The Nigeria Institute of Public Relations (which I am active member) Lagos state chapter just held its annual general meetings/first Public Relations Golden Eagle awards. A week-long event was full of fun, learning and networking opportunities. The public lecture on Thursday 22^nd July was well attended and the guest speakers as well as discussants did justice to the topic of the day. My major attention was on the award day itself (which was Friday 23^rd July). This is because I was a nominee for two categories of the awards (one: best contributions to PR education in Nigeria and Best new talents in PR). One of these I actually sent entry for while someone sent entry on my behalf for the second one.

As we know, Lagos is the hub of best professional practice in Nigeria and the contest was keen. My initial fear was the constitution of the panel of judges. Because I did not initially know the composition of the panel. But when we got to the venue and I saw the jury was led by Peter Ogudoro I became relaxed and promised myself to accept the verdict of the jury as truth. If I did not know anything about Mr. Peter Ogudoro at least I am aware of his level of professionalism, integrity and to his credit many of the third generation practitioner in Nigeria (which I am part) caught our niche studying under him.

While I do not want to miss the award, I had the premonition during the week of not getting any of the awards. This thought scared me to the marrow but I did ask myself what is the worst thing that can happen. I went over my last post on Algore(below) and told myself I could still go ahead with life after all I have gained some international recognitions as a professional.

When the award time really came and the head of the jury was asked to make a remark of the yardsticks they used for the awardees I noticed some of the things I did not do right and here is the lesson I learnt which I believe could be useful to someone of the nominees who did not get any award or someone out there that may be musing over a loss of something they cherished.

Always try: never come to a situation where you accept that you are not as good as others or your brand did not merit a higher level. The chief jury said they expected many more entries than what they got. He did say most people in the agencies were those that submitted entries while individuals shy away from submitting entry. If your brand is so sure it is making meaningful progress it will be great not to fear competition. Competition helps you shape up.

Package it well: one other lesson I learnt was the fact that one should learn how to package his/her thoughts, ideas/brands well. What is worth doing is worth doing well. Go the extra mile in brand packaging. Distinguish your entry into any market. I knew that even the entry I submitted was done with little effort just to show up in the radar. So when I saw my name as a nominee in Best PR education in Nigeria with two other noted brands I knew I did not give much attention to the way these noted brands would have packaged their entries. Learn to go extra miles as you may not know who is watching.

Do not Accept temporary setbacks: When you did not get what you want, be a successful failure. Share up the winner. Realize that it may be your turn tomorrow, Go out there and congratulate those who win and learn something from the fall. A Nigerian adage says ‘when a child falls, he looks at the front but when an adult fall  he looks backward at the point of his fall( to find out the cause and learn a lesson).

Even though my friend and wife were present-hoping to cheer me up for the award- I stood up, congratulated the winners in my categories, took pictures with them and shared the picture on my facebook album. I went ahead to send other awardees congratulatory text messages.

A guy came to me to ask how I felt and he was shocked when I said there may be something I did not do right. Today I drove to the office of the head of the jury to learn how to improve on myself and entry next year. He did decline to talk based on his position but did commend my entry. That is how to fail successfully. Interestingly just because I was a nominee, I got a request for proposal on social media marketing from an establishment today. Gold from the ashes you say. Let me hear from you. Use the comment section.

It is no longer news that the success of any brand rests solidly on the depth of relationship it has with all its stakeholders. No brand can be successful running a solo raise now. Every brand needs committed community members who are not only interested in working hard with the brand but who can work hard on the brand’s interest on their own freewill. As we now there is no community that thrives well on individualistic spirit and self serving leaders.

Today I just want to share a brief of what i took away from a personal research on the topic. Some of these thoughts are taken from Juliet Powell’s book and I do recommend it to anyone who is interested in building a strong community that is highly beneficial.

