This article originally appeared on the blog of Platinum VFP. Since I’m always interested in what brands, particularly South African brands are doing with social I asked to re-post it here.  If you need social services or help with you digital planning you will definitely want to have a look at Platinum VFP’s website. 

With Facebook Timeline recently becoming available to brand pages, take a look at the local marketing creativity being used on main cover images and some of the other features. Well done South Africa!

PROTEA HOTELS 

 WIMPY SOUTH AFRICA

TOPS AT SPAR

HI-Fi CORPORATION

NEWS CAFE

ABSA

STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY SPORT PERFORMANCE INSTITUTE 

TRAVELSTART

If you would like us to feature your brand page with snippets from your actual Timeline as an example for our readers, let us know and we will happily consider featuring it in our next blog.

By Daniela Bascelli (Social Media and Digital Strategist) at Platinum VFP.

Africa, this is why I live here is a Facebook page started by Port Elizabeth resident, Ayesha     Cantor.

It’s a wonderful celebration of life in Africa – all of it – and consists, in the main, of user contributed pictures from around the continent.  Everything from the laugh out loud hilarious to the breathtakingly beautiful.  The enthusiastic interaction is testament to the impact Africa has on the lives of those who live here (or who have left and yearn to return).  It is now a social media sensation.  I “liked” the page last week Tuesday.  I was the 7840th person to do so.  In the 5 days since then the page has grown to 8160 fans.  An additional 320.

The info section of the page says “If, as I, you are delighted, amused, and amazed by the things you see, do and experience around you on a day to day basis whilst living in Africa (or have lived in or visited Africa) feel free to share on this page.”

In the 1990s it was popular for white South Africans to talk about leaving for better pastures and Ayesha agonised about her decision to stay in South Africa but never considered it an option to leave.  She says “I never wanted my children to feel that they were living  second class lives but instead to embrace their country and continent wholeheartedly, warts and all. We live a privileged life, here in Africa….we are a most unique people, this being evident in all the posts shared on the fb page over this last year.   I consider myself engaged in the daily goings on, good and bad, but to focus on the good, of which there is puh-lenty right?”

So started her modest Facebook page in January 2011 as an homage to everything that makes Africa unique.  (To throw in some bias, it really is the best place in the world to live).

And through the year the page grew, not in leaps and bounds but rather in drips.  By November there were signs that the page may just be gaining traction and Ayesha was aware of a growing number of likes and shares of posts. The number of fans passed the 100 mark.

Just before Christmas this post appeared:

The post that started all the trouble. Kaalgat Santa in Africa!

This post took the page viral as you can see with the number of shares it received.  The page exploded and in 2 months has grown to over 8000 fans.  Amazing. It was viral in its purest sense – people sharing something that moved them.  There was no big brand behind it, no big marketing spend.

This tells us what we already know.  Content that is relevant, informative, entertaining and  speaks to its audience will spread like wildfire.  And so it has.

Ayesha is dedicated to the page and thrilled at it’s growth.  She has discovered, in a very public way, that there are thousands who share her optimism for the promise of Africa.

This page has achieved what so many brands are desperate to do:  Build a community of loyal and engaged fans.  The question now is, where to from here? When I put the question to Ayesha she said “Besides a few everyday ideas still lurking in my head….I would love an opportunity to somehow hook up with the Homecoming Revolution initiative.” She continues, “I never imagined the page to grow as it has, in such a short space of time…..speaking of time, it now takes up LOADS of it, pity one can’t generate some kind of revenue from it….. The albums, ‘’Good people doing good sh*t’’ and ‘’Buy Africa’’ have generated quite a bit of interest with good reports of donations and orders generated off the posts, would be so awesome if more folk could be helped out this way…”

I know this for sure.  It’s a wonderful concept, it’s a growing community and ways will come to light to both grow the page and support those running it. In the meantime, go and like the page and get involved. I wish her the best of luck.

A question I’m sometimes asked, particularly by people who are more old school, is: “Don’t you think we are losing something in society when our kids are interacting with their friends and networks through a phone or a gadget rather than in person, direct contact?”

There is a genuine concern about this, that perhaps we are getting so digitized that we are somehow losing a sense of real, human contact.  I can understand this view.  The age of the communication revolution is so different to the one just a  generation earlier.   So much so that it can be terribly difficult to comprehend this “always connected” society.

My answer to this questions is simply this:  It is part of our inherent intelligence that, as children and young adults, we will make the best use of the environment and tools available to us.

Firstly, for the most part our kids get plenty of human contact.  They go to school or university and they have a network of friends with whom they interact.  A good percentage play sport or are part of academic or other social groups.

But given the amazing technological platform that exists today, those networks and the interaction with them extends far beyond their physical contact.  A conversation can be started on the way to school in the morning through BBM, continue in person at school, move between physical and digital during school and finally come to a conclusion through an evening interaction on Facebook.

I would argue that people are far more social today and connected to the world because of the technology they favour.  And being young means they are able to master technology very quickly.

My son, who is now 19, has had a cell phone since he was 8 years old.  He has grown up in a world in which he accepts being connected as the default human condition and I am often amazed at the richness and depth of his network.

I can scarcely imagine the world he will pass on to my grand kids.

