Is it any wonder then that there’s a growing sense of fatigue?

Has social media reached the tipping point?

Sitting with a client recently, he put me on the spot quoting from a research report published in a local newspaper about how people do not want to be bombarded with brand messages in their social networks.  The report indicated that the reason individuals get on to social networks is to connect with their friends and “meet” new people; not to receive corporate messaging about some new offer or product discount.

While I am sure majority of the people reading this were not around in the 1920s when TV signals were first transmitted, I am certain there was hue and cry when advertising began appearing to interrupt important news about the great recession.  Social media is still relatively new and as such the discomfort of having commercial messages is an expected response.  The key difference and benefit of Web 2.0 is that individuals now have a say on which brands they want to hear from.  Social media is permission-based, which is a big win for the consumer and can be a big headache for the brand.  Customers will give you permission to engage with them if you offer them value through the content you have on social networks.

The excitement of all the available social networks has resulted in the overload that is causing some users fatigue.  Over time, one realizes the need to scale down once they have identified the most relevant channels for their requirements.  When you walk into the gym, hopping onto the cycle machine and then onto the treadmill followed by lifting all the weights and trying out every other piece of equipment is likely to land you in hospital with multiple injuries not to mention extreme fatigue.  Trying to be on all social networks with equal levels of engagement and participation can feel a little like the gym situation I have described above.

For any brand, investing in research to establish where the majority of your customers and prospects hang out on social media will help you narrow down to the channels where you need to feature most prominently.  Failing to do this exposes you to the risk of having social media assets that go unattended for long periods of time.  I cannot overemphasize how detrimental this is to any brand.  Research has shown that 49.5% of customers are far less likely to buy anything from you if they find a bunch of unanswered questions or complaints from other customers on your social media site.  A social media policy will greatly help to address some of these issues before the crop up, and failure to have one is among the key risks companies faces when engaging in social media marketing.  Read this article for details on other risks to avoid.

To avoid the fatigue, establish the right and relevant number of social networks and dedicate sufficient resources to keep them lively.  The many complaints and alarmist reports are just growing pains. Social media is only in its infancy.

The situation isn’t very different in the business environment; people make grave errors that do cost businesses money, customers and their reputation. Over the last four weeks I have observed as these type of situations played out on cyberspace.  Here are two situations with crucial lessons for anyone using social media for business.

Situation 1: The unhappy Zuku customer

Zuku is Wananchi Online’s flagship brand providing triple-play services to the East African market.  On their web site, they pride themselves as an “East African brand that aspires to bring our customer superior entertainment experience at an affordable price”.  From testimonials of a number of Zuku customers, at least their internet connectivity meets this description.  The TV offering is an arguable point and I don’t know much about their voice service.  On 2^nd November 2011 one of their customers was not having a good day with Zuku and put up the tweet below.

The customer, @carolmusyoka used Twitter to get not only Zuku’s attention but that of other customers and potential customers to highlight the experience she was having dealing with the brand. In a short span of time, a number of other Zuku customers pitched in with their thoughts on Zuku’s customers service (or lack of it).  From a safe distance it appears Zuku eventually made contact with their customer on phone but remained mum on Twitter where they actually have a presence @Zukufan.  This was a major error on their part given the attention their brand was raising on Twitter, the sentiment of which was mostly negative.  By 4^th November, @carolmusyoka was still waiting for a solution and more Twitter users were weighing in with their thoughts and experiences. From the barrage of tweets, one user shared this link from another Zuku customer who was quite blunt about both their TV service and their “customer disservice” as he called it.  The issue dragged on for a few days with the Twitter timeline with #Zuku references reading like a script from a horror-comedy screenplay.  A week after this saga began the tweet below was put up.

Zuku decided to take leave instead of taking action and responsibility on the platform where their brand was suffering the most! Right there, they provided the latest case study in “how not to run your social media marketing”.  They eventually reactivated their twitter account and have recently been on a following spree but questions still abound on whether they are using the channel better to keep their customers informed and happy.  The @ZukuFan handle is protected, meaning that they screen those wishing to follow them and those who read their tweets. That feature wasn’t meant for any serious enterprise.  Reminds me of a Bible story where some people were asked if they would light a lamp and keep it covered. If your business is on social media you are there to be seen and heard by as many people as will be available to listen.

