Disclaimer: This post was originally posted on Afrinnovator

Unlike traditional media, new emerging forms of communication have to be taken with the seriousness needed and ‘courted’ like you would a young lady you are eying to befriend and eventually marry. Lets’ face it, traditional media was all about the producer dictating what you the consumer will eat, listen, dress, sleep in, sit, talk… virtually every aspect of your life. Among die-hard fans of social media, it has opened up lines of communication, interactions and the world when it was previously thought impossible.

So, how does one approach social media? One fact that social media enthusiasts, consumers and users agree, it’s much harder to cultivate a massive following, fans, champions and even detractors’ overnight. It takes time, patience, more time and a heavy dosage of reality to make it in this jungle that is social media.

Listening

In social media, it’s not about you, your services, products or anything that may be deemed narcissistic. Listening is an art that one needs to learn quickly when navigating social media Tweet this

Before approaching that girl of your dream, am sure you take time to observe, learn, listening both to her and those close to her. It takes time to actually pluck the courage to approach her. This is the same in social media. You cannot dive in, and expect to make as much ‘noise and commotion’ as you want.

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Participate

After establishing a rapport, understanding conversations or gathering a few ‘friends’, the next step is participating or engaging with your new ‘friends’. Remember, social media is about everyone else apart from you. Take time to compliment, praise, and/or engage in meaningful conversation that will put you in the right path.

Finally you plucked the courage to approach her. And further to that, she has agreed to a coffee date. This is not the time to ‘play dumb and deaf’. If you played your cards right, am sure you will have discovered mutual interest or even differences that you can base your ‘first’ date tête-à-tête on. Apply these same rules to social media.

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Monitoring

With people conversing, interacting, mingling and networking, one needs to observe keenly their effects on those around. Having listened and participated, there is bound to emerge fans and detractors. How do you ensure you are always in the loop? Social media monitoring comes in handy. Since social media is about user-oriented and user-created content and conversations, monitoring becomes of paramount importance if one wants to remain among the top crème. How are you going respond to positive or even negative conversations about you, your service or product? Tweet this

It’s taken you months to finally make her accept you. The hard part has only begun. How do you deal with relationship up and down? How do you identify and monitor any issues, misunderstandings and deal with them effectively.

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Immediately after the BAKE Blog Awards 2012, tech blogger and one of the organizers Kachwanya sort to understand why Kenyan corporates and businesses are reluctant to embrace blogging as part of their online marketing tactics. From his analysis, the question that begs an immediate answer for the marketers is where is the money aka sales and done deals accrued from blogging. It is understandable for such murmurs and questions as it takes dedication to make a blog successful i.e. act as sales machine for businesses. The jury (read corporate marketers) is still out this read more

In this post, we explored the benefits of blogging a business can accrue from a regularly updated blog. A good business blog assists the business to gain exposure and bring in new customers as well as providing a forum for current customers to keep up with the latest happenings in the business.

But, maybe we should have started with the basics – what is needed to make a blog successful and marketers see ROI. While it is widely acknowledged that business blogging is no longer a luxury but a necessity for any business that is involved in online marketing, just like any other aspect of business, it requires some preparation. As such, it is important to lay the groundwork.There are five challenges that the average business needs to overcome first. According to Hubspot, 57% of companies with a blog have acquired a customer from their blog. Source

Strategy

No two businesses are same. In order to gain optimum benefit from a business blog, the business must have a clear idea of what the blog is meant to achieve, and how this will be done. The business must also be clear on who exactly their target audience is. In this way, the posts written would be geared to attracting this particular cohort as its readership. A clearly drafted messaging strategy (editorial calendar), marketing tactics, blogger outreach tactics, engagement tactics, analytics etc will ensure a smooth start.

Link to Business Objectives or Goals

Understanding how other businesses are utilising online tools and wanting to copy their strategies is all good, but at the end of the day, the blog is about your particular business. There needs to be a direct correlation between the blog content and your business goals. Continual production of relevant content, its distribution and promotion will increase brand awareness & visibility, loyalty and higher chances of conversions. An understanding of key metrics to track and measure is important as it will guide your blog in achieving the intended results.

