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.

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.

We recently asked this question to our fans on Facebook in trying to establish how exactly do we expect social media to affect the lives of Africans in the days to come. Main reason we focused on this continent is because Africa has managed to establish herself as the fastest growing technology destination and as marvel in connectivity growth with simple applications and mobile gadgets having enormous impact in everyday life. Recent statistics have shown that a majority of us access the Internet through our mobile phones and most of us will spend our time on social networks; with Facebook leading the pack.
Here was your verdict of the top 5 areas as at the time we were publishing this post….together with some of your comments:

Advertising and marketing for businesses – 28.3%
At 28.3%, most of the respondents said that they expected social media to provide a major marketing platform for brand and businesses to reach out to their audience. As one of the first online marketing agency focusing on reaching the African online audience, we can agree with this, but do point out that the rate of adoption has been rather slow. The next few months does promise to come with major changes as SMEs lead the way in flocking the online advertising scene.

Comark Onani – “I think social media will change the way media disseminate information, the way we transmit info will be more collaborative than produced by controlled sources. This is the beginning of capacity building in the African social sphere”

Connecting with friends and family – 24.3%
We actually expected this to be the biggest in terms of the impact of social media, surprised us by coming in second. 24.3% of the respondents vouching for this option, saying it has helped in cutting down the cost of travel and communication through traditional media such as telephone calls. It was also noted that social media has enabled Africans in the diaspora to be in-touch with their families back home with much ease with more interactivity beyond audio only. The capability of social media platforms to easily support images, video and other multimedia is highly accredited for this.

Evans Gikunda – “the aspect of advertising and marketing for business using social media hasn’t been harnessed fully in Africa so I think its impact is more on connecting.”

Enabling Africans tell their own story – 23%
The influence of bloggers and people in the social media scene is unchallenged in a well-connected society. Reviews, travel stories, personal dairies, Twitter, YouTube videos and even photography site such as AfricaKnows are presenting a whole new angle with regards to information about Africa. The platforms are helping get information out of the once ‘dark continent’. Breaking news as well as cultural information is easily spread to the rest of the world. Social media basically provides Africa a ‘chance to set the record straight’ as one of the respondents put it.

Chris Orwa “The drop in prices of Internet connection has increased the number of Africans using social media and an outburst of blogs, this will greatly impart Africans telling their own stories and putting it online. The advent of micro-blogging sites like twitter and foursquare has lead to an African generation that document their lives online.”

Politics – 10.8%
As usual when mentioning this subject, the reference goes back to the same cases; Tunisia, Egypt, Liberia and a number of Arab countries that recently saw uprisings against oppressive regimes by protests and rallies organized mainly using social media platforms. Nigeria (the most populous nation in Africa) is about to hold its elections this year and the incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan has set a precedence of how to use an Internet presence in campaigning. With a Wikipedia page, a website (www.goodluckjonathan2011.com) and even an impressive Facebook page (with over half a million fans) we can easily say he has been one of the most serious guys to use the Internet in selling his vision for an an African country.

Brian Mungei – “I also wonder how politics will play out…think the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. Fore-sightly, will it have the same effect in Kenyan politics in 2012 like it did in Nigeria?”

Managing Knowledge in Africa – 6.8%
Information accessibility has always been an issue in a continent whose literacy levels have been one of the lowest in the world. Google and other search engines have provided a major tool for accessing information. Now with the advent of cloud computing tools integrated with social media capabilities; storing, sharing and managing knowledge has become easier and more effective. Local African experiences and stories and shared for people to learn from them and add their ideas. A good example are online collaborative sites include the Climate Exchange Network for Africa (CENA) platform. CENA (a Rockefeller funded project) enables ordinary farmers to connect and share with researchers and university professors on farming practises, issues that affect the climate and climate change resilience efforts.

Eric Mugendi Nyagah – “There is so much in terms of content and knowledge that social media can bring to the African people, like getting information from people in their networks that they would not otherwise have access to. And sharing stories of Africa by Africans”

How do YOU think social media will impact Africa? – Log into Facebook and take part in the poll here, or drop us an email (joshua@pamojamedia.com) to find out on how we think social media will impact you and your business.

We have been running a logo competition for the Climate Exchange for Africa (CENA) project which is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. The project brings together different organizations within the agricultural space in East Africa to come up with ways to build climate resilience thus benefiting the small holder farmer.

Please click on this link below vote for a design that you like and help us come up with a great mark for the network. Thanks.

(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?

Tell us about your digital marketing agency, Pamoja Media.