Situation 2: The failed airline promotion

Australia’s largest airline and flag-carrier Qantas, is no stranger to social media.  The airline has built a reputation over its 91 years of existence.  On 22^nd November 2011 the Qantas marketing team launched a Twitter campaign where the winning tweet would be rewarded with a Qantas first-class gift pack.  The @QantasAirways account has over 68,000 followers and as such, running a campaign using this channel was bound to get some good conversation going. 

The background to this however is that the airline had been grappling with negative publicity following disputes with three unions that led to the eventual grounding of the airline’s fleet on 29^th October 2011.  Before fully resolving the customer dissatisfaction issue as a result of this, the company launched a campaign to try and engage it’s customers more on social media.  With the hashtag #QantasLuxury, customers were to respond to this question: “Tell us ‘What is your dream luxury inflight experience?’ #QantasLuxury”

The good:  Within an hour, the #QantasLuxury was trending across Australia.  A social media expert, James Griffin of SR7 said there were on average 51 tweets per minute on the topic.

The Bad & the Ugly: Fresh from having thousands of disappointed customers following the grounding of the fleet, the tweets were not flattering and had nothing to do with the intended campaign.  This became an ideal outlet for the airline’s customers to vent their frustrations.  Here are a few of the tweets:

“#qantasluxury is chartering a Greyhound bus and arriving at your destination days before your grounded Qantas flight”

“#QantasLuxury- When the passengers arrive before the couriers delivering the lockout notices do”.

“Getting from A to B without the plane being grounded or an engine catching fire. #Qantasluxury”.

While there was nothing wrong with the campaign itself, what the airlines marketing team totally got wrong was the timing.  They were insensitive to the issues many of their customers were still dealing with following the industrial disputes leading to the fleet grounding.

In March 2010, Nestle foods hit the news with one of the classic goofs that played out on Facebook following the actions of GreenPeace, an environmental lobby group.  You can read more about it here.

While these examples may represent some extreme situations, making mistakes on social media doesn’t mean an end to a brands engagement online.  If and when they do happen, the brand needs to ensure that it remains focussed on meeting customer expectations and directly addressing the issue.  Diverting the attention of Fans and followers will only aggravate them.  And obviously, so will deactivating your account or profile. 

These types of mistakes can be avoided by having a clear strategy and policy for your business on how to run your affairs online.  In the policy, there will be clear guidelines on a number of important issues such as:

• ·         who the authorised spokespeople are
• ·         the average lead-times to respond to customer queries
• ·         transition and handover procedures in case the site administrator changes roles or leaves the company
• ·         how to manage spammers and inappropriate content that external parties put on your social media channels

In the situation where you find yourself in a reactive situation, employ all reasonable principles that you would if the mistake had happened with a customer in your office, while remembering that there are hundreds or thousands of other customers watching closely.  Here is another interesting perspective on how to proactively use social media especially for the airline industry for crisis management.

The bottom-line here is that social media will not fix other broken elements of the business.  Every business will be challenged with some aspect or the other relating to their products or their customers but this shouldn’t also be an excuse not to engage in social media.

Social media marketing isn’t a band-aid for a broken business; it’s about using it to improve a business that has the basics right.

Setting up a presence on a social network is simple. The challenge most online marketers’ face is what to do after that. Their frustration grows at the lack of new followers or likes and more often than not it leads to total abandonment of the very pages they enthusiastically created. The tragedy with this is that for most customers it is sometimes better not to find the organization they are searching for, than finding it and realizing that their social media page has received no attention for over 4 months!

The size of audience you attract on social networks is largely a function of one key element: relevant content. Social networks and the internet in general is really crowded with information, some important, some life-saving, some helpful and others plenty irrelevant. The situation will only get worse as the amount of information increases. Why then should anyone spend a few more minutes on your blog or Facebook page? Connecting with your customers and prospects takes more than copying that latest press release or publishing photos from a recent CSR activity. Here are 3 tips on how you can improve your connection.