Sufficient Content

The type of content to disseminated is also key; what does the reader want to see? After zeroing in on your target audience and their informational needs, your readers will appreciate a constant flow of information. If a blog is flooded with too much information, it could tend to overwhelm the reader. Too little information and the traffic to the blog would probably dry up. A healthy balance therefore, should be the goal. Consistency, quality and relevance of the content posted is important and the essence of the message must be clear in the mind of the business owner at all times. When it comes to content formats, the choice is wide and varied to meet the needs of your readers.

Blogging is a powerful tool for business and lead generation and yet I’m surprised most digital consultants are quick to build Facebook pages and Twitter accounts as opposed to making websites that convert prospects to consumers and evaluating what social means to the business as a whole. Mark Kaigwa Resources

As can be seen from the above points, running a blog is an extremely involved undertaking and takes various resources to accomplish in terms of manpower, budget, technology, relevant knowledge & skills and a significant amount of time. Without these resources, starting the blog would be a false start.

Blog Marketing

Lastly, the business blog is useless without sufficient traffic to it. Creating a blog and doing nothing to broadcast it will prove your efforts fruitless thus discouraging you. The aim of the business blog is interact with your target audience and therefore requires that the right readers visit the site on a regular basis which can accomplished through marketing to drive traffic to the blog. This includes use of social media, email marketing, syndication, guest blogging and traditional marketing collaterals such as including the blog url in your print materials.

If you need help with your blog or are looking to create one, check out our blog solutions.

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10 Business Blogs in East Africa

My Take on Business Blogging in Kenya

Peter Nduati, CEO Resolution Health East Africa Ltd

PN: At Resolution Health we have always been a vibrant brand and as such we have willingly embraced new media. We may have been the first local brand to utilize QR codes in communication when we included these on our advertising fliers for the Resolution Health Impala Floodlit Tournament in March last year. The fliers were distributed to university students at their campuses and the QR codes linked to our Facebook page.

We have plans underway to expand our digital footprint though currently our 3 key tools are our website, Facebook and Twitter. Our website www.resolution.co.ke has dynamic tools such as an online search engine of our over 450 Medical Service Providers and a Premium Calculator in addition to the product and member information.

Promoting Healthy Living is a core value for us at Resolution Health; as such we provide relevant health articles and tips on our website and through our social media accounts. The engagement on Twitter ( @ResolutionHEA ) and Facebook ( Resolution Health East Africa Limited ) shows the public’s appreciation of health information and preventative care tips.

Being on social media is a full time role. It takes dedicated resources which we had not committed at first when we launched our presence in this space. We have since corrected that and are now able to engage better with our current and prospective members. JK: What are some of the challenges the organisation has faced when it comes to implementation and usage of these new tools?

PN: Being on social media is a full time role. It takes dedicated resources which we had not committed at first when we launched our presence in this space. We have since corrected that and are now able to engage better with our current and prospective members.

JK: What is the biggest change/advantage these tools have brought to your organization?

PN: A real time forum for listening to and updating consumers. This has been an opportune platform for us to share healthy living information, provide updates on our brand activities and receive sales and customer service queries.

JK: How do you measure the success of these tools in your organization?

PN: Not by the number of likes or followers we have but the levels of engagement we get i.e. customer queries, responses to our comments and customers sharing the information we share.

JK: What advice would you give leaders and organisations that are toying with the idea of using and implementing these new tools as part of their operations?

PN: Go for it! Consumers are communicating about the brands they engage within the social media space. Whether or not you are present, your consumer will be talking about you. It is important to be present to listen and respond to them. Social media is the consumers’ platform, your presence there should be to engage with them and not a one way information flow of you bombarding them.

Thank you Peter for your time and candid discussion on this topic.

You can follow him on Twitter @PeterNduati

My lessons from this interview are;

• Social media is an engagement between a company and its customers.
• Social media is not hit and run. To succeed, one needs structures, a strategy and dedicated resources to make it work.
• Social media offers real-time opinions, views and customer sentiments about a brand.
• To succeed, one needs to go beyond vanity metrics i.e. number of likes or followers and measure the true business value as set out in your strategy.
  
• Social media is not a company’s megaphone but rather, a consumers’ platform. Take time to listen, interact, engage and share relevant content that your consumers will enjoy. Ditch the monologue and embrace dialogue.
  

What lessons do you take away from this interview? Do share.

Email us to discuss a tailored social media strategy for your business/organisation.

