A recent report dubbed “The Africa Learning barometer” shows that there is a learning crisis & teacher absenteeism that needs to be addressed to improve learning outcomes in the continent and mobile technology could solve part of the problem. There’s also a staffing crisis in our seven public universities; for the 160,000 + students there were only 5,186 lecturers a ration of 1:70 students against the internationally recommended ration of 1:25 for sciences and 1:30 for humanities.
The Julisha 2013 ICT report shows 36% of Kenya’s population has access to internet with around 17.38M users in 2013. The report also shows that the main purposes of using the internet in Kenya are communicating with colleagues, (77%), searching for information 68% and education & learning activities at 40%.
In 2012 social media has gone beyond just being Facebook friends and sharing funny videos you found on YouTube. Today, social media has become a platform with the ability to change the world. As learning practices and technology tools change, mobile learning itself will continue to evolve. For 2013, the focus is on a variety of challenges, from how learners access content to how the idea of a “curriculum” is defined to become more responsive to trends and match the needs of the industry/marketplace.
Mobile learning is about self-actuated personalization; Learning though on one extreme is the magic of presence – with peers and teachers and another is the almost infinite access to peers and experts in the virtual world thus universities need to pay more attention to both.
Technology like tablets PCs, apps, and access to broadband internet are lubricating the shift to mobile learning, but a truly immersive mobile learning environment goes beyond the tools for learning to the lives and communities valued by each individual learner. Here’s the reasons why I strongly feel and urge the education stakeholders to embrace mobile & social learning as part of addressing the deeper learning crisis in Africa.
1. Access
A mobile learning environment is about access to content, peers, experts, credible sources, and previous thinking on relevant topics virtually. It can be actuated via a smart-phone, laptop or in-person, but access is constant–which in turn shifts a unique burden to learn on the shoulders of the student. Educational institutions in the continent thus need to digitize more content into various multimedia formats to optimize it for consumption across various screens key being mobile.
2. Cloud and Curation
The cloud is the enabler of “smart” mobility. With access to the cloud, all data sources and project materials are constantly available, allowing for previously inaccessible levels and styles of revision and collaboration. Apps and mobile devices can not only support curation, but can do so better than teachers might hope to as it enhances aggregation of content from various sources, people and platforms. By design, these technologies adapt to learners, store files, publish thinking, and connect learners, making curation a matter of process rather than ability. Hard copy content gets worn out, isn’t transferable and is bulky; worse still our institutions really do not have well stocked libraries that provide resources for all students especially during revision thus mobile learning provides digital content that is accessible to everyone, everywhere, anytime especially for lecturers teaching similar courses in various campuses/satellite campuses may save on duplication of lecturers by recording videos/audio lecturers and upload them for other students in other campuses! <—-very cool!
3. Transparent & Authentic
Transparency is the natural byproduct of connectivity, mobility, and collaboration. As planning, thinking, performance, and reflection are both mobile and digital, they gain an immediate audience with both local and global communities through social media platforms from Twitter to Facebook, YouTube to blogs. Virtual & Mobile education yields an element of authenticity to learning that is impossible to reproduce in a classroom. Here shy students can engage one another; ask questions online, start discussions, share good content they come across to a community of peers which ultimately converges to enable experiences that are truly personalized. Helps learners pursue their deepest interests and crowd source solutions to their weak areas.
4. Play and Blending
Play is one of the primary characteristics of authentic, progressive learning, both a cause and effect of an engaged mind. In a mobile learning environment learners are encountering a dynamic and often unplanned set of data, domains, and collaborators, changing the tone of learning from academic and compliant to personal and playful making the process of learning full of fun & likeable unlike what it is today in Kenya.
A mobile learning environment will always represent a blending of sorts–physical movement, personal communication, and digital interaction. Mobile learning for universities too shouldn’t be aimed at replacing the in-person interactions offered by institutions but offer students the opportunity to expand knowledge & pursue their interests without dedicating fixed periods of time to fit a college or university schedule. Mobile accelerates learning by taking the best of both worlds (traditional person to person) to virtual (mobile & social) remains an untapped area in Kenya could help with blending of learning!
5. Flexible
Among the most powerful principles of mobile learning is asynchronous access. This unbolts an educational environment from a school floor and allows it to move anywhere, anytime in pursuit of learning allowing it to take place beyond the walls of an institution. It also enables a learning experience that is increasingly personalized: just in time, just enough, just for me. Flexibility to some may mean complete missing of classes if in campus but that’s not cool (either way people miss classes for genuine & bogus reasons) and to others it allows them to read, revise anytime they have time in the day. Professionals looking for ongoing learning and career development without necessarily incurring the costs of a traditional education. This flexibility gives students a chance to access class content while stuck in traffic, in bed, at home or anywhere so all isn’t lost if they miss classes!
6. Self-Actuated & Always On.
With asynchronous access to content, peers, and experts comes the potential for self-actuation. Here, learners plan topic, sequence, audience, and application via facilitation of teachers who now act as experts of resource and assessment. Always-on learning is self-actuated, spontaneous, personalized, self scheduled and pursuable on one’s pace. There is a persistent need for information access, cognitive reflection, and interdependent function through mobile devices. It is also embedded in communities capable of intimate and natural interaction with students/learners. This helps students to shift their focus from going to school to pass get good grades to one where they pursue a deeper understanding of subjects & units; gain knowledge and finally pass exams and score enviable grades.