• Think like your customer not like you: I know that sounds a bit crazy but the content that you want to share as a marketer may not be what your audience wants to hear. The easiest way to do this is to think of the situations where you are the customer. Which Facebook pages do you “Like” and which blogs do you read faithfully? Evaluate whether you present the same value that you find in these to your customers. When your audience is clear on what is in it for them, the closer you are to building a loyal and larger following.

• Begin by utilizing the offline content you have: Online marketers often believe they must come up with fancy new ideas and content to put on their web sites, blogs or Facebook pages. While that is excellent where possible, do not disregard the loads of content you and your colleagues you have created in the past. This may currently exist in the form of White papers, presentations, proposals and other offline marketing material. Do not fall for the temptation to do a quick copy & paste; most of the documents I’ve just mentioned will be lengthy and may contain more than one key topic. As such, it is recommended that you spend some time reformatting and breaking this content down to bite-sized chunks that are easier to consume in social media sites. Remember to keep your audience in mind while doing this. Avoid jargon and the use of company acronyms and terms that may not mean much to external audiences.

• Share new or ongoing specials and offers: You could share any specials that you may have running or create exclusive ones for your online customers. This one has been used with great success by many organizations to increase their online following. When the audience knows that they will receive a discount, free gift or other concession because they belong to a select club of Twitter followers or blog subscribers, they are more likely to click on the all-important link that you want them to. Once you get them in, you must ensure you keep them engaged; remember they still have the option to unfollow, dislike or unsubscribe. Don’t give them a valid reason to.

You can find other perspectives on this topic in this great article “Why people don’t want to follow you on Twitter or Like you on Facebook”.

I welcome your comments on this topic below.

While in most organizations the jury is still out on whether this social media thing ought to be taken seriously or not, a marketing executive or any other internet-savvy member of staff will spare a few minutes to take a look at the corporate Facebook page in the midst of IM conversations with friends, uploading photos onto their personal profile and working on their email. Often there is no plan or schedule to guide what the individual or individuals who have administrator access to these social media assets will do (check for an upcoming post on the content dilemma).

If yours is a business faced with this challenge, here are 4 quick tips to help you get onto the right track:

• Identify a suitable social media champ within your organization: While the use of social media in business is primarily for marketing the best champ in your business may not be in the marketing department. It is best to nominate a team member who is passionate about social media and a prolific user of the same. In the event that the person fitting this bill is not in the marketing department, establish a clear and well defined manner for him/her to work with the marketing team in order to ensure that the overall marketing objectives of the business are met. The nomination of the social media champ should however be done with care so that it isn’t used as an excuse for an employee to become an internet junkie.

• Schedule time on a consistent basis to monitor and update the social media assets: Time spent on your corporate assets should be planned. The frequency of checking in should be governed by the traffic on your social media assets. As such, it will be natural to have longer gaps between check-ins when your social media sites are newly set-up and shorter ones as the sites get busier and better known. Being on social media on an ad hoc basis is more likely to yield negative results such as missing crucial customer feedback, or hackers and self-seekers that will use your sites to sell or promote unrelated products or services.

• Don’t spread yourself too thin: Due to the low entry barrier, it is easy to succumb to the temptation to be on as many social networks as possible. This inevitably creates more demand for time in order to remain fresh and relevant. As with any other business decision, do some homework and establish which social media channels work best for you. Needless to mention, this should be based on where your most of your customers will interact with you. Until you can build sufficient capacity, do not hesitate to close or suspend social media assets you own that are likely to have little or no impact.

• The 21st century challenge: there is too much information: We all find ourselves clicking on link after link on Twitter and tempted to watch all the great videos others have posted on Facebook and YouTube. No one ever has enough time to read and watch all they need to while online. You must therefore be very focussed on what you want. Decide upfront what is important and resist the urge to open “just one more”. There are bound to be interesting and informative links that may not fit into the time you have scheduled; bookmark these and set time aside to review them later.

