During the weekend while taking stock of about to be finished first quarter of the year 2010, my head raced through a lot of stuffs. One of such is the implication of being a social media laggard.

I am sure most of us have not forgotten our marketing 101 class. At least we can all remember product innovator, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. While thinking about this, I stumbled on an article by Jeremiah onwang which seems to capture what I have in mind. I guess this will make a good read for anyone who wants to do some brain exercise in social media application. 

While most us here either as individual brands or corporate brands are still waiting for the ideal time to jump in, people are already sharing the booties. While we are still saying our population is still small, the early adopters, innovators are already making their mistakes and winning their laurels. Waiting for the ideal time may seem like waiting for ‘godot’ who may never return.

Jeremiah Owang says that as a social media innovator, individual is willing to try new technologies as well as evangelize them. If his conclusion is to be considered right, he says most of these innovators started out in 2006.Jeremiah said most of them learnt by trial by error as there were not enough applications that could help them much when they started out. They may appear to have gained thought leadership by now if they have been consistence but their downside is that they would have invested too much time and effort to make it work. Some of them might have abused the platform rules because they did not realized there were rule s then.

The early adopters have learnt from the mistakes of innovators and might have gained from the experience, mistakes of their fore runners. This group may belong to 2007 users. Early majority joins around 2008 when most supporting technologies have developed and have reduced their risks of failure. This group took time to learn. Even though my opinion with regards to date of adoption may differ from Jeremiah’s view, I do believe we shared common opinion generally

My point of argument is that there are countless corporate and personal brands who are still laggards in our environment. Till date they are still in the valley of indecision. They are still skeptical about the use of social media. They want to understand everything before they join the group. Most of these laggards will join later in the year or beyond. It is just my concern that by the time they want to join, they would have lost a sizeable portion of their market to any of the groups who embraced social media early. They may not gain thought leadership status and there is likely tendency that their brands’ engagement tread would have leaned. The bond between such brands and their targets may not be tight. There is also a tendency that the social media sea may not be clear enough to encourage non initiates to swim through. I stand to be corrected here. It will take them longer years to enjoy any benefits.  Where is your brand today?

Each new day gives me a new excitement. I am happy I am making progress and that I am involved in shaping the new paradigm in my country. Now it may not make enough sense but after a while, we will wake up to the reality of time. It is now obvious that treating new media or what I like to refer to as social media with levity is tantamount to brand destruction.

I love the way one online author defines new media. He says ‘new media refer to here as a wide spectrum of content production and dissemination frameworks that use the internet & web’. This show there may not be clear cut difference in new media and social media as some experts want us to believe. This online writer went on to say ‘the emphasis of new media is on information produced by citizens for the benefit of the commons. This also point to the fact that the online citizens care less about any brand that does not value them. They want to reach their community members with burning information that affect them either positively or negatively. God helps any brand that falls on the wrong side.

To ignore the conversation today is dangerous and given the fact that citizens’ access to information can not be controlled, it will be wise to initiate a process that will put your brand where the conversation is. In our clime, we keep saying the population is still insignificant hence why the noise/fuss about social media application. Butt my concern like any other forward thinking individual; brand is that one does not need an entire population to destroy anything. Recently a major print media is involved in online reputation damage due to mismanagement of internal communication process. I stand to be corrected. while I am still thinking and frowned at why such vital document leaked to the hands of online media I am of the opinion that( with regards to our discourse here) such can serve as a good case study.

About five major brands were also mentioned as accomplice. Up till now, none of the affected brands have seen any justifiable reason to say something. That is a sign of our ignorance of the power of social media. I am particularly concerned about this issue because it has been reproduced in a platform that has over 173 countries membership with an average of 350 million members around the world where the statistic have also shown that an average of one hundred million log on are recorded daily.

