I wake up with possibilities each day. I am passionate about making entrepreneurs and brands succeed in their efforts despite the economy. Money is not available to do everything we want to do. If I am correct there has never been anytime when money goes round to do all that human desire to accomplish. The peculiarity of now is that budget has become tighter than before for most brands. The banking reform in our country is not helping matter presently. Banks are no longer granting loans as before. Many brands now improvise on what they have. For many brands today, most jobs that were   contracted out before are now being handled by internal audience. These have all affected flow of cash to big agencies that used to handle those jobs.

The reason above is telling on small scale as well as medium scale brands. The only option to reach clients now with zero or little cost is through engagement marketing. Engagement marketing offers a great platform to brands because it involves dialogue and sustained relationship building. When this is properly done the buyers help you drive the brand in a way that your brand’s huge budget can never have achieved. Engagement marketing helps brands to stay at the competitive edge of creating dialogue and solid relationship with potentials as well as actual.

According to a whitepaper by Silverpop, engagement marketing offers  new landscape of marketing channels on a one-one relationship( that is powered through the web) and allows, empowers clients to participate in a brand’s marketing messages. To excel in engagement marketing, the followings need to be in place

Brands must worth listening to: the attention span today is about nine seconds instead of sixty. So brands need to first work hard to get the attention of the prospect in today’s hyper active, internet based communications tools and trends. Too many things are clamouring for clients’ attention online. Each brand is competing for that customer’s attention. What will help your brand is the level of your brand’s credibility

Sound Strategy and tactics:  getting their attentions is not enough today. The joy and euphoria may lead to inertia that will make you forget the purpose of getting the attention in the first instance. So efforts must be made to engage them in taking a positive action that will lead to achievement of your brand’s goal. Opportunities to be known for their efforts, contributions to your brand’s success must be included in your strategies too. Otherwise they will feel used for a selfish brand’s ambition.

Place value on long-lasting relationship: never forget that relationship is the bedrock of every business today. Engagement marketing will be based on mutually beneficial relationships between those who help you promote your brands and the brand itself. Your internal audience must be trained to value your stakeholders’ effort so that they do not soil the relationship along the line. Consider customer life time value before you over react to simple misdeed. What do you think? Use the comment section.

Sometimes it is difficult to assess the impact of our actions until they have been taken. What I have come to understand is that we may not know what is beyond until we take a bold step to confront our fears and disarm them. I have also discovered that as a pioneer, one must be willing to take the risk, be willing to dare the consequences to attain a greater height. Willingness to beat a path to a desired destination is equated with being ready to sustain bruises if it comes to that.

Today social media education, enlightenment buzz is spreading. Many are fascinated by the appeal but they have never taken concerted effort to push anything. Our determination to sustain the tempo in Nigeria is based on the fact that if it is working elsewhere, it can work here. Even though there are lots of roadblocks that people in the western world do not have to think about.

Based on a popular request, I have decided to pen my thought , experience about the just concluded Social Media and business goal seminar organized by Michael sage consulting Lagos Nigeria( disclaimer: I work for Michael sage Consulting). Being the first of its kind that is targeted at corporate organization and how Social media can be used to boost credibility, awareness, engagement as well as profitability; we did have our fears about whether corporate people will even consider attending. We know many like ‘instant answer’ and that informed the reason they are embracing web advert over social media marketing. The reason for this is not farfetched. There is this erroneous impression that web adverts help them gain eyeballs and it is faster to reach target audience in social media platforms. This is another topic to be considered later in subsequent write ups.

We worked hard to expose the opportunities, benefits corporate organizations can get if they embrace it. We must acknowledge the huge support of Nigeria number one Marketing Magazine (Marketing Management-M2) for promoting the seminar for a month. We cannot but appreciate Mr. Akin Adeoya-Group Managing Director of Marketing Mix ideas and the Director of Marketing for M2- Lekan Babatunde for such a huge support.

The faculty was also carefully selected because we wanted people who are doing the stuff instead of people who are talking about the stuff. We therefore have Dayo Adefila from Agency, Azubuikwe Ishiekwene from print industry and another Public Relations and Brand strategy angle in person of Kingsley Obom Egbulem plus yours truly. We kicked off the programme with my opening shot titled: Business and Social media. This explains the background and why it is time to embrace social media especially in Nigeria business environment. The session explains further some of the challenges, misconceptions associated with social media application within business arena in the country. Kingsley Egbulem session focused on Social media and dynamics in changing communications and corporate affairs. Kingsley emphasised that Social Media is not just the future but it is now. He exposed the participants to trends and why corporate communication specialists should understand web based available communications tools.