While this is not the exhaustive list of tips you can use to save time, they should help form a crucial first step. Please share any others you might have below.

Image used with permission from creator Renjith Krishnan

Word has it that the site simply had no security at all (the username: ADMIN and password: PASSWORD do not qualify as security).  In an earlier article I indicated that with increased bandwidth, we are opening the country up not only to more business and social opportunity but also to cybercriminals who will spend time online trying to figure out who to nail.  And what a place to start?

For anyone transacting online in Kenya, this is a very scary period.  The very entity that one would rely on to address cyber-attacks or cases of cyber fraud appears totally ignorant of how to deal with this ongoing game.  Might that be why they still insist on recording everything on books and scraps of paper torn from the corner of a newspaper?  What other sensitive police records may these hackers have access to? 

The police chief and all at the Ministries of Internal Security and Information & Communication need to take this a lot more seriously than they currently are!  Failure to do so will not only leave us decades behind in term of our preparedness to secure cyberspace but will also hurt any prospects for local or foreign investors doing business online from within Kenya.

The average Kenyan gets ripped off several times over with reckless abandon.  Today I sat with a friend working on some data online and with no notice at all, he couldn’t access the internet.  He quickly called his provider to establish if there was an issue with the connectivity only to be advised that his service had been disconnected because he owed KSh.250.  This, notwithstanding that the provider holds KSh.5,000 as a security deposit from this customer.  Only last week, another friend shared a harrowing story of how he was slapped with a power bill of KSh. 900,052 for his relatively small residential abode!!  No, he doesn’t run a welding or bakery business in his backyard; this is purportedly his consumption following an average of KSh. 1,000 to 2,000 over many past months.  He is currently doing the 3rd week of no power, thanks to Kenya Power & Lighting Company’s insistence that he must pay up.

As Kenyan consumers, we are in dire need of a strong Consumer organization to fight for our rights against product and service providers that generally take customers for granted.  The big boys never loose or get inconvenienced even when they hold plenty of customer’s cash with no interest earned in the guise of security deposits.  Why should your cell phone provider disconnect your service for having a negligible overdue bill and yet we have no recourse when they fail to provide the required service?  We do not have an endless supply of private solutions and sometimes the solution providers of these solutions fail us.  We must get our government and our product and service providers to live up to our expectations at the very least.  Only then will they start thinking of how to exceed them.

***

The first stop for many people today to get any information on an organization is the web.  Any self-respecting organization has by now ensured that they can be found on the cloud.  In the East African region, the web revolution began slightly over a decade ago and for several years that followed, launching of corporate web sites was a big deal accompanied by much funfair.  For most of the organizations in the region though the big question remains; has the website brought about the expected returns and benefits?

A few issues need to be considered in answering this question.  Depending on the organization, the “ownership” of an organization’s web presence is between Marketing and IT.  Normally, the two need to have a very healthy liaison to ensure a good result.  At the initial phase of setting up the site, IT was most likely involved in the technical nitty-gritty with marketing handling the content and design aspects.  The latter then normally provide content for updates to the site.  Among the issues that the marketing folk need to be concerned about on an ongoing basis includes the traffic.  Just before that however, they must ensure that the web address is well publicized and easy to remember.  There are organizations whose web sites are visited only by the staff and a handful of other people since no one else knows that such a site exists!  While this may be an extreme case, there are a great many firms in the region that have web sites, a majority of which are not well known. 

Publicizing a web site is crucial but definitely not the silver bullet to drive traffic to your online premises.  For many of the organizations, the sites that they set up during the “we need to have a web site” craze of 10 years ago have remained the same.  Sad!  Today, many people accessing a web site need to know more than just when your company was started, how many offices have been set up, the last CSR activity you did and your fax and generic info@ email address.  This is where the IT team must play a very critical role.  The ability to transact on a web site is what differentiates firms.  Today, in the midst of the economic madness, all executives are focused on cutting costs while maximizing revenue.  The marketing teams are considering all legal options of winning market share from the competition.  As CIO, if you already haven’t, here is your chance to be the star.  Investments into CRM applications and web-enabled software have been ongoing in many organizations for a number of years now.  These obviously only mean something if their features are fully utilized.  Can customers access your standard pricelists from your web site?  Can they view your current stocks or service offerings?  Can they actually fill an order form online and make payment?  These are the differentiators that win your firm market share.  The easier you make it for your customers to buy from you, the more customers you will win.