Whatever the cause of this damage is not of our concern in this piece, our emphasis is the need for brands here to wake up to the reality of what new media can do to any brand that ignores it. My fear for brands that continue to overlook the importance of new media agrees with an online writer that says ‘With the introduction of vernacular language capable mobile phone handsets and the increasing affordability of multimedia mobile devices, it is increasingly difficult for brands to stifle voices from the ground’

While everyone is becoming content provider and speaking their minds, why are our brands here keeping silent and pretending that nothing has changed? Why are they waiting for the day of doom to start the process of incorporating social media in their communication/marketing plans? Why are they going on with the old paradigm that regular media will always holds the sway. There is an urgent need to embrace, hire the services of new media experts who can help position their brands against the raining days and more importantly save their brands from colossal shame that online community can cause them. I am still waiting and monitoring how the above mentioned case will be resolved when it has become international issue that bothers on hard earned image the brand has. If I must conclude I love all the major brands involved with passion but why are they not using the same medium to undo the damage done.

We must also remember that Google does not forget. Every information is archived by Google. An African adage says when you hear carry it, carry it and you keep quiet, they may drop it at your doorstep/backyard. We all have an equalized platform in new/social media to build support, understanding, engagement, strong reputation, reduce, and eliminate impact of damage. Silence may not be golden now except it is a worthwhile strategy. The danger of ignoring the new/social media is traceable to its viral effect as well as the buzz. It can be associated with the Yoruba adage that says ‘the god of thunder does not know any boundary when it fights’. New/social media does not know any boundary. It crosses every nation, tribe, clan, settlement

Yesterday, I was speaking at an annual conference of a youth advocacy group I had the privilege of pioneering about a decade and half years ago. I actually led the group for three years before I committed the assignment to some other individuals who could steer its wheel of progress. This group today (which was predominantly undergraduates then) now has doctorate degree holder, computer scientists among other professionals. I was billed to speak to this group on the topic: Developing marketable skill. The time spent was a great one. When I got to a part of the presentation that requires I ask them the question “how many of them are on social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as well as how to develop right skill in appropriating online social networking sites to their own advantage”, I was shocked to note that many of them say there is no time and it could be a distraction to life.

Not being in the social media cloud today (especially the three that hold the preeminence among them) is tantamount to going the way of losing brand’s relevance, visibility as well as recognition. It does not also make personal/corporate brand memorable. Neither can any brand gains top of the mind status anymore without involvement. It is that bad. With heavy money, the brand may feature in local environment but not any more in the global realm.  Out of sight is becoming out of mind gradually.

Not being in the cloud makes your brand to miss out in the 24/7 conversation.  This may harm or make your brand. I read a statistics that really blew up my mind in this regard. I was informed that social media clouds now are the most popular after the porn sites. Another major point that dawned on me from my researches is that any brand that is not in the cloud now will not be found as people search out for brands( personal, corporate) that they want to engage everyday. When you are not there, you are gone.   You can download /view the presentation slide here

 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

There is nothing good that does not has a cost attached. Everything that worth it will always make a demand from you. Today social media has become the buzz word. Many marketing communicators, public Relations experts and brand drivers are rushing into learning how to take advantage of the new trend. Trends as it is known do not last eternally. No one knows whether this will be applicable to social media though we seem to have come to the  logical conclusion-by our actions that it has come to stay for good. Social media is reputed to create awareness, build relationships, encourages conversation, increase personal, brand visibility among others. But with every great idea comes with a responsibility, certain demands and fears.

Authority counts in social media. To become an authority, you must establish trust, engage the community, sacrifice personal and corporate time. Maintaining control is becoming increasingly difficult. What we say and hear more today is ‘lose control’, brand democratization and voice of the stakeholders. Getting attention in the sea of noise is also a great challenge. The need to go for more knowledge is now  popularized as no novice can play the game. Online reputation demands knowledge of adequate software. Web 2.0 is what we are playing with now and web 3.0 is already around the corner. It means that in order to be relevant, we must up our knowledge to stay in control. Today, we are emphasizing words of mouth. Getting customers to buy in and voluntarily communicate the brand to relatives, friends and colleagues. The challenge here is daunting. There is also the issue of measurement of results. Yet many top executives are not even persuaded that social media holds some magic wands to bring new and improved ways of doing business. Developing contents, marketing it is a huge task.