Find where they are: there is no strong community without proper understanding of the culture and environment they live. I expect my friend to know where I live. That shows the individual cares. So the first step in building engaged tribe is to know where they live. You may need also to study the community they live and find out what is important to the community members.

Understand the audience strength:  a brand needs to understand the community audience strength. The mistakes most brand make is to focus energy only on the influential. But like Ducan watts says ‘most social change is driven not by influential, but by easily influenced individuals influencing others easily influenced individuals’. The point is everyone is important even though we may have priority.

Understand their habits and motivation: To influence anyone, you must first care about the person. So be sure you study what motivates them and what their concerns are.

Cater for their natural Interest: now that you know what motivates them, care like no other persons for their interest. Share links, give them referrals. Continuously give helping hands. Answer their question. Help them to understand your brand too.

Reward social influencers: in helping out, it is natural law that some of the community member will begin to think they owe you and they will be willing to help spread the buzz about you. Along the line you will noticed some dedicated community members who will go extra miles in making sure your brand excels.

In conclusion, we must note that having engaged community or tribe is work but the ROI is unquantifiable. An engaged community is extremely powerful tool that can provide self-perpetuating support and guidance system for you and your business.

At a recent World social media mob flash held in Lagos Nigeria where we have the gathering of social media enthusiasts, professionals and those who intend to use social media, the audience was generally talking about best use of social media in Nigeria by corporate organizations in our environment.
People suggested GTBank Plc should be rated as one the best uses of online community in Nigeria. As moderators of the session, we asked that audience should give reasons for their suggestions and can we all looked at the brand’s online initiative, presence and activities together in the face of best practise internationally. Given the fact that Community is supposed to be an agglomeration of people with common interest, who have common language and where everyone has a say. Also, the community members of today do not want organization to talk at them but to talk with them. They desire dialogue, conversation and feedbacks. Strong community does not rest solely on the game of number; it is the extent, depth of interaction and engagement
This view has been supported by Lani Rosales when he wrote ‘there is no value in ‘friend collecting/likes’ but there is a massive value in building your network…If the end goal is to put money(through the relationship you are building) in your pocket(or build relationship as the case may be), stop friend collect, build network’. Brand community is not about the community creator; it is all about engaged network that speaks the truth and promotes the brand.
There is no online community that will become celebrated when it is only the brand that is speaking and does not allow feedback. No solid relationship has been built on Monologue. When a brand does not give room for feedback, it will lose enough credibility it is supposed to get. To gain word of mouth, clients or community member must be allowed to ask question, express their opinions. As we know word of mouth is a cultural accelerator but the brand must set up the architecture to engage audience.
To create a worldwide rave about a brand online in which people help to tell your story, you must be ready to lose control. We are in the age of information democratization and not monologue or broadcasting. If there are virtual strings attached (feedbacks on the ‘wall’ of GTBank Facebook page is deactivated), people will not engage you or choose to speak to you or for you about your offerings.
When a brand sets up online engagement mechanism with a mission to listen, get opinion of the community, it will always lead to a higher social intelligence and better leadership for the brand. Juliet Powell says’ while traditional leadership understanding of leadership structures stressed the need for power and stern guidance (as we see GTBank seems to be doing with its community now) new structure of leadership (which GTBank community is aiming to achieve) is based on empathy, two-way communication…to be an effective leader, you need a team (community members/stakeholders) that supports you and is willing to work hard not only on your behalf, but on their own as well for you’.
Given the above, how many of the close to sixty thousand ‘friends’ of GTBank on its Facebook page are singing, propagating GTBank Orange rules yet?. GTBank now has easy access to gather enough feedback it will spend money on yet it has muffed the voices of its community by removing facility/applications that will make it get feedback through the setting it is operating now. In a Nielsen’s report on ‘Why Banks should listen in Social media’, it clearly states that when banks listen, it gives the feeling of stability, solidity, partnership, empathy and understanding.
For its Twitter page, it is well designed with care and we must give kudos for this. But what is the value of a beautiful house whose family members has to listen to the father’s instruction only, while feedbacks are not given attention as fast as the information the father has to push out. We have monitored/followed conversation on that page and we discovered questions are not answered immediately. Speed is important in today’s fast speed online world. A customer that is not answered on time may post a comment that will catch fire within few hours. The bloggers’s post that started ‘DellHell’ got 760 comments among many examples we can cite.
My conclusion on this session is that strong community requires honesty, credibility, openness, willingness to accept feedback irrespective of what they have to say. There is no fear in love (which brand community wants to promote). When dialogue is allowed, it will give the brand the true performance rating of its services to the cherished community. It gives brands opportunity to know how to correct wrong impression, information at the disposal of the clients, community members etc. A great community is not a place to ‘self-promote’, it is an avenue for dialogue, support, engagement, understanding and sharing that will allow members to defend one another. I just hope someone is listening. In all, we ended the analysis on the fact that we should commend the GTBank team for pioneering an online brand community. Our plea is that what is worth doing is worth doing well.