In the last 10 days Facebook has made numerous changes to the Facebook experience for users.  The most radical of these is coming in the next few days: A complete overhaul of the profile page which is being renamed “timeline”.

I’ve had the opportunity to play with the timeline and it is quite remarkable and I believe it will enrich the social experience and further integrate our online and offline lives in that what we do offline will be more and more reflected online.

The amount of resistance to these changes has been amazing to see.  Mashable ran a poll asking if users loved, hated or didn’t care about the changes.  With over 5 thousand votes 72% said they hated the changes, 14% loved them and 14% didn’t care.

On my own Facebook profile I defended the changes which resulted in a storm of commentary on the subject.

It’s clearly a hot topic for many.  This is my view:

We live in a world of constant change.  In our past major changes took hundreds of years (1750-1950) then changes would take around 10 years (1950-2000).  As technology began to drive our planet faster so the changes were faster.  From 2000 the world changed every 3 years or so.  From 2010 it seems change is radical, immediate and constant. One consequence is consumers and users want what they want instantly.  If a web page takes more than 4 seconds to load we’ve already moved on.

Therefore any business model must include rapid evolution and change.

This is all the more important with a brand as large as Facebook. Dominance is never assured.  Netscape was the biggest name is internet browsers in the late 90s.  Who even remembers them today?  Napster was the great evolution of online music at the start of the century.  Gone and forgotten.  Myspace was the first major social network and seemed to have such dominance that Newscorp bought them for $580 million even though it made pretty much no money.  Myspace is now a footnote in the history of social networks.  A history that is less than 10 years old.

In order to avoid becoming a phase in history by 2015 Facebook has to evolve with changing attitudes and habits of its key product, users. Being socially connected online was pretty novel in 2004, revolutionary perhaps. How does Facebook remain revolutionary 7 years later when we’ve all gotten over the novelty? It evolves and changes with a vision of how human communication and interaction will develop in the years to come.

Some of this change will probably not work and have to change yet again.  Other changes will be revolutionary and will lead to even greater innovations -innovations we cannot even fathom with available technology.  Just 10 years ago technology like the iPad seemed fantastical.  Today we hardly stop to think of the powerful technology we have in such a device.

It is a natural human instinct to resist change and have our comforts challenged.  But we are moving forward at a rate unprecedented in the relatively brief period of human history and to be secure in our place in modern civilization we must overcome this instinctive resistance and move to embrace this constant change.

And, as always happens, in a month we’ll be Facebooking like crazy and wonder what all the fuss was about because, hey this stuff is amazing.

A number of South African big brands are making their way on to the social web. Only a handful are coming close to making a good shake at it. The rest are not doing too well at all.

The change of mindset required for social media can be almost impossible to fathom for a business and the bigger the business the more difficult it becomes.

One brand that is taking small steps and taking the time to come to grips with how it works is Hi-Fi Corporation and being engaged is beginning to show positive results.

According to Digital Manager, Anne Schmidt, Hi-Fi Corp’s Chief Executive,  Allan Herman is fully committed to the company going Social.  This is probably the most critical starting point for any social media plan to go forward.

With this in mind Anne set up a Facebook page in December last year.  She admits that they were not entirely sure where they were going to go with it.  But an idea surfaced early in the year and in April  ”Funky Friday” was launched.  Every Friday there is a give away.  To be eligible for the prize requires that the page be liked a form filled out.  The winner is announced toward the end of the day. The campaign when it started was supported with a national radio ads.  Anne says that support from suppliers (who sponsor the give-aways) has been tremendous.  They are very excite to be on board.

At the launch of Funky Friday their page “likes” were in the 400 range.  3 months later this has increased 700%.  Pretty spectacular result.  But the be all and end all is not just the number of likes. The goal of course is conversation and looking through their page they are doing admirably with a very high level of engagement. As a result they have a growing base of customers that are having a conversation with their brand.

An amusing anecdote on the growth of their page is there was very quickly a high demand for a way to connect up through mobile devices.  Most businesses today still block access to Facebook so potential likes by corporate office workers were stranded behind firewalls.  Mobile access was set up through a mobi site and a majority entries are now through this service.  Ironically Hi-Fi Corp themselves ban access to Facebook at the office.

As regular readers will know I’m a strong advocate for freeing up access in the work environment as a critical step in becoming truly conversational as a business.

Once a social media programme gets going the next immediate concern is resources, particularly if the programme enjoys some success.  The greatest investment in social media is time and then patience.  To this end an additional person was hired to address the need for additional resources.  Petri Kaparos joined them just as Funky Friday launched. So although they don’t have a dedicated social person or team there is at least a recognition that additional resources will be a must going forward.

I was particularly impressed that Anne understands the need for the Hi-Fi Corporation brand to be represented on the social web by an in house team.  ”Outsourcing doesn’t make sense” she says.  And quite right.

Anne says that content is their challenge going forward – how to produce content that will continue to keep their brand engaged.

Future 

Having now experienced some success they are keen to capitalize. There is talk of using Foursquare and going e-commerce but these are all plans in the future.

The immediate future will involve continued engagement through their Funky Friday campaign while the internal brainstorm continues for content roll out.

But Hi-Fi Corp is firmly on the road to social and even with a limited plan they have enjoyed success.  Once they have a firm handle on where they are going the cloud will be the limit.