I read an article by Mike Herman recently where he counseled that we should not carry issues to the extreme when it comes to social media. According to him, a research conducted showed that we still have huge percentage of customers who are not hooked with the juice of social media because they do not have access to personal computer nor internet. He also claimed that social media has not been widely trusted. The fact that everyone can blog does not make their opinions valid. Mike conclusion was that it is too early to place faith in it.

Given that social media will take away personal freedom with regards to openness, place a demand for a frequent and consistent content update among others, do you think it worth the coins? This is what I am thinking about today. I am an addict of social media if I must acknowledge that.

Social media has moved from a new device to the future of every brand. Many international communities are annexing the opportunity provided by social media to gain visibility and build strong communities. Even though our environment is just growing its internet audience most of which are using social media with majority on face book; proper understanding of social media helps in no small measure but we  guide against violating the rules. Brands as well as brand drivers also need to know how to annex social media opportunity. As a leading brand, social media expert in Nigeria, as well as a member of social media club International, California, with other friends who are lovers of social media; we are initiating a process of inaugurating Nigeria chapter of the club. Social media Club International is a professional organization that brings together journalists, publishers, communications professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers, and other interested collaborators. Essentially the people who create and consume media who have an interest in seeing the ‘media industry’ evolve for everyone’s benefit. So are you on facebook and other social media? Do you  understand what benefits you may be missing out? Please link up with us. All you have to do is to join the group on facebook:http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=98457170756&ref=nf .The purpose is to offer avenue to network, share experience. The club presently has over fourteen chapters in Europe, Asia among other continents. The Nigeria chapter when launched will be the first in Africa. The launching date is in June 2009. Further details will be communicated to members.

Every great enterprise that has succeeded is not a product of overnight action. It is birthed with sweat of hardwork, persistence and a high level of determination. Many have the erroneous believe that since social media offer opportunities for visibility, the result will be instant since they can create an account within minutes.  The truth is like in any dance, one has to repeat the steps. Over and over again. Once the first step is initiated in connecting with people with a purpose of engagement, the brand needs to make sure it stays connected until it bonds strongly with the target audience.

Social media do not guarantee capturing instant sales lead, database, survey research instruments as the case may be, it is only sure when the goals are set. Persistence is used as lubricating oil for the wheel of social media progress. Efforts must be made consistently to touch base with brand’s target audience. This offers greater benefits to increase brand’s chances of stronger bonding. This will increase also the chance of making a success out of the brand’s social media effort. Persistence will teach the brand to realize that continuous effort must be made to connect with target effort no matter the time require to do that. Connecting with influencer takes time, focus , energy among other vital details. Ability to be there for the audience by being ready to answer questions they may ask even when it is not that convenient require patience and persistent as well as strong will. Social media do not encourage lack of focus too. Never be in the habit of shifting position of your offerings in terms of contents, comments. Anything that will not get you decent attention should be omitted as fast as possible.

Always be willing to do a review or what we call audit to find the effectiveness of your brand’s efforts.

Today we are faced with billions of interruptive marketing. It is every where. When you log on to yahoo or any of the popular social networking media, you are daily bombarded with flashes of interruptive marketing or advertising to use the known language. It has become the major source of revenue of most free sites where people can open account. As much as I do not have any misgiving about that, I am of the opinion that brands should begin to see ways such channels can be used to add value instead of playing the “ME too” game. Many brands should see the handwriting on the wall by now but alas, their consultants, Ad agencies in collaborations with in-house experts are more interested in what they will gain than what is good for the brand.