Azubuikwe Ishiekwene, a frontline Journalist and chairman of CNN/African Multi-choice Panellist brought his experience to bear on finding a meeting point in the use of regular and social media tools to enhance business goals While Dayo Adefila began  his session on Social marketing: Global marketing and corporate affairs enterprise with a  social quick intro to social media. He drew several examples to how the increasing numbers of Nigeria population into the digital world is now offering untold opportunities to serious minded business corporations. Dayo Adefila did warn that social media is not a one night stand and that it will take patience to enjoy its full benefits. His second hilarious presentation on Social media ROI was really helpful to the participants. He also emphasised the fact that experts must produce strong ROI through effective targeting, strategic communications and real life measurement standards.

In all, participants who came from Agencies (Prima Garnet, Insight Communications), Academic community (School of Media Communications, Pan African University), professional services firm, Pharmaceuticals and consumer product manufacturing firms (Glaxosmithklime-GSk etc) as well as media buying/Public Relations agency left with a good knowledge and a promise to change their worlds with a new dimension of information that were shared. I must conclude that the social media fire is spreading in our country and we are proud to be pioneer. The enthusiasm is building up. We may not catch up with the western world so soon but we are on the right path to great discoveries and opportunities

When it all started, very few people gave this baby, new trend a chance of survival. There were one thousand and one reasons why people thought it could not survive. The low level of infrastructure, cost of access to Internet was not within the reach of average person on the street. But few of us saw the possibilities of universally connected people, communities and brands that shared opinions and exchanged pleasantries as friends.

 After five years of sticking to it and advocating the possibility of a new world where the voices of the voiceless, so called underdogs who could not afford the cost of putting their opinions on the pages of the regular media now have a new found love, opportunities in the social media platforms. The advent of social media is premised on the need to communicate, share opinion in an environment that encourages cordiality and relationship building.

 Aside from the major platforms like facebook, home-grown platform like Nairaland is becoming a strong platform for bonding with different sections created for auto sales and expression of opinions on various national issues. Over the years, the dynamics of social media appreciation is changing. The level of awareness is increasing especially since the beginning of the year. As our  nation gradually moves towards developing strategy that will move us out of the recession, brand custodians are looking out for ways to cut cost and their eyeballs seem to be strolling towards social media.

 Though what we noticed is that many are yet to take a decisive action in learning the rudiments or establishing social media position in their organizations. While we keep up the advocacy, there seems to be encouraging news that there is a silent crave to know more among the youths and middle age people. At least, the acquisition rate of Nigerians into facebook is presently put at ten thousand every two days. If that continues, we will have millions online in the next few months. This is a great opportunity for brands that know what to do. They may need to learn as much as they can to take advantage of the vast potentials. At the beginning of rebranding exercise led by Prof. Akunyili, I noticed they were not using social media and I have once discussed that on this platform. After an intimate discussion with one of the technocrats invited to craft the rebranding document, I learnt  that it was part of what was submitted but never executed.

 When there is a will there is a way, we woke up this morning with a newspaper report that the President- Dr Goodluck Jonathan promised to open a facebook account to reach Nigerian youths, and it will be a channel to get feedback on electoral reform that is ongoing. That is breakthrough. At least it has started to gain national recognition, awareness and application. It is our prayer that right people will be given right assignment. At our own level, we have noticed the demand for more knowledge on social media surged after our national conference on social media and brand positioning in February 2010. Even though we have also stepped up advocacy in reaching more professionals and individuals as we have the capacity. I have enjoyed various forms of interviews from regular media and we just hope this will continue in the months to come.

 One of the challenges I have also noticed is the fears associated with social media. Many still believe it exposes people to a lot of risk, wastes management time (because of its addictive nature), but all these could be put in proper shape when objective is defined and standards are set in place. One of the greatest challenges to social media application in Nigeria is lack of verifiable data that will support decision making process on whether to use them or not to. I was at a television programme last Saturday where the anchor was insinuating we have two million members on Facebook. As far as we are concerned that is a controversial figure, what we are working with presently as professionals is one million two hundred. So if experts do not agree on figures, how can we convince clients? That is why we are working on having a verifiable data that can help decision making process for users. Around the world, people, management and decision makers have access to such data. This project will be packaged in E-book form and free of download for anyone around the world. This project is opened to sponsorship to any corporate organization that wants to take the advantage of visibility, brand awareness, equity that is often associated with such publications.