A number of issues that previously hampered developments in this area have now been resolved through the passing of the much-debated Kenya Communications Amendment Act 2008.  You owe it to yourself to clearly understand the key benefits that this law brings to the ICT sector and capitalize on these to improve your organization’s web presence.  Once you fix the back-end issues related to how the applications you have invested in will make it easier for your customers to interface with you, then the marketing teams now have their work cut out for them.  Locally, firms in the airline, banking and media industries have demonstrated leadership in making their web sites work for them.  While stunning designs go a long way in making the experience pleasant, they will tell you that the clincher is in the integration of their sites with their core applications.  It is very encouraging to note that we now have a few homegrown amazons and e-bays; businesses that have no real physical presence and only accessible in cyberspace.  Who says you must get real-estate in Cairo or Kuala Lumpur to do business there?

***

Isn’t it interesting how simple words when used in an IT context can elicit very strange responses from the very people who thrive on using IT buzzwords?  Imagine with me what the response of an IT head within a Kenya government department or ministry would be if you asked him “What is your strategy around cloud computing?”  I do not intend to beat up on the government here since many private-sector CIOs may also not have a convincing response.  You would expect that answer to cover issues of security and how it is unlikely that the government will move into that direction soon due to the crucial need to have control over where data and information is stored.  This individual will then proceed to hand out his business card complete with all key elements signifying government including the flag and coat-of-arms and tucked somewhere at the bottom is his Hotmail email address.

Cloud computing has only gained popularity as a buzz-word in the last couple of years.  The concept has however been with us for over a decade.  When web-mail began taking root sometime in the mid-nineties, then the acceptance of cloud computing began.  Infrastructure, platform and software elements of IT are now available as a utility.  According to Wikipedia, “Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.  Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them.  Cloud computing services usually provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers”.  As this concept now shifts from a consumer focus to a business focus, it has earned new names and thus new fears, most of them unfounded.  The government IT head I referred to earlier may have spent the last few years sending and receiving government information over the cloud via webmail, but will be very hesitant to invest in cloud storage for government data ostensibly because he believes he would have no control of it.  And herein lies the issue.  The need to have control is the root of all insecurity for people charged with managing IT for various organizations.   Having said that, many people will confess that they have lost data due to a failure on their PC or local server, which they have control over, but possibly not had an issue in over a decade with their webmail which sits on the cloud.  In a conversation several months back with a director of one of Kenya’s large banks, I asked whether the bank would consider outsourcing the IT function and got an emphatic “no”.  The bank would not run the risk of having a third party own and manage the systems that it relies on to run its business, the gentleman said.  In the kindest way possible, I enquired how they dealt with the “risk” of running their business across many of their branches, in buildings that the bank did not own and the discussion quickly turned to other more palatable matters.  The benefits of cloud computing will accrue to those whose attitude has changed.  Organizations need availability and reliability not control. 

One of the ways that organizations especially SMBs can weather the current economic storm while maximizing the use of technology to reduce costs is to adopt cloud computing.  SMBs have been slow to embrace the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model but, given that many firms are finding it difficult to obtain credit; exchanging capital expenses for operating expenses could be very appealing.  Large organizations also stand to benefit but the shift to the cloud is likely to be more gradual and phased due to the existing investment in legacy systems which will take time to migrate to the cloud.  Undeniably, enterprise customers will have a more challenging time moving to the cloud.  Many of the existing cloud platforms today as provided by Amazon, Microsoft, Google and many others, were designed to work for a consumer market.  Enterprise applications are also increasingly becoming available online but the challenge for most organizations is the need to move their current applications to the cloud which often proves not to be a very easy task.  While convenient migration may hinder the adoption of cloud-based infrastructure, it is definitely a temporary barrier which will soon be overcome.  Environments with little or no IT infrastructure are best placed to immediately begin reaping the benefits of the cloud.