My interest in social media dates back to year 2005. I was at a seminar on personal Branding and the facilitator asked whether if we Google our names anything will show up. None of us has Internet access in the room so that became an assignment for all. I got home and tried as much as possible to locate a cyber cafe where I could do my assignment. I Googled my name and nothing came in my favour. I became embarrassed as I Googled the name of my facilitator who seems younger than I in age and yet he had positive review. He owned the first ten mentions about his name.

I made a determination to do something about that. In the process of time, I have lost major positive review that would have shown up after my name just because I was not consistent with spelling of my name in every online activity. Today I understand better and I am learning the how to get it right. But the essence of this article is to find out from some of my colleagues how strong is our influence or tribe we are building? Or do we even have a mindset of building anything at all. There is this clash of whether quality supersedes quantity. What obtains today is the level of influence you wield will determine what comes to you when you need a job, a recommendation, a referral among many other key success factors.

I am currently reading a book by Julliet Powell  ’33 Million People in The Room’. There is a quote inside the book by Guy Laliberte about how to run a business( which I think is also applicable to personal brand) which says ‘Do business as if you were playing a game, have fun, know the rules and when it is time, make your own’. The import of this is huge. It is good to be an online observer, consumer, and ‘commenter’ but if you do not set up, nurture and build powerful tribe of your own, you will lose out and can never wield much influence.

To corroborate this, this mentioned book also gave the report about a research tagged ‘Reed law and the centre of Influence’. The result showed that ‘effectiveness of large network (and social networks in particular) can scale exponentially with the size and social importance of the network. In other words, Reed law suggest every new person on a network doubles its value’.

This book also cited a research study by UCLA and Boardex looked at the impact of being in the centre of network affects financial success of an individual or corporate organization. It goes ahead to say companies are influenced by their social connections and the position they wield inside the connection will determine their fortunes. This also goes for individuals too. It is also stated that if an individual who is highly connected and occupies the ‘centre of universe’ as top executive in a company is removed or dies, things may not be the same again for that company/ business.

The import of the above is that in the next five, ten years, what is your level of influence or whether you are the centre of the universe in your tribe will determine what your allocations will be. Especially here in my environments. I do know this is already happening in highly developed economy. Talking the talk without locating a tribe you can be part of, where you can learn, have fun and test run your ability to start one will affect your personal brand. Part of the report on the centre of universe that really touched me is that a man at the centre of the universe (power broker, influencer) without enough competencies may be hard to remove or sacked. While we are developing skills and competencies, ability to know how to wield influence, create tribe will go a long way to help us sustain positive perception.

A word of caution here though is that while trying to create a tribe, some will overdo it by destroying already established community of others. This strategy will not help much as others are watching your moves. All you need do is build more friendship walls, learn from established tribe, be patient and start out your own tribe by being willing to give, share your knowledge without ulterior motive to highjack established tribe/platform.