 Promo:

 To enhance our community’s knowledge on social media and how it affects business goal, we are planning  a day intensive seminar with the title: Social media and business goal’. It hopes to expose practical, useful ways of using social media to personal and corporate advantage. The facilitators are seasoned experts who have gained varied experience. Dayo Adefila(Head, Strategy and planning at Insight Grey) is an experienced creative , Brand, digital marketing and communication expert; Azubuike ishiekwene , a former director in punch Newspaper will be speaking on finding the confluence between regular and social media for business goal, kingsley Obom- Egbulem-CCO of HCDI and Serenade communications will help to expose trends in corporate communications, marketing while i will also be speaking on other issues. This event comes up June 15, 2010 and cost only twenty five thousand to participate.

 Last weekend I was at The Nigerian Bar Association, Ibadan Oyo state Nigeria meeting. I had the privilege of speaking to lawyers, some of whom have being practicing for decades as well as young ones. Social media is affecting the dynamics of the way we all operate either as business owner, individual or professional.

Interestingly, the meeting was packed with many who want to know how social media will enhance their practice. I started out by trying to define what social media is and why legal professionals should take advantage of the plethora of online social sites to promote, communicate, and build new business, bond with their clients despite the ethical codes that most Nigerian lawyers say are against advertising.

I went ahead to discuss the time we are in and the necessity for change with the trend. I did maintain that growing numbers of professional networking sites, need for everyone to be where their clients are and the fact that people of all ages are now on the internet have provided an opportunity for lawyers to connect with their present, future clients. In the course of the talk, I also maintained that new and emerging social media trends are extremely important for lawyers.

Lawyers who ignore them do so to the detriment of their practice. I also recommended that depending on the size of the firm, there is a need for at least one staff member to be familiar with emerging Web 2.0 technologies and the ways in which those technologies can help and harm their bottom line. This conclusion is premised on my online research and personal observations.

 The reaction I got was pre-empted, given the fact that I knew that many people are avowed to change. Many of the old lawyers believed that law profession forbids advertisement, marketing of any form. I guess many of them are still confusing advertising with conversation, relationship building, personal branding, personal credibility building. As far as I am concerned, there is no such ethical codes that forbid individuals as well as law firm to have an interactive website, blogs, question and answer free legal advice forum that helps people (who may be potential clients) to understand the law better. All the identified platforms above will increase personal credibility, reputation building, business development, make establishment of solid mutual relationship easy.

While trying to establish these grounds, A senior member of the bar who is also a Senior Advocate of Nigeria of great repute Barr. Niyi Akintola stood up to give supporting evidence of how just having corporate website for his law firm where he showcases cases he had handled, won has increase his personal and professional credibility internationally. He cited examples of getting calls from abroad to handle some cases in Nigeria. At the end, many of the lawyers were convinced that it is high time they turned in and join the bandwagon to remain relevant.

The lessons I learnt at the end are: There is need to increase advocacy, awareness of professionals, business owners, professional bodies in the effective use of social/new media. For those of us ‘who know how’ to keep quiet is a great injustice, disservice to humanity. 2. People will resist change until they see an urgent need to do adapt.

In a recent professional roundtable with few colleagues, we were discussing issue that relates to emotional engagement with brands that can likely have meaningful impacts on brand’s success. Some were of the opinion technology plays a great role in brand’s objective achievement. While we all agreed on this, the point of argument arose when some felt that technology should be given preference over social science in social marketing. I and some other felt that technology may be great but social interaction follows social behavioral pattern than high profile technology when it comes to social marketing. The reason is not far fetched, when the instrument of interaction becomes complicated through the use of high profile technology, the purpose of conversation is often defeated.

The above now forms the basis for this write up. Opinions are welcome from others who feel otherwise. Trend is changing at an alarming rate. To play the game, brand must understand the rules and adhere to them. Social media has increased the noise level on the web. To be seen today is a daunting task. The days of ‘build it and customers will come’ are gone for good. Many brands are failing in social marketing efforts today because they have hired technologists to do the work that requires social sciences assignment. The human element of social marketing is often ignored by high profile technology application.

While social media is helpful to any brand, over reliance on technology will harm the conversation spirit that social marketing aims to achieve. Social marketing promotes relationship over technology. It is focused on sharing helpful tips, connection, association, friendship, allegiance among real people. Many brands that concentrate on technical tools may live to see that it is becoming interestingly difficult for them to build strong engagement with their brands.