There is nothing bad in creating this channel for a brand as long as there is a subtle connection of value-adding benefits to the audience whose privacy is being infiltrated. According to one internet article, Interruptive marketing is the process of interrupting prospective clients from whatever they are doing at the moment… to get their attention in order to begin/further sales relationship.

In the early part of world wide wed introduction, interruptive marketing works because of its persistence, hard work among other factors. More importantly it works because it resonated with the time where information passage reigned supreme. The other factor that aided the effectiveness of interruptive marketing then was its newness.

Today time has changed, interruptive marketing has become an irritation and it is wearing out prospective clients yet that has not informed many brand owners to device a new direction to follow. Even though this system can still be used, it must obey the present age rule. Today many hardly look at such marketing strategy especially in the social media platforms that are meant to be where we meet friends, socialize. The worst offense is to start a sales pitch. People are developing strategy to avoid many of the platforms that promote such marketing tactics.

These interruptive marketing messages can be redrafted to establish relationship that will lead potentials from being an acquaintance, to consideration, interest and a final decision process which make the potential to become a fan. Seth Godin captures the essence of this in a book “permission Marketing” when he maintained that marketers, brands have no right to sell in most of these social networking sites (italics mine) but to initiate first a permission to start a relationship that will probably lead to the road of connection. As we know we hardly give a total stranger a chance to start sales pitch at the first encounter. The wisdom in this is that even if brands have to “advertise” in social media platform, the wordings of all their interruptions should be drafted in a way that will lead the potential to a site where content marketing or the usefulness of the brand is already store. I think after this process should sales pitch be introduced otherwise, the first impression created may take several efforts to erase. The challenge with this is that Ad agency- because of the need to show ROI- will always counsel brand owners to the contrary. What a calamity! On the other hands, potentials they want to reach also hate unsolicited advert that is out to sell in a social gathering. Interruptive marketing has become an assault today on the potentials and this is against the rule of etiquette. Brand through their ads on social media should begin a process of asking for permission to be a friend, be ready to accept no or be gentle on their psyche through use of  “suggestive” words like a guy who needs a date.

On social media platform, I will want to agree with what Seth Godin says “You can either appear like a shameless flirt or as a gentleman”. Brands need to foreclose the road of aggressive approach they are now using and become gentlemen. I am of the opinion that permission strategy will work better than interruption, guerilla methods being used by brands today. Interruptive marketing is becoming noisy, wasteful, annoying and damaging and the difference in all is the approach and the wordings of the adverts. Most of them are devoid of any value-adding content or a direction to one.Most are laden with highly sentimental contents that are repeated everyday. What happens to creativity? They are already in saturation stage, brand owners please change!

In our earlier discussion on brand’s content marketing, we did mention that survival of brands during this time is dependent on content marketing which discusses brand’s relevance and education. We did conclude that great content is not only enough but its spread holds the key to its success. For content marketing to be successful or any other online marketing in this instance, there is need to identify each audience, understand the influence individual group wields and properly managed all the stakeholders. 

Like any other platforms, online consumers have influencers, active, inactive stakeholders. Reaching every group begins with different approaches, tactics, strategies. Individual brand must identify appropriate groups to reach, watch how active members of those groups are, research group types and ensure the brand befriend the group’s admins. This will be a discussion for another day, meanwhile let us first identify brand’s online audience; what their influences are and how they can aid the spread of brand’s content and marketing. There are several propositions in this regard, but the best that caught my attention for now and which I strongly buy into is the Charlene Li’s division of US adult online consumers. Charlene Li identifies about six levels or groups of online brand audience, consumers. They are as follow:

1. The creators: This level of online audience is web savvy. I also called them digital natives as they breath, sleep and are consumed by happenings on the internet. This set of audience publishes or maintains blog, upload videos. They are active bloggers, twitters, podcasters , vbloggers . They read others’ blogs, get involved in communities, forums and sometimes they are administrators of some online groups. This group wields a great influence online and some of them command great followings. It is a great advantage for any brand to have the most influential of them in their niche as friends and canvassers. Charlene says this group is about 13% of the online audience. Most of them enjoy strong coverage from the traditional/mainstream media. But if we consider 80/20 percent rule. They are worth given attention