7. Diverse
With mobility comes diversity. As learning environments change constantly, that fluidity becomes a norm that provides a stream of new ideas, unexpected challenges, and constant opportunities for revision and application of thinking. Audiences are diverse, as are the environments data is being gleaned from and delivered to.
Mobile learning allows students/learners from diverse backgrounds to connect, network and share knowledge virtually and seamlessly hence enhancing collaboration between peers and institutions globally.
Author Archives: socialproclubs
Social Media For Good; What We Can Do as Kenyans
On a chilly Thursday morning I woke up to something interesting on Twitter; a discussion fronted by @PaulaKahumbu CEO of Wildlife Direct. She posed a rather intriguing question and got me tweeting for the next one hour! Social media has changed and continues to shape the way we exchange of information, share content and add to it as well as pass it on and discuss ideas.
In the past we have seen #KOT (Kenyans on Twitter) come together for various good reasons, we had #CarpoolKE, #KOTagainstMpbonus, #PeremendeMovement, #KenyansForKenya, #KOT4Conje among other great initiatives meant for the good of the society.
We’ve also popular TT’s such as #TurkanaOil, #SomeoneTellCNN, #BudgetyaMasuffer, #MiddleClassProblemsKE and customer service oriented #tags; the popular #TwitterBigStick and #TwitterThumbsup. As some of us do well (right, good & social stuff) on social networks some tribalists have been publishing hate messages something DR. Bitange Ndemo has been talking about weekly since late last year in the Wednesday Media Monitoring briefings at the Infocomm Ministry.
Late last year we had #SGSNairobi by UNDP which brought together tech-preneurs & social innovators whose ideas, initiatives and campaign have had massive success and huge positive social impact and we should have more of such events often. (Methinks)
Recently (yesterday) we had #SomeoneTellBotswana, #SomeoneTellCNN & #SomeTellKenya which shows a growing sense of pride in our nation and demonstrates our patriotism. I am more than happy to see the number of hate pages and Twitter handles reduce in Kenya, we managed to pull through the election peacefully with minimal cases of hate tweets and propaganda. What this tells me is Kenyans are now taking social media seriously and it’s time we scaled that up to unlock the full potential on social media.
How about we have weekly sessions on Twitter on to discuss various issues/topics?
Karani Mutonga, CBI 360 and I started #BusinessWedKE; a 1 hour long discussion to share insights, opinions and information related to Biashara and various things affecting the industry sometime late last year but the hashtag didn’t gain traction. We used to invite online panelists to tweet and respond to some questions or give feedback on our topic of the week.
Due to the feedback on Dr. Paula Kahumbu’s #ThinkTank and #PowerHour we could dedicate an hour per week to discuss various topics/issues affecting us. Could be tech, politics, health, governance, corruption, education etc.
For purposes of having something relevant, the tech community can say come use #TechThinkTank, education players can use #EducationThinkTank na watu wa Biashara can have #BizThinkTank in our weekly #PowerHourKE. Or should they be uniform? Remain or use #KEThinkTank? You tell me!
So say this kicks off next week we can maybe start with education, the other week we go to governance or democracy like that et;al. I would also like to volunteer to coordinate the think tank debates/ chats, to come up with topics in partnership with players in different industries and raise them for discussion every Thursday 9 am to 10:00 am.
Well if you have any contribution to this post please follow me @KenyanMarketer & share your response with me and other #KOT.
Is Monitoring Social Media The Only Solution GoK has to Hate Speech #OnlineKE?
Is monitoring social media rather reactionary and tiresome? Set up keywords to monitor, track conversations, identify frequent sources of ‘hate speech, curate content or the evidence, move on to arrest these perpetrators…does that sound like a 3 hour job to you? Due to the viral nature of social media, sticky content spreads very fast. By sticky I mean emotional content that is either positive or negative! Not NEUTRAL! So if the initiative below seeks to prevent a possible PEV then they cannot do it! People will share pics of violence while asking others to stop….what that does is we all start preaching peace while preparing for WAR because we can see what’s happening elsewhere. Mashada.com was shut down last week for the same reasons….but my question is, does shutting down the platform gag the users? Does it mute them? NO! They move into other platforms with their aliases and continue with spreading inflammatory content.
I conceptualized a campaign dubbed “I am A SocialPRO” to raise awareness, public advocacy; promote responsible & ethical ways of engaging online and education on social media. Therefore this campaign seeks to promote responsible ways of engaging on social media, sensitize content creators on legal risks of creating and sharing content that is inflammatory and full of hate as well as educate Kenyans on social media etiquette and ethical ways of communicating online for societal good. Here’s what I tweeted and the response I got!
Here’s an article on the Sunday Nation, read through and do let me know what you think is the right, most viable and efficient to reducing the ‘hate speech’ on social media.
New project to check hate speech on Facebook, Twitter
Be careful what you tweet, update on your Facebook account or write on your blog.
An online monitoring project has been trawling websites, blogs and the social media for hate speech in the past four months ahead of the March 4, 2013 elections.
The Umati project, an initiative of technology incubator, iHub, and software developer, Ushahidi, aims to monitor and report dangerous postings online by Kenyans to the authorities.
Ms Angela Crandall, the research manager at iHub, said five monitors are at the firm’s research centre.
“We have people who in addition to mastery of English understand Dholuo, Kalenjin, Kikuyu, Luhya, Swahili and Sheng,” said Ms Crandall, who has been working at iHub since 2011.
