Social Media In Nigeria: 5 expert claim checklists
Author: yinkaolaito
Yinka Olaito is happy,excited and passionate Brand Communication, Social Media expert, Trainer and speaker. Yinka Olaito helps brands(Profits and Non-profits)with effective communication and positioning for premium service delivery and returns.Yinka Olaito also has special interest in Development Communication and has consulted for noted UN Agencies. Yinka Olaito is the CCO of Michael Sage consulting and African Child Right Inc.Lagos Nigeria
Social Media in Nigeria and in Africa still remains largely at the infancy stage. We must acknowledge the level of its development across African countries varies. This may be due to availability of technology, awareness, internet accessibility and bandwidth issues in various countries.
As the leading voice in Nigeria( privileged to have spearheaded the need for Social Media use), coupled with opportunities to have offered Social Media consultancy Services across African Countries(pride not intended), I do think speaking about current trend within this young industry will not be out of place.
Around May 2011, a PR Agency contacted me, wanting to know if I could help in hiring/recommend a Social Media Executive with track record. This has become necessary because the Agency just created a new department. To give room for competition, I wrote the vacancy on my facebook profile which attracted responses. To up the game a bit, I required these potentials to send in their resumes. To my amazement, I discovered there was a great misconception among these ‘so called experts’. The misconception bothered on: what is the difference between being a Social media platform user and being a social Media professional. That a person uses Social Media platforms (by creating accounts in many of them) is not the same as a taking special interest in the study of knowledge, applications, business ethics, value etc of the trade.
For instance, if a popular artiste is using social media platforms to connect, chat and engage his audience, does that make such individual a Social Media professional? Let assume the artiste has thousands of followers. The answer we give to the above is also applicable to individuals who have accounts without a technical ability to offer relevant professional help.
I have taken time to study the terrain and found out lots of overnight professionals have come into the market, brandishing, promising all forms of results with high sounding words. Most of these ‘so-called professionals’ have confused the client and some are ‘lucky’ to have smiled to the bank in the process. In most cases, in order not to be out of the trend, some clients have bought in and wasted corporate hard earned resources. Once beaten, twice shy one may say. Some organizations-especially start-ups and medium scales –which could have taken better advantage offer by social media would not want to touch it with a long stick. For these reasons, can we now offer some checklists(not exhaustive) clients must look out for before they part with their Money?
Deliverables: as much as we know, Social media activities are not vague, they are real and verifiable. Ask your experts to show you his/her deliverables in the past. It can be for personal brand building, corporate or product activities. By any means, ask for the projects they have been involved in, their roles in the project and if they are not the team leader, ask if they can give you names that can be contacted with proofs they were active project team member.
Personal Online Central hub: In my little sojourn here, I have not seen a social media professional without a personal central hub. By this I mean, a personal platform where they have been sharing knowledge, engaging over a long haul. For many of them, it may be owned Blog-Video, text, audio/podcast etc. Most Social Media experts are noted givers. Their central hubs had been running for years. So ask your experts to show you his/her personal central hub online. If it is less than three years, ask if he/she has been using free/third party platform. Look out for personal improvement of the expert over the years. It goes beyond just owning a personal central (online) hub; is the hub updated frequently? That shows their commitments. To up the game, ask if they have any EBook authored/published by them?
Invest time in continuous learning: you may also want to ask your expert to show you his/her collections-Books, Ebooks, Audio etc. Ask them titles they are reading now, what they read last week, last month and how has that changed their perspectives? I mean with regards to social Media practice.This is also essential because knowledge in this young industry is progressive. New technology, case studies, ways of doing things show up every second.
Willingness to make mistake/takes risk: Ask whether they have made mistakes before in the field, what did they learn? How about taking calculated risk that guarantees clients’ investment and perception
Constantly promote human relationship skill over technology: A real social media professional also knows that at the end, his major achievement is building solid relationships. So he/she promotes and daily strive to gain more relationship skills over technology even though the later is also essential.
Let me conclude this piece by affirming, the above checklists work anywhere around the world. Or what do you think?
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i totally agree with you sir on all ths points.i hope the so called experts will the Big Names,Big Pockets and Big clients don’T Confuse the client before the client realise that the skill set needed to run social media is distinct,unique and still hard to come by.Again most dont have defined Goals for campaign so no measurement is done.If an Agency cannot tell the clients the Kpi that will move there Brand forward using social media,it not yet time for the Brand to go there.Keep up the Good work Brother
@temi, I hope someone is listening. i also think some of us who add value should brace up
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