Brand must learn to humanize their social marketing tools to get the best in terms of returns on investment. The demand of today is that brand must listen before it pursues ego laundering through unnecessary use of complicated tools that can harm its objective. Anything short of this will break the back bone of conversation, relationship that social marketing represents. While there is no evil in the application of relevant technology which will enhance productivity and efficiency, over reliance on technology that will confuse the niche will not help brand as much.

For social marketing to be successful, find first what works with your niche in terms of easy accessibility, usage. Remove the cap of a traditional marketer and learn to become what makes you a partner in progress. Remember, social marketing that will be meaningful, interactive, promote solid relationship should concentrate on relieving the stress off the niche market. Reader’s opinions are welcome.

 Each day gives me opportunity to learn something new and I guess that should be individual approach to life. Finding right information is also dependent on where one is looking at. But if you ask me, you don’t get it wrong by associating with right people and reading great stuff. I do not have money is not enough excuse today if you have access to internet. This informed my concern for those millions of genuine people who do not have access to internet in my country. I consider how much they have to pay daily to get educated in cyber cafes. Having said that, I have come to the conclusion that the more informed we are about anything the more we can add more value to other as well as increase personal efficiency.

Today I was going through stuffs on how I can up my game in social media and what I discovered was great enough to compensate for the time invested. We now have myriads of social media platforms. Many are already caught napping just because they want to be ‘omnipresent’. This is a great task and ‘suicidal’ at the long run. Being everywhere is good but to have a rented apartment that you will never have the time to visit is a waste of everyone’s time and resources. Before you join any platform, learn what the rules require. If the rules demand that you need to visit the medium and update status once in a while but you know you ‘would never’ have the time to do that, I guess it will be right to wait till when you can rearrange your schedule.

My take for individuals is to start with these three platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn and twitter. The demand of these three is enough. Even if you desire to update once in a week. But come to think of it, every serious brand should consider to own its place on all the three.  From a recent survey by marketingprof.com, twitter ranked second on the social media platform that delivers value to brand. Blog is considered most potent. Facebook is also considered great. Interestingly whether you are there or not the conversation will continue. To up your game on social media, do consider the following

1. Monitor your reputation: You can use Google alert, Google analytics, search.twitter.com. Tweetbeep.com  among other tools.

2. Claim your profile: several directories are available for different platforms, for blogs you have Technocrat, blogcatalogue, for twitter use WeFollow.com etc

3. Template design: Ensure that the first impression of your social media page is appealing. Use twitbacks, word press templates etc.

4. Measure effectiveness:  Find out how effective your activity is, you can use Alexa.com, twittercounter, twitalyzer etc

5. Listening tool: Your ability to listen and comb your environment is important. If you are not listening your effort in offering solution, being valuable will suffer. So consider Radian6 and Techrigy

Many are worried that the management often bypasses them when it comes to vacant position in the top management or C-level. C-Level is short form of Chief executive level. The source of their concern may be the fact that they are delivering on their jobs than most people that are promoted. Though Brand You may have the hard skills require delivering on the job, C-level positions demand more than just hard skills. There are several other skills that are important to get to the C-level in any organization. Ability to be C-level compliant will give Brand You an edge. Let us quickly examine some of the C-level requirements when the basic skill has been given.

1. Social intelligent: This great capital much stronger than any other skill. Ability to flow with other people with ease is important. Knowing your job is not enough at the c-level, the position requires you to work more with people, interface with your organization’s stakeholder among others. If Brand You has no social intelligent and ability to flow with social setting, you can do a lot of damage to the organization.

2. Ownership mentality: Brand you may have the necessary skill in place, but do you have ownership spirit or mentality. Do you see the organization as yours contributing more than what you are paid for or just giving your time based on what you are paid.

3. Magnetic personality: is your brand magnetic? Does is draw people or repel them. If people, team member can not come to you, there will be a lot of problem for the organization if you assume a c-level position.

4. Personal Leadership: Leadership is a strong quality of C-level executive. A leader takes responsibility. A leader leads an exemplary life that others can copy. See where any organization is triumphing and breaking new grounds, the C-level executives are great leaders who lead their lives well before leading others.

5. Mentoring ability: Can your brand mentor team member, do you have what it takes to be patient with some, be hard with some and to coach a slow learner. Believe me someone is watching your performance within that organization to see whether they can move you hope. The ball is in your court. Is Brand you C-Level Complaint? These are not all it takes, but you may start with these.