“We once toyed with the idea of using computer software, but much content was in vernacular and it was difficult to develop software to interpret this.”
The monitors follow opinion and political leaders from different communities and collect data from Twitter, Facebook, blog posts and comments on online newspapers.
The data is then categorised as offensive speech (lowest level), moderately dangerous speech or extremely dangerous speech (highest level).
Ms Crandall told the Sunday Nation that Umati shares the reports it develops with different partners including the police, National Cohesion and Integration Commission and the civil society. They are also in contact with the ministry of Communication as well as electoral commission.
These sites have gained massive popularity since the last General Election, a period when radio stations and mobile phones were the main mediums used to perpetrate hatred.
In contrast to 2007 when there was no systematic monitoring of the Kenyan online environment, Umati is trying to ensure that it captures the trending topics, phrases, and sentiments especially in this campaign period.
“We are aware of the influence that new media had on the 2008 post-election violence in Kenya and this is why we are undertaking this project,” says Crandall.
But why “dangerous speech” and not “hate speech?”
The National Cohesion and Integration Commission Act of 2008 says hate speech is “speech that advocates or encourages violent acts against a specific group, and creates a climate of hate or prejudice which may, in turn, foster the commission of hate crimes”.
The Umati monitors, however, particularly go after “dangerous speech” or “speech that has a potential to cause violence”.
“The definition that NCIC has for hate speech is vague and leaves room for different interpretations,” said Ms Crandall.
“Dangerous speech” is borrowed from Prof Susan Benesch, an academic who studies the role of inflammatory speech in catalysing collective violence around the world.
Ms Crandall said that inflammatory speech is still rife in the Kenyan online space.
“We have found more dangerous speech than we expected,” she said.
As a result, Umati is now working with online thought leaders such as bloggers to quickly counter the results of this.
Umati is also working with Ushahidi to host free and open events and trainings on dangerous speech and how to diminish its effects.
Why Companies Should Handle Social Media Like Dating and Relationships
Five Social Media Tips You Can Learn From THE Dating SCENE
I know the title of this post arouses curiosity but am about to prove why you should handle and approach your community on social media like you do with a girl/boy in the dating scene. I happen to have spent the weekend home alone, phone off, no Twitter, no TV, no laptop- nothing; basically cut out off the world! Well I was having that “ME” time to reflect upon many things when my thoughts drifted to my social life…dating and such kind of things! The more I thought about it, the more my mind wandered to social media and how companies often try to build relationships. So I engaged my thoughts to come up with this post! So in this post I will explore similarities and lessons social media managers can pick up from the dating scene to guide them in managing brands on social media. This will be pretty simple so here’s how to go about it!
1. KNOW WHERE TO SEARCH.
This is actually the first thing you do when seeking the right person- so where do you search? Some go to church, others find bars to be good hunting grounds, and others go to events such as weddings, networking sessions, seminars, dating sites and such. For companies you need to know where your customers hang out, which platforms are they active on? Are you targeting the 18-24 market? Where are they? Are you looking for the 25-35 age group or the older ones? So at this stage you need to identify the social networking sites where to focus your social media marketing efforts. Remember social media isn’t all about Facebook and Twitter so take time to explore where you put your resources for the maximum ROI! After you do this, then as usual you need a strategy, with objectives and a plan. Then craft the message- what’s the tone? How will you put it across in an engaging way? At this you may also profile (do some research) your TA, identify their touch points and things they love or enjoy doing and at what times or seasons/days/ times of the day as you prepare for step 2 below!
2. TAKE THE MOVE!
After you have the place to do your search, you now take the bold move to approach the girl, so I assume you have already set up the social media channels, well branded and with profiles nicely filled up with information. As you do with dating, you dress properly (branding), take the girl to a nice restaurant, go to church with her and such! So here’s a few tips to help you with that crucial first date!
- Be bold – Don’t be afraid to share your thoughts, opinions and ideas with her. On social media don’t be neutral! Be a rebel or the hero. Neutral content/discussion doesn’t arouse engagement! Be very keen as you don’t want the girl to curse meeting you same thing, if your content isn’t great on social media, people will leave!
- Post less –Sharing everything on your mind or what you come across will push her away so is the community you have on social media! You don’t keep calling her and texting all day so the same works with social media! If you’re pushing serious content tweeting and posting in the morning may get you RT’s. Sharing content when your community is not online will not earn you engagement. Use Tweriod to see when you tweet and when your friends/followers tweet. Then tweet during those times to increase engagement. You also need a content plan and a maintenance schedule for all your social media channels with a policy/guidelines as you don’t want admins to post anything!
- Use the 1/9 tweet rule –Those who only share their own content are transparent and audiences online look at that as purely selfish and switch off quickly. Get in the habit of sharing 9 tweets not about you or your business for every post about you or your business. This way you don’t spam people; the same thing applies to dating- you don’t talk endlessly about yourself! Do less of push marketing, no “Me, me, me’ kind of content. A good ratio of sharing to promoting your own content on Facebook is 4:1 as a minimum (the more you share about other valuable content i.e. less marketing messages, the more you get in return). Be sure you only share content that adds value to your community – content which they’ll find useful. If it’s a mixed up case scenario share content that benefits people across the board.