In conclusion, is your brand ‘Google-able’? Where is your tribe online? Are you at the centre of the tribe’s universe? Do you know how the Reed law can work for you? If I will not be termed selfish, become active member of Brand Gavel Community, guest post if you are passionate about what we are discussing here, step up the discussion by leaving comments and expressing your honest opinion etc. One day we will organize an offline networking session; will anyone know your face or remember your name as a community member? Take position now.

We all love growth. But many do not plan for it. Do no ever forget the law that says every object remains at a standstill until a force is applied. Many successful brands today will not be in the radar again in a couple of years just because they have forgotten how they get here. There is nothing bad in celebrating success. The only snag is that each level of success brings additional responsibility. Each new success should supply additional adrenalin that will keep the brand to remain afloat.

On the other side of the divide, I am amazed when most brands throw in the towel because growth has not being feasible. Especially when they know they are doing it right and moving in the right direction. For those who are already considering throwing in the  towel, please always remember the Chinese bamboo tree that takes about four years to take root downward before shooting out and become about five feet in the fifth year. The secret is never to throw in the towel.

My thought today is to share with us basic ingredients that drive brand’s growth.

New ideas: Brand must keep experimenting with new ideas. Staying with old philosophies will not help. Always write down new ideas, work out the details and implement them.

 Creative approaches: To drive growth, brand must also embrace creative approaches to doing business.

Innovative products: to drive growth brand must continual co create innovative product and service that will excite its audience.

Integrated organizations that maintain open communication: A divided and closed organization that does not breed enthusiastic audience can never drive growth. Always ensure that your brand maintains open communication that permit expression of personal opinion as well as inputs to brand’s growth

Connected communities: brand thrives on a connected community. There is no reason in this age for brand not to use all the new media to build connected communities that are great fans of the brand.

Responsible ethos: Be a responsible brand. Live on core values that will enhance brand’s equity

Unquenchable passion for change: have a passion that is change driven. You must not accept the status quos as the verdict. Challenge what is and what has been. Be driven by a change mindset

Yesterday one of the major print media in Nigeria sought my opinion on the value of social media to business. This discussion is published today in the paper’s business page. I am happy that social media is beginning to show up in the radar of our business operations. But as we know the bandwagon effect of many businesses rushing to embrace the platform will affect Returns on investment they can all derive. Social media is helping business owners shape perception. Like one writer says ‘Perception is all there is. There is no reality only perceived reality’ Therefore we must learn to manage perception in social media through a stand out initiative.

Most brands join the bandwagon of social media application to business promotion with an erroneous impression that people are bound to listen to their marketing pitches. The naked truth is that people are damned tired of listening to such stuffs. Customers are tired of being marketed to. They are seeking for solid relationship that will lift them up, make them make better and informed decision.

Since social media provides an equalizing platform to express and connect with targeted audience through valuable content, the amount of information available has compelled audience to either close their eyes or ears to some business initiative in this regard. To really stand out in social media effort, business must rethink the strategy of holding up money, merchandise as major factor to building solid relationship, impact.

To stand out, I have come up with four unique factors that will enable any brand stand out in its social media effort. I do not claim to know it all but strongly believe these will work any day.

1. Compelling content: content is king in social media. Never underestimate the power of great and compelling content that will help your target audience excel, look great and smart among their peers. Whatever platform a brand chooses, content drives traffic. Great content propels word of mouth advertising that will spread the buzz about the brand any day any time.

 2. Creativity: I like to define creativity as the open difference you make in turning something common to an extra ordinary experience. How creative are you in the dissemination of your content. Do you focus on text or add audio, video, great visual design that is appealing to the audience? I have since discovered creative video adds a lot of credibility to content creation and I may soon be incorporating this if my logistic is perfected.

3. Clients/target collaboration: A tree does not make a forest is an age long cliché. To stand out in social media it will be good to find a community of admirers, followers, target who will be willing to help spread the buzz. To become viral, your community collaboration will help a lot.

