‬of how easily technology can be adapted into the different organizations in diverse sectors ranging from education‭ (‬Kenyatta University)‬,‭ ‬banking and finance‭ (‬Equity Bank‭) ‬and even manufacturing and consumer products‭ (‬Coca Cola EA‭)‬.‭ ‬According to the reports from the event‭ ‬organizers,‭ ‬a‭ whopping ‬29%‭ ‬of the entire projects submitted relied on mobile and wifi technology either partially or entirely for their successful implementation.

What is your organization doing to tap into this new territory that will help take your firm to new heights in terms of business process efficiency and sales lead generation‭?

A while back, I had an interesting discussion with a client with regards to the best way for her organization to have a an effective digital footprint. Our meeting went on well as we covered Internet strategy, website design and content, SEO and online advertising . But come social media and major doubts came into play. “I know its important but not at the moment. We need to focus on selling the product and reaching more clients.” was the response. As an online PR and marketer, I felt this was a challenge and decided to try and answer some of the main questions to help clear the the name of social media, of which business executives already consider a grey area.

So here goes:

Social Media is time consuming and labor intensive:
No one understands the company brand and products better than the company employees and if they can not talk about it, then there is a big possibility no one else will. We find many companies that ‘block’ their employees from accessing social sites so that they spend more time working but in essence we are just keeping most of the information and facts about your brand or product bundled up within the organization’s walls. I suppose thats not good for business right?
Well, with the correct strategy on time, content and target metrics, a company can be able to provide a good customer relation management through social media using minimal resources and time. Updates, responses and posts can be done in a scheduled and regular manner that even the clients can get accustomed to. The most important thing will be to ensure consistency so as to earn the trust of your audience and hence gain more followers who know what to expect and when. But most importantly, how to get in-touch with you.

Basic function of social media is to reflect what’s on my company website:
What ever is said on social media platforms can be said on the website using even more words and explanation with even better results; This is a lie. Yes, social media can not replace the use and effectiveness of a website in some areas but it presents the personal side of the company. Its pretty hard to reach the hearts of your clients when the communication is analogue.
With social media, its more of a digital dialogue that has the potential to be replicated and shared by other people. This is basically getting a thumbs up from your audience to others who will most likely be directed back where you want them; your website. An effective use of social media to increase traffic to your website and generate online conversations about your brand is dependent on the social media strategy execution plan put in place.

Measuring ROI and Impact of social media is complicated and is usually inconclusive:
Two ways, qualitative and quantitative measure of success and impact. Under the qualitative measure of social media and online PR, you need to determine the areas to be measured that is, corporate reputation, conversations or customer relationships, get benchmark questions on the current situation then come up with the questions to measure the success.
Quantitative measures of a successful social media campaign will include number of new followers/friends joining the company page/accounts, amount of mentions and links shared, retweets and level of increased traffic to the company website generated from the social sites.

The African online scene is still too young and immature:
I think the question should be “What does the future hold for social media in Africa so that I can invest my company resources in it?” The leading countries in terms of social media presence and use in Africa are South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt with each contributing in its own way via mobile, videos, blogs and popular micro-blog topics. The continent has created some impressive social media presence through user generated content that originate from social media platform such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and YouTube. Uganda produced its first viral video this year and Kenya has had more than three global Trending Topics under its belt but just to mention a few as there are many more examples we could list.

Its evident and quit understandable that many corporates in Africa still view social media as time consuming and an unnecessary undertaking. At the same time, many other organizations are setting up an online presence without fully understanding the benefits that can be achieved by the endless opportunities created by having a detailed and well structured strategy. At Pamoja Media, we offer a fully integrated social media and online PR expertise to unlock the endless opportunities that social media provides as an invaluable customer relations and management tool.

One area that is conspicuously absent or lacking is corporate/company blogs, on a company’s website you will find the blog section to be usually out of date and generally ignored.  This is unfortunate because in terms of ease of communication this platform would be the best for the company to offer a regular update of goings on to its clients, customers and to the general internet public.  Wikipedia defines corporate blogging as ‘….. a weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals‘, adding that..’ The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads‘.