3. So what next after the first date?
After you’ve went out for dinner with her, you don’t ask to take her to your house! Maybe you play the gentleman, drop her home, pick up a cab for her or at least escort her to her bus stop. Right? You then call to find out whether she got home well as you wish her good night and thank her for having dinner with her! Sindio wananume? Now back to social media, once you get people to like or follow you, you welcome them, thank them then immerse them with content about your business and what you offer. You aren’t asking for a sale, you want to first build the relationship, give value, good content, keep your promises- when people ask for information, you give it on time, when you promise to call them, do it! After the first date, maybe you schedule the next one, you want to see her often right? So with social media, you may ask your followers to also LIKE your Facebook page and vice versa, check or subscribe to your channel. You may also redirect them to your website or ask them to check your products in a branch/outlet/retail outlet near them. Remember you now want to ‘see’ and engage them more often and get your community interact with your business, experience your products and services more often. Remember you don’t push this on them!
4. Your Reputation- what do other people say about you?
At this level if you had done your search in the right place, done step two and three well, a girl will ask her or your friends about you. Check your Facebook profile, ask your colleagues and people who know you more about you! She simply wants to get an opinion from people who know you before she makes a decision whether there’s a future in what you have initiated. With social media, a customer will search more about your business online, ask around for recommendations, also ask friends about your product or service or maybe read product reviews online. So this is where you monitor your brand mentions, address inquiries, read reviews and up your reputation management! You don’t want your prospect to read a nasty blog about your poor customer service, negative customer experience and such kind of things. So how well do you track conversations on social media space? Does your business deliver on its promise? Do you keep your word? Is your product awesome as you say it is? Remember it’s no longer about who you say you are but what others say you are so you need a strong social media team to handle your public relations online. This is very important in the purchase decision process! Any issues here that raise a red flag will turn people away!
5. Take her to bed- Call for action!
Most probably after step four a girl will have made up her mind but you still have a chance to clean up your name! You know it guys, how we say we’ve changed, we’ve quit alcohol and we’re no longer players! With business, most likely your prospective buyer will have 2 or 3 options now; with recommendations to try out product B from company C. However you still have a chance to explain the benefits, value proposition and the uniqueness of your product/service. Address the fears the prospect has and do it authentically and in a genuine manner. Don’t be a one night stander as you ask for a SALE, seek to build & nurture a relationship! Ask her….ask for it….take her to bed! After this you need to convert your customers to brand ambassadors, make the experience memorable, and make it a great moment. Delight your customer! Keep the promise! On social media you need to ask your community what you want them to do, do you need them to signup for your newsletter? Share video? Tell them, do you want them to add their friends to the page? Ask them so! However don’t be pushy, give them a reason to do so, one which is remarkable content that they can share, secondly could be incentives, could be your great customer service efforts! Ensure you give value to spark initiative and encourage action!
Have a merry Xmas and a happy new year!
Muthuri Kinyamu is a Social Media Strategist at Social Edge Africa the company behind @SocialPROclubs and you can follow him on Twitter @KenyanMarketer
Five Terrible Social Media Mistakes To Avoid This Christmas.
It’s Christmas again; the mood has really set in and the feeling plus the need to be a bit random, lazy, laid back is with us and party endlessly. When it comes to what we are sharing on social media with our communities that too has been affected by this mood. When it comes to social media, you need to be consistent as you have been throughout the year; if you are a business then you need to stick to your maintenance schedule as per the content plan you have in place. However due to several reasons, this might become a challenge due to the festivities. Here are five social media mistakes you should avoid this Xmas period to the New Year holidays. Do enjoy!
- Doing it casually-Be careful with frequency!
Just because it’s Xmas doesn’t mean you should joke around, share stuff that is almost useless or if you are a business you post ‘irrelevant’ content that isn’t related to your business, industry or brand touch points. Don’t over-post …but don’t under-post either. For facebook I would recommend a maximum of four posts and 10-15 tweets a day! You don’t want your posts to be so frequent that they become irrelevant to your audience. If you have to post several times in a day just like I do please vary your content. Don’t use too much slang or your mother tongue as you may end up losing the hard earned followers you had acquired! Managing social media corporate accounts can be overwhelming as it is a 24/7/365 days job! It’s not something an organization should take a break from (not even this Xmas), you need to be consistent so please ensure you have your social media team well set for this period. Sorry if you will be working however don’t be dull-be happy and spread that Xmas cheer to your community on social media!
2. Being Absent and Inaccessible!
Your friends want to be heard so is your community if you are a business. And the only way you can prove you are human on social media is by listening and responding. Make it part of your strategy this holiday to address inquiries, complaints and compliments ASAP if not in real time. A simple click on the LIKE or RT or FAV button shows at least there’s someone on the other end! As you do these please ensure you don’t post tweets or updates full of errors to ensure you portray the right impression out there; so please take your time to proof read. There’s also a certain tendency to ignore certain inquiries, could be overlooked erroneously or otherwise. This sends a signal out there that the brand is unfriendly, busy to handle my inquiry or uncaring! If you use your social media channels for customer service please don’t take a break this Xmas, this also includes players in the tourism sector such as hotels, lodges, airlines and tour companies as people will be seeking information, help and making inquiries so please be present and accessible- read and respond! As you do this, please give timelines and work hard to deliver on your promise! The response you give to complaints in the public domain may set a precedent so kindly ensure that you don’t create a loophole that people may take advantage of as you seek to delight people this Xmas!