4. Consistency: whatever you do, you do not stand out by once in a blue moon appearance on the radar. To stand out, you need persistence, commitment, consistence innovation, trial and error. I have not seen an outstanding social media expert who had not heard his/her own share of failure.

Let me conclude with Allen says’ opinion when he wrote ‘create the site you have been looking for, write like you would like t be written to, sell like you would want to be sold to, talk like you would like to be talked to, deal like you would like to be dealt with, create for others what you would like created for you and excite others the way you would like to be excited. I guess these are golden rules of social media that make your brand stand out or what do you think? Write your thought in the comment section.

Every wise brand today takes step toward building its knowledge base. This stored up knowledge will ensure its relevance tomorrow whether it is prospering today or otherwise. The impact of knowledge has been emphasized by The Bible when it says’ a wise man store up knowledge while a foolish man care less. An African adage also says ‘because things work out today is not a guarantee that one will always has it so compels a soothsayer to consult his oracle after five days. Whenever we sort for more knowledge in any niche, our perspectives change for better.

The western world places emphasis on knowledge acquisition, sharing and management and this is reflecting in the success they are getting. An Average fortune 500 company has a position for knowledge management Director or if at worst a manager. How many of our brands here have knowledge management Director who helps manage, share knowledge, discoveries about the brand. We only place emphasis on corporate communication, brand management staff. I know DDB and other great companies have knowledge directors whose major function is constantly to disseminate knowledge around the world.

In the process of acquiring knowledge, one will have the opportunity to network with other people of like mind, exchange ideas and become better. In the light of the above, I like to bring to our notice a knowledge sharing networking event happening here in Lagos Nigeria on March 24. The event is packaged by Nigerianbrand. Individuals, brands may get further details from the event planners page.

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

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.

Relationship is important to brand survival. Brand needs to build affinity with others to become truly successful. Humans are not created in isolation. This is a signal that shows that we all need others to move ahead. A person is four people away from a desired contact still holds true.

 In my research, I have discovered that what is applicable to humans are also true for brands. Brands are living entity. Brand does not exist for itself. Brand needs strong relationship with external communities to excel. The day of brand monologue is gone for good. Dialogue is the new, hard currency that brand must trade with. It is important for brands to maintain their differentiation, internal innovation and to constantly oil their funnels of communication, the future of any brand is not guaranteed in isolation.

 Community engagement will help much. Brands must become active member of the societies they operate in. Giving back, taking interest in the well being of the society they operate in is vital today than ever before. For any brand to stand aloof is tantamount to self destruct. The depression is making many brands to roam the societies (online an offline) without ever becoming a true, active member of such societies.

Many have forgotten that symbiotic relationship system is important. They have ignored the clients concern to their own peril. Many brands continue to ‘speak to their clients’ without listening. Any brand that stands alone today without giving helping hands will soon realize its mistake when the society repels its offering. While it is important for brand to minimize cost, save time and other vital resources through ‘father Christmas’ gesture, showing concern, encouragement, providing answers to environmental questions through different fora. Some of these do not require financial commitment but creating time.

At offline level, release your staff to participate in local non-profit initiative, allow your members of staff to mentor local high school students, plant flowers or maintain a local, Community Park. On online platform, let your brand takes active parts in consumer forum or other platforms where your target hibernate; give free content and give helping hands by answering questions of the clients. Remember, we live in an ‘archived’ society. By that I mean that Google keeps record. So when crisis arise, people help those who have been there for them. Stand alone brands spend huge money on crisis management because they have to manage the situations by themselves without a supporting hands.

They hardly have a soft landing. They crash heavily on the rock. My questions today are: is your brand part of any relevant community? Is your brand well known for helping out or leaving positive impression (offline, online)? Do brand assessments today, make necessary changes if you feel yours have been a stand alone? There is danger ahead if necessary changes are not made now