Social media has become the most exciting shift in communication that business is currently experiencing. This shift spans across generational boundaries and has made a more convenient lifestyle for people as the socialize on the internet.

Over the past year I have had the privilege to coach executives from Mr Price, The South African Presidency, the ACDP, Southern Sun, Three Cities, TomorrowToday and a number of Non Profit Organisations.

The key areas that we cover in social media coaching are:

• How to use social media platforms?
• How does this affect my business?
• How does this affect people?
• How can I make the work for me?

What makes social media coaching sessions different from social media workshops.

• The coaching sessions encourage conversations that speak directly to your needs or concerns
• One-on-one coaching can be done on your schedule (we can even do them over Skype if its more convenient).

For more information please contact workshops@mikesaunders.co.za.

Touch Durban saw the opportunity to leverage the Currie Cup by doing something that can only work on a social media platform. They supported another Twitter profile!!

@touchdurban put all their effort into getting as many people as possible to follow @just_sharks. This helped the @just_sharks claim the number three position on the SA Twitter Trends and take @touchdurban into the Top 10.

The Royal Hotel, who runs the @touchdurban profile, gave a weekend away to a sharks supporter for showing their support to the Sharks rugby team. This helped drive the interest towards the @just_sharks profile and promote the hotel and their twitter profile.

There are a few things to take away from this:

1) When promoting yourself in social media circles it can be very beneficial to run joint promotions rather than trying to “go it alone”

2) Competitions are a great way to generate excitement on social networks. When running your competitions make sure you in,clued a way for people to follow your profiles

3) Join the passion – people promote what they are passionate about.  Aligning @touchdurban to the Currie Cup Final bought the Durban events profile to the awareness of rugby fans during one of the most passionate times for the sport in South Africa. As people promoted their love for the sport @touchdurban was taken along for the ride.

Well done to the team at Touch Durban for doing such a great job.

Join Touch Durban on Facebook of Twitter

I can confirm all the hype now after I sat with Mr. Vusi Mona, Deputy Director General: Head of Communications, from the South African Presidency. Over coffee at the King Shaka Airport we discussed the strategy to implement this new communication vehicle into the The Presidency.

I found Mr. Mona to be incredibly insightful and passionate about exploring social media.

Mr. Mona had this to say about our consultation session together:

“Thanks Mike. I derived lots of value from our discussion.”

I am looking forward to serving our country in developing their new social media communication strategy.

What has become more interesting is that in South Africa 82% of the online population are on Facebook and 74% of the population are actively involved in social networking.  In March we also saw the launch of Google real-time search in South Africa, which brings social media updates into Google. There are also develoments, made by google, that mean you have better search potential in Google if more people are following you on twitter.

What is taking place is a fundamental shift in the way people use the internet. People are choosing to network, search, discuss, aggregate and understand the internet through social networks, of which Facebook is the largest. This has meant that Google has had to go to the social networks to get the information that people are intesteted in.

So the question: Is Facebook getting bigger than Google? What about in a South African context?

What do you think?

Well now we have something new to consider: Facebook Community Pages

What it looks like and why have one?
A Community Page looks and feels exactly like a normal Facebook page but it has a slightly different purpose. The page is meant to be used for all the unofficial band, brand and business pages that are out there. Facebook seems to be trying to bring a more official status to a Page by letting the unofficial pages have their own platform.

What’s so different about it?
Basically the biggest difference is that when these pages gain popularity they have the potential to be handed over to the Facebook community. This will mean that the community page will start to look like a wiki about the page topic.

Start your own community page

Why not just use a group?
My personal opinion is that Facebook is trying to phase out groups but there is no proof for that other than my gut feel. Another thought would be SEO. Groups on Facebook are not indexed by Google. So if you would like to start a community of people and wish that community had a search engine presence then a Community Page is they way forward.

The other thing to remember is that pages provide user statistics. So your community page could provide some interesting insight into its users.

