Who are your audience and what do they do? The basic premise of her session was, approach them through the medium they use.
A media tidal wave is on the way and every single company in South Africa needs to be aware of it. The shift in media consumption has transferred the focus from opinion leaders, professionals and traditional leaders to “somebody like me”. A spokesperson for a company now needs to be someone that customer can relate to.
The importance of Search Engine Marketing was touched on – you need to ensure that your brand/company shows up on the organic listings for the key phrases your customers or possible customers are searching for. Essentially you want to be in the top 10 of the results as searchers don’t usually bother to go further than the first page of the listings.
Advertising is shifting. Less money is big spent on TV and more is going elsewhere. Online revenue growth is increasing, since 2002 it has increased threefold. South Africa does have a smaller online audience but it is increasing constantly, in fact it has increased over 423% since 2000. The internet users are the opinion leaders, half of them are between 25 and 44 and they are predominantly white but the black users, (or the Black Diamonds as Sally called them), are very important in their communities. Broadband subscribers are doubling each year and have been doing so for the last 4 years. Search is South Africa’s highest online activity. They are looking for something and your company must be there for them to find.
Sally also mentioned that to find 18 to 34 year olds you need to go online and capture them through social media. On this note consumer generated media is having a tremendous impact on peoples lives and companies, Microsoft has even stated that blogging has done more for their image than all the PR that they have ever done. Big statement - this is because people feel that there are real people there that you can speak to via blogs. When blogging for your company, you need to blog about things that are of interest to your customers and their lives - this will bring you traffic and improve your brand image. Bloggers are opinion leaders and people tend to listen to them intently, essentially they are trusted. Avoid their bad books ;)
Other points that were made in terms of blogging included…Don’t blog purely about yourself, blog about things that are of interest to your readers, make the content relevant. Blogging needs to be current and relevant. Be open about everything and don’t try and keep skeletons in the closet – you will be outed pretty damn quickly.
So far it seems that everyone’s having a good time, the one concerning thing is the fact that there is no Internet connection at an online conference. It truly is bizarre how few hotels and conference venues are jacked up in this department. Oh well… what can ya do. Oh and Scott seems to be concerned about the lack of muffins :-)
Posted by thescott on 2007/03/03