We would like to offer a few pointers on how to run a successful and relevant company blog:

• Establish guidelines.  This should be done from the outset as they will guide the bloggers on what topics to cover.  These guidelines should also outline the themes that the bloggers will write on on the blog.
• Establish a blogging team.  A team should be put in place to ensure regular updates, the blogging duties should also be part of the tasks and not seen as an additional/side issue.
• Avoid Marketing-speak and PR.  Make your blog a window to the soul of the company, a place where the company’s corporate ethos are shared with the on-line public when doing this avoid it being a marketing talk-shop.
• Establish a commenting policy.  This will guide your blogging team on how respond to comments. Comments will encourage interaction between the company and your readers.  As you blog you will find that comments will come ranging from the constructive ones to insults a commenting policy will make sure your blog does not degenerate into an abuse arena.  One thing to note though is to welcome criticism, this will provide valuable feedback to company.

The above four steps should guide you to starting out you company blog, if you need more help doing so, feel free to contact us on how we can work together to make your corporate blog work for you.

IT training for kids who live in the surrounding farm areas of Stutterheim outside East London in the Eastern Cape. South Africa. Photo: Trevor Samson / World Bank

It has been a famous rallying cry that Africa’s internet growth will continue skyrocketing. Research studies have proved the possibility of a viable market within certain countries in the continent. With the introduction of various fiber optic projects across the continent, faster and cheaper internet will become a major benefit for internet connectivity in Africa.

Internet penetration within the continent sits at 5.6% while the rest of the world enjoys a 26.9% average. Within Africa, the only countries with penetration higher than 20% include: Mauritius (26.7% of 1.275 million people), Reunion (27.4% of 803,209 people), Seychelles (37.0% of 86,595 people) and Tunisia (27.0% of 10.38 million people). Morocco is close to breaking the 20% barrier at 19.2% of 34.3 million people. Penetration within these countries allows the web to play a greater role in the everyday lives of people with access. Other than Tunisia and Morocco, most of these countries have a small population within tiny island nations allowing for greater penetration.

While it is true that the web will become a force in Africa, it won’t be so without a few deliberate decisions on both the part of policy makers and business people. Currently, the web is used to access outside destinations and information in most African countries.

Why is this significant?

Until the internet experience is relevant to day to day operations of a people, it is very hard to make it a must have tool. In the US, the web is used from when one wakes up till the moment they retire to sleep. A single day will have someone checking email, reading the news, catching up on blogs, shopping, interacting with friends, banking, work intranets, learning through research, entertainment, and many more. Within Africa, I have found that the internet is used effectively by a select few. For everyone else, this is a great tool for communicating and meeting people through social networks such as Facebook.

Browsing through the Top Sites per country on Alexa.com is an interesting experience. In the US, the first foreign site ranked that I could identify is BBC at number 55. I think of a foreign site as one where content is created predominantly for a country outside your own. The Google country versions are a special case and I will treat it as such. Outside of the US, whenever you type google.com, the country version shows up instead of the global site. So I treat Google country sites as a similar iteration to the global site. Out of the top 100 sites within the US, I could only identify BBC as a foreign site.

In Japan, China and the UK, I found US sites but also a good amount of local web sites relevant to the country. In China for example, none of the global powerhouses such as Google and Yahoo led the way. These country leading sites cover a wide range of fields from shopping, recreation, local and government services, entertainment, news, resources and many others.

In Africa, this is not the case. The top Nigerian site ranks 16^th among the leading sites. Nigeria though has around 22 sites within its top 100. South Africa’s first site is ranked 8^th with a healthy 42 sites within its top 100. Egypt’s top site is ranked 8^th while Morocco’s is 9^th. Kenya’s top site is 12^th with 25 sites amongst the top 100.

In my opinion, until African governments start investing in better websites to assist its citizenry, until corporations both large and small start delivering services or improve workflows online; we will always trail the rest of the world. While connection speeds and the drop in prices are major factors in the growth of web penetration, so will the delivery of every day services that consumers and citizens expect from their corporations and governments respectively.

Cheaper internet will mean more people will have a chance to go online. But how sustainable will the web be in Africa without great local content? We can all visit Facebook and BBC and laugh at YouTube videos, but we need local content outside of news to make the internet a truly living and breathing organism. Services such as job and real estate searches, car buying, shopping, local entertainment and the like will be important.

This brings me to the final missing piece that I think is as relevant as a conscious shift in strategy by both governments and corporations. Online Payment Services. Discussion on payment services will require a separate post, but until a payment system is established in Africa that is respected and accepted by both locals and the world at large, ecommerce in Africa will be a dud. Fraud has rocked so many banks and online payment services. For every new payment product made available, a hundred hackers try to figure out a way to steal from them. This has become a major pain for most companies and international ones have learnt to avoid Africa like the plague. We need a stable, robust and scalable solution that work in most African countries. Once that is established, I think we will be on our way to realizing the potential of the web and the smart phones in Africa.