3. Being a Billboard!
Social media can be extremely beneficial to you and your business; whist sharing your own content online (marketing) ensure you do not over promote yourself, your business or that Xmas offer or promo you are running as a brand. Those who only share their own content are transparent and audiences online look at that as purely selfish and switch off quickly so don’t talk about yourself and what you are doing all the time! Social media is about the people, please avoid the “Me Me Me” kind of posts and give your community something more beneficial & entertaining! If you are running a promo consider including give aways, coupons or gift hampers to spark initiative and make the campaign less of spam or annoying.
- A good ratio of sharing to promoting your own content is 4:1 as a minimum (the more you share about other valuable content i.e. less marketing messages, the more you get in return).
Take time to listen, share entertaining content (people want to be happy/ we are celebrating). Be sure you only share content that adds value to your community – content which they’ll find useful. This means that you should understand the demographics of your friends or fans. If it’s a mixed up case scenario share content that benefits people across the board. Providing different types of content has been proven to engage audiences more effectively. And please DON’T forget to wish your friends/fans/followers and LinkedIn connections a MERRY XMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR! I know everyone will be doing that so why don’t you also do it too, come up with something creative, local and cool that stands out, something that people can share and feel deeply appreciated by your business or brand!
4.Keep private things private.
Facebook and Twitter is very much in the public domain (yet it’s often perceived as private at the same time), there are numerous examples of how private (often extremely personal) information has ended up in the public domain. If you say the wrong things, it could damage your professional reputation. Don’t post too much information on your private life (its okay to let people know you travelled up country or to the coast but not post everything you ate from breakfast to dinner, photos of your extended family and the dirt in your private life). It’s just an update; don’t share info on your recent breakups (If you’ve got problems FACE them do not FACEBOOK them!), social places you frequent regularly for security reasons, don’t post vital information on people’s walls too. That includes photos of you in the beach with bikinis and girlfriends or your family (Keep that to yourself too). Don’t put anything on the internet- read Social media that you don’t want your future boss, current client or potential clients to read. This is so basic and will help you a lot this Xmas.
5. Posting ‘Drunk Tweets’!
Never post or tweet when you’re overly-tired, jet lagged, intoxicated, angry or upset. This is so important yet most people will ignore it over these holidays. Please avoid tweeting too much when you are drunk so that you don’t wake up to ‘stupid’ tweets that will leave people worried and asking whether your account was hacked into! When people are drunk they also tend to say where they are, with who and doing what which tends to divulge too much of private information. If you are out of town, such info could aid a burglary in your house (That includes checking into 4Sq every time) and if the person managing your business accounts starts tweeting over a beer then that could mess you up seriously! Just ensure you have people working on shifts to help with official corporate channels and if possible ensure you give that job to the right person/s just in case the workload is huge!
Have a merry Xmas and a happy new year!
Muthuri Kinyamu is a Social Media Strategist at Social Edge Africa the company behind @SocialPROclubs and you can follow him on Twitter @KenyanMarketer
How To Formulate A Social Media Strategy-The Checklist
Social media as a marketing tool is pretty powerful, but too often do smaller businesses set up accounts because it’s what expected of them. No matter what the size of the company is, everyone should have a strategy in place before they begin otherwise their new venture will lose steam before it even begins. If you’re starting to develop a presence online, or you just want a checklist, here are a number of questions you should answer when you’re putting your plan together.
1.What Do I Hope To Achieve?
It’s pointless to be using social media if you only have it because everybody else does. For any strategy to work, there must be an overall goal in place. Is it to drive sales, improve customer service, create new connections and business leads, or just a way to reach out to customers? If you don’t have an aim, then you won’t be able to formulate a strategy. And if you don’t have a strategy or commit to one, the enthusiasm you have at the beginning will wane off and you’ll have nothing to keep you going. Before you dive in to the social media bandwagon headfirst asking yourself “What for”- what do you want to achieve out of your efforts! If you have that set and clearly spelt out; let us move to number two.
2.Who Do I Want To Communicate With?
Linking back to the first point, what your aims are relate to the type of company you run. Whether your company focuses on B2B or B2C will help you determine what type of demographic you’re aiming for. Do you want your audience to be mainly business people, shoppers, marketers, or smartphone users to name a few? While there’s nothing to say that you can’t reach out to everyone, it’s better to have a core audience that you can build upon. You need to know who your target audience will be and in what platforms as this will guide you when creating the social media content plan and maintenance schedule in platforms you will be using to achieve your objectives.
3.Which Platform(s) Should I Use?
Many businesses will set up an account on Facebook since it’s the most popular, but there are a number of different ways to connect with your audience and each site or app has its own strengths you should take into consideration.
Facebook might be the most popular place and is the easiest to run app competitions, but Twitter offers a quick and snappy method of communicating, LinkedIn lets you connect directly with professionals, Foursquare lets you reward people for visiting your outlet and Instagram & Pinterest is great if you want to show off products and services. How you’re going to interact with your audience will matter.
One thing you should avoid is adding too many accounts as you’ll end up being overwhelmed by it. Preferably, you shouldn’t have more than three accounts if there’s only one person handing things as adding any more will make the workload unmanageable.
4.How Much Time Can You Commit To This?
The big question for a lot of companies investing in social media. Work schedules are busier than ever and in the case of smaller companies, social media may be added on top of existing duties and increasing the workload. Essentially, if you can’t find the time to properly engage and do it consistently, you probably shouldn’t be using social media. Social media is almost a 24/7/365 job so you need to have adequate & qualified human resource to manage your brand presence in all platforms you are participating in.