2. Critics: This set of online audience does not maintain blogs in most cases. Few have but they do not maintain them or give the blogs adequate attention. They are not passionate about content spreading. Most of their efforts are concentrated on comments on blogs, posting of ratings and reviews as well as having an account on a medium that catches their attention. They are assumed to be 19% of online audience

3. Collectors: this category of online audience collects materials from the above users; they engage RSS and tag web pages. This category is said to be about15% of the online audience.

The above audience are most active than the other three levels of audience that we are going to discuss below.

4. Joiners: This set of online audience only use social networking sites. A peculiar line of thought associated with them though is that some of them do not come near these accounts for weeks but most ensure they open, check the account once a  month. This group is estimated to be 19% of online audience

5. Spectators: This set of internet audience reads blogs, watch peer generated videos, listen to podcasts and often use their mouths or links to spread whatever they consumed. They are about 33% of the internet audience

6. Inactives: This set care less about what goes on. This set6 of audience is about 55% of the online users. This may be good news to those brands that have neglected the online audience. It must be noted however that this survey is focused on adult online consumers. When we compare teenage or young adult’s data, the result can be shocking. But let assume this is what we have, any brand that is involved in content or online marketing should now have a clear idea of where to concentrate effort, and how best to develop strategy to reach the inactives. For those who do not like long lists, we can group online audiences into three namely: digital natives, spectators and inactives.

Linked In  ,YouTube ,Flickr , Del.icio.us, echnorati ,Twitter,Facebook. 

Social media has become part of us. No one will deny the fact that social media can be addictive too. Because it has become a veritable weapon to connect and gain visibility for brands: personal, corporate, product.In this new age of personal branding, one of the best tools to craft personal visibility and niche is to embrace social media platforms. Like we know, social media offers the best template to connect an individual with the right people in his niche as long as the individual is willing to give and not out take advantage of others. Most popular and influential people in the world have accounts as well as fans club within different social media available.

As much as these appeals are there for individuals, there is other side of the social media that brands must take notice off. Even though social media have the advantage of enhancing personal brand’s visibility, there is this subtle side of sending a negative image if care is not taken. Many of us sign in or open accounts in most of these social media without considering the implications and responsibilities. As long as it gives the visibility it requires, thoughts are not given to the fact that each is a platform to build relationship through constant connection and sharing. What we have noticed is that many of the accounts we open in most of these sites are dormant for months and some for years. Few of the accounts opened are maintained, lubricated, and oiled. These have damaged the essence of the connection it is supposed to maintain. What this attitude show is that we care less and the individual personal brand involve is just using the medium to gain visibility and nothing more. Most of us forget that the creators of these social media platforms have a need before creating such media.

Well we may argue that many of these abandoned social media platforms do not manage their brands well, but the fact is that we must take responsibility to help them in as much as we can open our account. The other angle to the argument is that we do not have time to maintain the accounts because we are in many places. Will it not be right to concentrate on those media we have time for and which we think offer us the value for our time. When I open an account on a social medial and I try to connect with any individual, I try as much as possible to check the last time the individual visited his/her account in the medium. For me it shows the levels of value anyone who has not visited his account for over six months will offer. That may also affect my perception of the brand.

To get the best of social media I think we should consider the followings when opening an account with any of them:

1. What value will this platform offers me and what are the demands of my signing in?

2. Will this platform connects me with my niche market and right kind of people I want to be associated will?

3. If a recruitment agency finds my profile here, what kind of impression will they form about me?

4. Will I have the time to pay my dues in time of constant request, connection that other members of the platform will ask me?

5. What kind of relationship can I build here?

6. Will I be proud to tell other people my profile, account is in that platform?

7. What will this platform do to my personal brand?