“Pamoja” is a Swahili word for “together.” I started Pamoja Media in the U.S. with my business partner, Benin Brown. Our initial idea was to create an African ad network for marketers who were thinking to reach out to Africans in the Diaspora and on the continent. We thought that if we could monetize more of the African inventory that exists out there, maybe we could improve the African economy by increasing the value of trading online.

But when I came back home to Kenya, I ended up discovering how the web is treated differently than in the U.S. Over here, most people start and end their web experiences on social platforms like Facebook and hi5. Corporations and government are not really using the web effectively. For example, we don’t have an automated payment system in most of Africa. We don’t have ways that people can actually use the web so they can leverage the functions of government — public services and things like that. So the original Pamoja Media model did not work out. We found that we could not market a website when people can’t do anything on those sites. That’s not a sustainable business model.

So the thing that we needed to start addressing was building the capacity for corporations, organizations, and maybe government to be able to look at the web a little differently. The web should be a platform where they can move processes, reduce costs, and serve a greater number of people efficiently. We ended up incorporating online strategy, creative development of some of the solutions we offer, online PR, social media marketing, media buying and placement.

I think Pamoja has the best of both worlds: Benin and I have seen how the web works in the U.S. I’d say the web here in Africa is about how it was in the West in 2002 or 2003. So we’ve actually seen the process of what’s happened in the West in terms of automation, efficiency, web 2.0 and all those things. With that in hindsight, we’re able to advise our clients a little better.

Read more of this interview with Joshua Wanyama on the TEDBlog.

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.

African Collages for VC4Africa used as branding and design inspiration

Pamoja Media worked with a team of different designers and programmers spanning three continents to put together the new VC4Africa website. This was a wonderful collaborative effort that had the whole team pulling together over a period of around 7 months to put together the new refreshing brand, inspirational images, collateral material, website and online strategy.

Ben White of VC4Africa interviewed Joshua Wanyama of Pamoja Media to talk about the project and how it came to fruition. Below is an excerpt of the interview. The new site launches on November 1st, 2010.

What was the draw for you to help VC4Africa launch?

I first encountered the VC4Africa website in 2008 as it started out on the Ning platform. When the opportunity to work on it arose, I took it as we share similar visions for Africa. So hopefully my involvement in the development also translates in a small way to helping the organization achieve its vision.

How did the process work for you, what made it different and how was it working with a design from Rotterdam?
The process was great. I was part of the design team with a wonderful designer Gaudi Hoedaya. It was my first full co-creation project spanning two continents. At first I was tentative on whether success was possible. But once we begun work, I knew we had a great process in hand and a good chance of bringing this site to fruition.

Can you talk a bit about the creative process and exchange with Gaudi?

We divided work along clear lines. Gaudi would work on the logo for VC4Africa and also develop the stationery material for the organization. Gaudi also designed the homepage and two internal pages of the site. I worked on the visual elements that would be considered for the brand including logo, images, colors and word play. This was to be the source of inspiration for Gaudi. I also finalized the site design and flow for each section within the site.

How did you come with those collages of images for example?

I started out by first exploring the words that kept coming up as we talked about the project. From these words, I picked 8 themes to explore. Once they were selected, I then found images and illustrations that would reflect these themes. I then explained the research and some key thoughts that Gaudi should consider while working on the logo. Once I forwarded him the collages, the rest was history.

What are the main ideas behind the design and the new site from your side?

We needed to highlight that a project of this magnitude can produce great results from combining varied geographic regions and experiences to deliver a project that was both dynamic and an embodiment of Africa

An African and European designer can actually work together while never having met and still be able to come up with an appropriate solution.

The whole existence of VC4Africa is to be able to give entrepreneurs and wonderful ideas in Africa a chance to grow to become something bigger. This site attempts to make this easier for both people seeking funding, those looking for opportunities to fund and the community to engage and have the best ideas rise to the top. It is my hope that we have achieved this goal.

How do you look at the results?

I think the site is successful from the development standpoint. It is now important the get the community to use it. This will be the final measure to let us know if it is successful or not.

What is for you the strength in this collaborative process?

Different thoughts from different people ensured a wonderful mix of ideas. These ideas in turn gave us a chance to build a good solution that has a really good chance to be great depending on how the community and its use of the different features. Without the various experiences being brought into one melting pot, we might have gotten a more cookie-cutter solution which the new VC4Africa site clearly isn’t.

Anything else you think is interesting to add?

I would love to see more collaborative projects in the future and see how many are successful. Maybe this might encourage technologists within the continent to develop more continental solutions.

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.