If it’s possible, reduce the workload by assigning different channels to each of your staff, or assign days to your staff for when they’re responsible for social media duties. Different companies require different approaches so find out what works best for you or better still let me help you with this.
5.How Will This Fit Into Our Schedule?
The last thing any business wants is for staff to be distracted from their main duties, which is where time management comes into play. Have you scheduled social media time? In most cases you might need to keep engaging fans to show you are actually listening. For the most part, you should be able to take an hour out of your schedule each day to focus on social media duties, but that doesn’t mean it should be taken in the one go. Maybe work it so that you dedicate 15 minute segments to social media during working hours, monitoring and updating when things are less hectic. If you’re not keeping updating regularly and consistently, you’re not giving people a reason to follow you. You’ve got to be PRESENT & let your presence be felt by your community on social media.
6.What Kind Of Tone Should I Adapt?
How you present yourself is important and what you say and post will show how you come across. If you’re using social media as customer service, you will need to adapt a formal tone when communicating, but if you’re promoting yourself, there’s no harm in trying to inject some humour into your posts. However kindly ensure the communication is uniform across platforms, the look and feel of your presence across networks has to be easily recognizable by the public. This is critical for both personal and corporate brands!
7.How Will I Measure Progress?
The main benefit of social media is that you can measure just how well your accounts are doing. You need to have tools or ways of measuring the ROI of your social media efforts. Also, choosing which metrics to value is important as some can be seen as vanity metrics which don’t provide a lot of insight.
analytics and insights on the number of active fans, followers, hits and interaction matrix, fan demographics and usage breakdown.The metric tools you use should be able
to look at the overall performance of your business on social media, the success should not just be determined by how many fans the page attracts & number of followers on Twitter (although that is a useful benchmark, I feel that it would be a narrow and specific way to measure success) but I advise you to measure your success of our social media efforts by looking at:
1.Fan and follower interactions, level of engagement and feedback received.
2.Reach of message, content, number of engaged users and conversions.
3.Level of influence across the platforms we are participating in.
4.Use the growth of the audience as a key performance indicator.
5.Number of hits on your digital properties and referring URL’s. If much of the traffic is from social media sites then that shows your presence is good.
Looking at specific metrics in isolation won’t tell you much, but taking a few together will give you a clearer picture of what works.
8.How Does This Tie Into My Overall Strategy?
While social media is very useful as a marketing tool, it should be viewed as part of an overall marketing strategy. Will you be treating it as a separate entity or will you be tying it in with other campaigns and marketing opportunities. As mentioned earlier, different social media channels offer different opportunities so when you’re planning a large-scale campaign, plan with these features as part of the experience instead of just tacking an obligatory Facebook link to it. You need to ensure your efforts on social media complements your PR, media and experiential marketing efforts. You have a customer service charter? How does social media help you achieve that commitment? You want to reach out to more customers and grow revenue? then how does social media fit into that strategy? You want to expand to new markets? how will this work for you?
9.Do I Have Guidelines That Staff Can Follow?
If you’re allowing staff to run your social media accounts, it’s a good idea to put together a social media policy so that it’s clear what acceptable and what isn’t. These guidelines don’t have to be complicated, just provide a few ground rules that are easy to follow so there’s no confusion. Furthermore you need to also lay out a maintenance schedule with details of who and when should be posting and engaging the audience on social media. You need a team here, creatives to generate sticky visual content, video content is crucial too not just updates full of text!
Did you like this post? If so please follow us on Twitter @KenyanMarketer @SocialPROclubs & share this post with your friends. Thanks!
If you would like some help with formulating your social media strategy, review or audit of your current strategy and analysis do not hesitate to contact me on 0724215977 or write to me through (Muthurikinyamu@gmail.com/ Nateford@socialedge.co.ke)
I’d love to be of help to you.
Muthuri Kinyamu
Monday, 12 November 2012
Social Media For Universities; What’s in it for them?
How Social Media Can Enhance Learning In Higher Education
Social media is transforming the way the world does business, the platforms provide a great way to connect online, share information, gain valuable feedback, and build relationships as well as network. Today the implications are huge and the prizes are enormous for those businesses & individuals who handle it right. Let’s face it; social media is here to stay, it’s not a fad neither a ‘thing’ for teenagers anymore!
However we haven’t seen local universities embrace social media and integrate it to teaching leave alone introduce units that tackle various disciplines of this new media. At Social Edge Africa we are very passionate about changing and making learning more fun in universities through SocialPRO clubs that we launched on the 25th of October 2012 at the University of Nairobi.
With the growth of social media usage, it is a fact that students check their Facebook and twitter accounts more often than before.
Universities need to recognize the opportunities in social media especially when it comes to the use of social networking sites. Our universities will gain more access to audiences (students, faculty, alumni, support staff etc) to share content or information through social media, something which would cost a lot more in the past.
This will change how students interact and engage with members of the faculty, give feedback on what they are taught, ask questions and help lecturers share content (research findings, assignments, useful links, class notes and other relevant educational materials) across the various platforms. If members of faculty especially embrace and use social media to share content with the students, that will make learning more fun as content can be posted in creative formats that are consumable on mobile hence improve learning as they will not only understand but make sense of what they are being taught. It enhances universities to provide more information to the students, inspiring them to develop ideas, enhancing collaboration and therefore making them more innovative.