The cloud computing phenomenon also creates an entirely new business opportunity for hosting services.  One of the best ways the region could utilize the rapidly increasing bandwidth is through the provision of locally-hosted web-based services.  This could be the next blue ocean for value-added resellers who want to differentiate themselves.  The shift from competing with dozens if not hundreds of other businesses for the ever-shrinking pie of IT projects to new avenues like application and data hosting may determine who will still be here five years from now.  Real cost savings by moving to cloud computing will only apply to consumers when there is a critical mass of providers as well as critical mass of customers.  As such, we will witness the typical wait-and-see approach as many organizations shy away from being the pioneers to avoid paying the premium for being ahead of the pack.  Likewise, without sufficient competition, the few providers that are first into the field will capitalize on the almost monopolistic scenario before more players hop in and prices begin dropping.  Today, some organizations are beginning to enjoy cloud computing benefits by creating an internal cloud.

Every IT leader will need to evaluate and advise the organization on the elements of their infrastructure that should move to the cloud.  The experience and subsequent success or otherwise for organizations using cloud computing is hinged on one key aspect – the Service Level Agreement (SLA).  This is where most of the time and attention should be focused as it will address all issues relating to the risks – legal, regulatory and business; security, availability and the cost advantage for cloud computing.  The only sure thing – the cloud is unavoidable.

The other key remark the PS made, which he has stood for over some time, was on the need to create jobs by encouraging and nurturing the local PC assembly industry.  This is where we part ways; I think it is a jua-kali idea.  I have no objection to anyone that wants to assemble their own PC for use or for sale but this is not what we should be looking to for job creation or as a catalyst for economic growth.  We have an amazing pool of innovative talent in ICT that we even export.  We can employ these resources in more impactful and sustainable ICT production than just putting together PCs on a production line.  Software development and provision of IT-based services are a good place to start.  Indeed we have begun with the growing BPO sub-sector, but we have barely scratched the surface.  If the ICT Ministry were to effect more rapidly the e-government policy to ensure that government services are all available and fully transactional electronically, it would open up opportunity for the many young graduates to utilize their skill in creating applications for use not just in Kenya but for export too.  Edwin Kipchumba Singoei, the 19 year old inventor of a security alarm system recently earned himself a University scholarship from the Standard Group due to his innovation.  This is just one example of how the country can nurture talent and elevate the sharpest brains to the global stage to offer solutions for the world. 

I believe much of the talking, researching and conferencing has been done on how to move to the next level as far ICT usage for commercial, governance and social purposes is concerned.  The country is not moving fast enough to make the wonderful plans a reality.  At the pace at which things change in IT circles, it is imperative that we do not keep our good plans on the shelves for too long.

As an entity faced with competition must do, we need to establish what our strengths and weaknesses are.  As far as the assembly of electronics is concerned, the odds are stacked against us from a competitive perspective with expensive and unreliable mains power as well as distance from the source of most components being major factors.   While considering assembly of PCs locally, we need to think of addressing the regional and international markets due to economies of scale.  We have seen the competitive landscape tilted against our favour in agricultural sector due to local production costs being prohibitive.  Any lessons to learn from this?  It is worth noting that in other African countries like Egypt and Nigeria, locally assembled computers do not compete at par with imported products but only stay afloat due to government subsidies or decrees that force government entities to only purchase those products.  South Africa has a better success story of homegrown brands though the economic dynamics are quite different.  Our preparedness to venture into some of the industrial engagements is currently limited by several factors beyond ICT such as the cost of electricity and rigid trading and taxation regimes that will impact the purchase of inputs and sale of finished products.  These issues do not come into play in the case of intellectual property and a services-based ICT industry.  I do not want to suggest that is can only be one or the other but we must establish our strong points and where our greatest potential lies, and pursue the same with utmost focus otherwise we risk failure by trying to do everything by ourselves.