According to Scott Stratten, there are seven deadly sins that hinder successful social media marketing that yield desired results. They are:

 Gluttony

The point of participating in social media is not to spread yourself too thin, trying to be everywhere. Instead, you should try to be great in the one or two outlets that you choose to establish a presence in. What happens when you spread yourself too thin is what Scott Stratten calls Mannequin Networking where the company or individual has a presence but is not really there. The ability to react and interact on one medium is more effective than being present on every media but without any real presence.

 Pride

It is not possible to ignore certain tools or applications because you dislike them. To indulge in this behaviour could result in missed opportunities for you or your company. Scott Stratten advised that it is better to learn about it and if you consequently hate it, you are rejecting it from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance. This is because you may not be impressed with a certain tool, yet it maybe the commonly tool used by your target audience.

 Sloth

There is little use in having a presence on a site if you are not going to utilise it. If the twitter handle or facebook page you have opened remains neglected, it is better to delete it. There is no need to try to operate an account that you can only monitor weekly or monthly. The whole point of social media is engagement and connection and if one does not like to do so, it is best to be completely absent.

 Greed

There is only one way to legitimately increase one’s friends, fans, or followers and that is to improve one’s content. There are no shortcuts or instant gratification in social media. Asking for followbacks or invading other people’s blogs or sites asking for followers creates the wrong impression. Slow but sure wins that race.

 Envy

The pretension perpetuated by some by claiming to be ‘humbled’ by compliments and then re- tweeting these compliments repeatedly gives the impression that is the opposite of humble. This is exacerbated when all negative comments posted on one’s page are deleted.

 Wrath

When someone has had a bad experience or is angry about something, if they have a social media account, they are likely to share the experience. The opposite is also true. When a person experiences good or exceptional service they are also likely to say so. Therefore it is important to keep this in mind as you conduct your offline interactions.

 Apathy

Arbitrary invitations to like a page, follow a company or tweet without giving a reason will make no sense to your target audience creating a sense of apathy. This leads them to ignore your messages if they are not actively turning them down. It is good therefore to conduct a due diligence that will let you know what your clients are interested it and what would pique their interests.

Go on and make your confession here. What is your social media sin?

Social media is in the ascendancy as far as online marketing is concerned. Facebook and Twitter reach a large number of people, with 140 characters and a click of the mouse. They are the easiest way to communicate with one’s clients and potential clients in the fastest way possible. The question then arises; does this mean that email marketing has lost its relevance? The quick answer to this question is no.

Remember, social media should be used to spark interest and create discussion about a topic or item of interest while email marketing should be used to deepen that interest into personal involvement, drawing in the client into a relationship with your company that goes beyond one hundred and forty words and into the realms of give and take.

While social media tools convey information to a large number of people, email marketing speaks to each individual at a more personal level. It encourages greater interaction between the company and the client by using triggers which precipitate an intended action. Furthermore, email marketing gives the sender a chance to enhance the relationship with the client throughout the sales cycles whilst encouraging fence-sitting potential customers to go further into the sales funnel.

The average email reader is assumed to be busy and vexed, having several issues at any one time competing for their attention. The email marketer must keep this in mind if they wish to hold the attention of the reader for more than a few seconds. In order to grab the needed attention, it is important that emails are tailored to reflect four features. Namely;

1. Personalisation,
2. segmentation,
3. contact relevance and
4. contact frequency.

Personalised emails that make the reader feel that the writer is speaking directly to them are more likely to be read until the end, and the intended action taken thereafter. In order to effectively personalise the email, it is necessary to segment subscribers into pertinent groups of common interest.

After segmenting subscribers, create relevant content that is tailored to that segment and send e-newsletters or eshots at a frequency common enough to be consistent without being insistent. Getting this balance right is what will make the difference between having one’s email continuously marked as spam (and deleted) and obtaining the response that is desired.

Social media can only say so much to the client or consumer of a product; being limited in words and scope of what can be written due to the wide range of its recipients. Using social media in conjunction with email can help the sender build up rapport with the intended recipient.

In this connected world where the personal touch is so often lacking, the use of email serves as the nearest substitute to the personal touch that can be found virtually.

Get in touch with us to help you create and launch successful email marketing campaigns. While at it, register to receive our Smurt Notes Digest, our email newsletter that we send out fortnightly.