It will be possible for students to come together, discuss and interact and that takes learning out of the class room thus creates more opportunities to learning and teaching by simply harnessing the power of social media.
Students should no longer only use social media for managing their social life and expressing their identity but also use it as a platform where they can get more information on their areas of learning, share innovative ideas with other students from different universities, get to know what they think of the idea, ask for some advice on how that can be utilized and maybe apply the idea when the chance brings itself to light. That way, our students will be shaping the future of Kenya!
The growing use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter offer great educational opportunities. Lecturers and students should extend their communication outside the classroom. A dialogue between a lecturer and students can help students get immediate solutions to their education related queries instant rather than wait for the lecturer to be available another day for them to get their answers.
In the social networking sites, students can form education-oriented groups and put good use of social media to extend their informational and educational outreach rather than form ‘mchongowano’ groups to expose them to a full world of discovery on various topics outside the units or course one is pursuing.
There is so much potential in our social networks towards education as these platforms help students to work collaboratively across universities thus enhance sharing of course content, ideas, information and opportunities online.
Social media has the advantage of ease of access, portability of technology, simplicity, and freedom of speech and expression. By the use of social networking sites, students can reach their career goals faster and more easily than now. It will also educate students who have no idea or know very little concerning a particular field through the fact that they are interested in a certain subject in the field of learning. Some students are already using social media to improve their educational skills through activities like blogging.
We should thus urge or inspire students to be content creators online not just consuming and tapping into other people’s minds and findings.
Universities can also use social media to promote specific events and get students to participate as guests, volunteer time in planning and assist in some way as this helps them equip themselves with more skills and network.
With social media the university community can engage, participate and follow an event as its happening. Live video streaming can be done inexpensively these days, if that’s technical, video footage can be edited and posted on the university site and shared across platforms, better still uploaded on YouTube or follow the event trough a common hashtag?
Through social media, universities can notify their students on latest developments, new hires, major events (partnerships, affiliations, conferences, and graduation), emergencies and tragedies easily and faster with a tweet and a Facebook post or message.
Universities should embrace a ‘less stuff, more content’ strategy. Days are coming when we will need textbooks less. Most of the content will be shared online for the students to easily access them.
Universities could make sure that they have a centralized Twitter and Facebook account that broadly covers the institutions, but particularly for larger schools, breaking up news feeds into smaller accounts for say, the business school and the law school, promotes allegiance and engages a more targeted audience.
Social media too provides universities with effective ways and opportunities for alumni networks to strengthen the bonds between the alumni and former institution, sporting club, college, university, and soforth. Twitter and LinkedIn for example connects people across fields and businesses, making networking easier for everyone involved. So for alumni who might want to connect with others from their university for career or personal purposes, Twitter acts as a great connector.
It will be known how best this works or if it works by trying it out in our universities and letting the students say how best it works for them.
Did you like this post? If so please follow us on Twitter @SocialPROclubs & share this post with your friends. Thanks!
Video: Where do great ideas come from?
One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions:
With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward.
Beginning with Charles Darwin’s first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines.
Most exhilarating is Johnson’s conclusion that with today’s tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow’s great ideas.
A Beginners Guide To Being an Influential Tweep in Kenya- Tweet like a PRO!
Ten Basic Social Media Tips for Beginner #KoT
Of late in my pitches (am a freelance social media strategist and consultant) I realized that most Kenyans have this weird phobia and ignorance for Twitter. Most do not seem to understand ‘how to join the conversation’ and be part of it whereas others lack the basic understanding of the powerful micro-blogging site. For most business owners and managers feel that Twitter could do more harm than good to their brands and business and have rather unrealistic objectives and targets. Well, just in case you are among the lost in this Twitter-sphere and I want to share with you a few tips to help you navigate your way in the Twitter streets and gain followers and most important the influence! Just before we go on, kindly note that Twitter is nothing much of a technology but a conversation that continues with or without you and the beauty of it all is you choose which conversation, tribe or community to join & belong to!
Read on, become a #SocialPRO; a Twitter power user in this case.
1. Have a bio.
Your Twitter bio is a great place to show how interesting and cool you are. Make a list of the things you love, your passion, stuff you like doing and what you do as well as your goals in life, career and business. Explain what you did in the past, what you are doing now and what you want to do in the future. (Remember you only have 140 characters)Whatever it is, share it. Do not have an empty bio. You also need to have a profile picture and the headline cover; if you are creative enough do something on your Twitter background. You can use your name as the @username or have @funnyname as long it defines your aspirations!(Choose one that suits you) but above all ensure your bio says something about your background, forte and interests. You can check mine @KenyanMarketer for tips by the way!
2. Start Networking.
Do you love sports? Search for people who have interacted with that topic in the recent past and engage them. You may follow 100 tweeps using a trick called “Catch and Release” where you follow targeted followers in your field and clean up those who do not follow back! (Using Tweepi you can clean up the unfollowers). Are you a developer, a techie or a creative or want to be one? Start networking with other tweeps doing what you love or what you want to be in future. Attend Tweetups and use hashtags in your industry to share your opinions or thoughts on certain topics and events. You also need to attend events in your areas of interest so check around for things happening around what you do and join the convo! When you attend a conference tweet like a madman (or like @RobertAlai when he’s paid to tweet at a launch! This will make you the go-to person who seems to know what’s going on and you’ll pick up some followers, RT’s, Favs and countless replies. Check out tweeps using the same hashtag and engage them as that’s how you build genuine followers who stick by you! Birds of the same feather flock together!