Allfacebook makes a very interesting observation:

“As Facebook has come to realize that the users want to use Pages as a general “community platform” to socialize ideas and causes, they’ve decided to enable users to essentially create their own “Unofficial Pages”. Users can then meet other users who have similar ideas and interests. One strange distinction is the difference between Pages and groups. Facebook states that groups are for “professional interests or hobbies” whereas community Pages are for “causes and topics”. I’m not sure users will understand (or even care) about this distinction.”

The success of the Community Page concept will completely depend on the users taking to it the way the Facebook expects them to.

The summarised version
Pages are for your ‘official’ presence on Facebook. Groups are for ‘professional interests and hobbies’ and Community pages are for the Facebook Community to express themselves.

To look at the effect this may have on marketing take a look at my post on Ideate

Interested in knowing more about Facebook?

Consider booking a social media workshop

I think that this has happened because of a disregard of the hard work involved in running an internet marketing campaign or online business.

So many people speak to me about this amazing business idea that involves developing a small website and then sitting back and watching the money roll in.

Unfortunately the internet does not work like that. I wish it did, but it doesn’t! It takes hard work, dedication, persistence and and innovative mindset to stay ahead of the pack. At time its even important to maintain a healthy skepticism for the internet and its possibilities. Just to keep us on our toes!!

The average age of Facebook users in South Africa is 33; MySpace is 32; Twitter and YouTube come in at 31; and the youngest in the survey is MXit with an average age of 27. These findings dispel perceptions that social networking is for teenagers only.

Unbelievable! That means that people on Facebook, Twitter, MXit and YouTube could have more decision making power than we think. We may need to start changing the way we market to these networks because we may be missing the mark completely. Generation X are the ones we can meet with social networking. Very exciting news!

One question is begging though? Where are all the teenagers?

LIV provides holistic residential care for vulnerable children with the core vision to

rescue a child – restore a life – raise a leader – release a star

We got involved to leverage social media and the internet to raise awareness of the project, create an online marketing strategy, coach the founder in social media and drive sales of banquet table to their event and the ICC on the 7th April 2010

The online portifolio created for the promotion included a presence in Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, You Tube, the development of the Official LIV Website and a complete blog strategy that included both text and video elements.

In the short time the project has been live we have already expreienced the following successes:

1. Tables sales are being generated directly off the website
2. The facebook community are backing the project completely offering their personal and professional services to help the project
3. Tich Smith, Founder of LIV, is already very active on Facebook promoting the vision that he has. (He didn’t even have a facebook account a month ago)

Feel free to contact me if you would like to implement an internet marketing strategy with your organisation

1) Get focused

A profile with a single focus always generates a higher following. Even better, a focused profile attracts a specific audience interested in your topic. Meaning that your potential for meaningful engagement and lead generation is higher.

2) Brand yourself

Part of branding yourself on twitter is deciding on your focus but once this is established bring your focus out in your profile design. Custom designed profiles give a more authentic and professional appeal. This often will cause people to feel better about following you.

3) Search optimise your bio

Once you’ve decided what you’re about, make it clear in your bio. People search for keywords when looking for people to follow. Much like SEO you need to make sure that your bio clearly uses your industry keywords. What good is a clever sounding bio if no-one is able to find your profile. Dan Zarella’s book provide some interesting information that bio’s that include the words “official, founder, expert and author” tend to have more followers than those that don’t.

The ability to create your own custom URL’s for facebook have been around since about June in 2009 but for some reason the South African public have been slow to catch on. Custom URL’s are possibly the most important aspect of your social media campaign and business/product branding. The URL is the address that people type in to get to your website or facebook page.

The usual URL for a facebook profile or page is very long and illogical to the everyday web user. As an example lets use my facebook profile URL which normally would look something like this:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=6552729302392&ref=ts

The URL now looks like this

http://www.facebook.com/mikeasaunders

The second URL looks neater and cleaner and is a better address to use when marketing yourself or your product.

Act quickly

My suggestion to you is to act fast because once someone has chosen a custom vanity URL then it is theirs for life. If they choose your preferred name then you have just lost out. To claim your vanity URL go to facebook.com/username. This page will let you name your personal profile and your business page profiles.