3. Share Remarkable Content.
The best thing to show you have depth in what you do and your industry you need to share content you’ve read and found useful. The other way of doing this is to follow bloggers in your field and leave great replies or mention them on your tweets. You can also mention a high profile Twitter user in your tweet – For example, tweet, “Hey, @KenyanMarketer, I loved your post on @CIOEastAfrica on why companies need a social media manager. Interesting read that makes business sense!” and I will RT it, engage you further and follow you back! Remember not to overdo this so you don’t become a ‘nuisance’ to these tweeps! Just leave insightful replies once in a while. You may also try tweet something humorous as over 84% of retweets tend to be something funny! Still on this, to gain more RT’s use around 70-100 words so that you leave space for @Username and a comment just in case tweeps wants to add a comment and RT it!
4. Be Bold, Current and Suave.
Don’t be afraid to share your thoughts, opinions, ideas and your life on Twitter. I don’t recommend sharing everything that comes to your mind. Follow the right people to ensure you get reliable info first hand as well as great content which you can share to your followers. To show you are ‘smart’ you may differ with their opinions to spark a discussion around the link you’ve shared! Alternatively why not participate in an industry chat like #ChaseDebate if you are in the banking and financial sector? Seen the #HBRchat? Can you leave an insightful and well thought reply that sparks a discussion? What’s your opinion on KE politics, alliances and the CORDs? Can you tweet something that’s not tribal and well thought analysis that holds water? As you strive to be bold remember to either be a ‘rebel or play the hero’.
5. Be a Content Creator.
I should have started with this; I’ve had great success picking up followers simply by writing content for other blogs as my guests posts are published across the internet. Depending on the size of the blog and traffic, you can get from 10 to 100 new followers from one post. Just make sure in your author bio you include a link to your Twitter profile. Popularity isn’t influence on Twitter; you don’t become influential simply because you tweet but because you are a consistent good content creator. I contribute articles to leading blogs such as CIO East Africa, SocialPROclubs, Humanipo, iHub.co.ke, Under30 CEO’s, Career Point Kenya and still getting requests to write for more! You could also create your own blog and publish content around your hobby, passion, career or profession. Don’t be idle as Caroline Mutoko bluntly puts it!
6. Start Bottom Going up
Have you seen ‘unknown people’ who always say hi to @Bobcollymore, @MartinOduorO, @AlykhanSatchu and other CEO’s on Twitter every morning? Well these ‘big’ tweeps are ruthless and will treat you as an intruder. Mentioning @RobertAlai on every PRO Raila tweet to earn a RT may not yield much! So here’s what you do, start with people you know, you could ask your friends on Facebook to follow you on Twitter. Start engaging the ‘kawaida’ tweeps as you work your way up! I know this sounds mean but everyone had 0, 10, 20, 50, 100 followers at one point so work your way up dutifully! You can engage thought leaders on certain topics in your field as well as use #tags like, and popular ones like #FF or use #TwitterBigStick for your –ve customer experience and Sunny will give you a RT among others. (Be smart here)
7. Don’t be an idiot!
Avoid sharing content that your followers will not find interesting, relevant or useful…and avoid sharing content that is too popular or has been shared multiple times in other places. Show your followers that you are on the cutting edge. Avoid copy and pasting people’s tweets especially on TT’s as people have read them elsewhere! Posting alarming tweets, content that’s boring, not true and plain stupid will chase away the 50 followers you had gained. So sound a bit clever…use Twitter to track news so that you don’t tweet stuff that happened 8 hours ago as #BREAKING! Ooh, if you are a joker and want to establish yourself as one, then you can get yourself a community of idiots too!
8. Be consistent but Post Less
You don’t tweet endlessly one day and never wake up to it next day! You need some consistency and a balanced tweeting schedule! You need to schedule social media time; maybe you tweet in the morning, at lunch, during breaks and in the evenings. You may also share content across platforms – thus drawing people from Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram to Twitter and split time between these social sites. Remember you still have friends on facebook, connections on LinkedIn and followers on Pinterest so share content on these platforms too as you try to draw these communities to ‘join the convo’ by following you on Twitter. Being consistent doesn’t mean tweeting endlessly; so post less, listen more and participate in convos!
9. Use tools!
The good news is you can automate part of your presence on Twitter by using certain tools. Use Buffer to have a more balanced tweeting schedule throughout the day, Use Tweriod to see when your friends tweet then with Plugin time your tweets and publish them when your community is online for maximum engagement. This is good when you are travelling, as all you need is to load you Buffer app and it will tweet your stuff away! There’s Twitter for SMS too so you can tweet via text just in case the urge to tweet becomes irresistible! (can be addictive by the way)
10. Do all the above!
Thank you for reading this post to point number 9, so my point 10 is to remind you to practice the above nine tips dutifully and follow my advice keenly! Cool? But since you are still here with me I want to give you one extra tip, a bonus! You need to get the above tips RIGHT as it is pointless to be using Twitter because everybody else tells you it’s cool! Sounds rude? Hope not and if it is, I have no apologies!
Well I hoped you liked the post so please follow me @KenyanMarketer & share this post with your friends! The process of becoming the next KE Twitter power user starts NOW!
Interesting Read!
SocialPro Clubs 
