But what's the ROI ?

It's a question we are asked very, very frequently. In fact, its the one question every client or potential client of ours asks. Just what is the return on investment (ROI) from my business social media activity?

This is actually a very difficult question to answer because to be honest, there is no easy answer. Are you looking to generate more business from your social media activity? If so, its probably quite simple to measure business generated from leads or enquiries coming from social media. Of course, these leads would need to be *extra* business generated over and above your normal lead-generating activity.

Are you looking for increased visibility for your business or organisation? This is easy to measure,in terms of straight hits on your social media channels, but what does hits or the number of followers really tell you, other that you've about three million less followers than Justin Bieber on Twitter? You really should be looking for quality, not quantity. Are your followers and facebook likes from your business market or potential customers, and do you engage in conversation with them or just broadcast your own activity? After all, we are now in the age of web 3.0 and this is the creative collaborative web. Any successful social media activity must involve some degree of dialogue. If you look at some of the large business using social media, the successful ones are the ones who use it to have conversations with their followers. Social media is a community where you have to interact with people, talk to people, deal with complaints, answer questions and engage in discussion.

And if you want to position yourself as an expert in your field, the number of questions you answer on sites like Quora and Google+ will also be important.

Its not the raw data or metrics or stats which are important, its how these are analysed and interpreted. This is where you will find your true ROI, and this where an expert social media consultancy will be worth it's weight in gold. We can show you just what your  bucks are generating, and because we live breathe and work social media, we know just where you'd be best to focus your activity if you want a demonstrable return on your Rands.

ROI - its not just followers and likes, its quality not quantity,and above all,  it is focussed activity designed to suit your individual needs.

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Do you need to spend more on social media?

The attraction of social media for many is the low-cost entry. A few tweets and Facebook posts cost nothing but time. But to garner any sort of return on this time, your social media output needs to be refined and engaging. Its not enough to simply post messages and broadcast your news and products. You need to engage in conversations because its difficult to build up a presence on line without this. Of course, creating a buzz on line demands a commitment to investing the effort involved in cultivating and building a following. So, would you invest time and money in this? Spending hard-won profit on a social media specialist might be expensive but the return might also be well worth the investment. Because you can't do this half-heartedly, it needs a certain level of input, and this means you've got to put out to get in. Here's a great little blog post on social media marketing spending..

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Developing leadership capacity...characteristics of great leaders

This is a blog post I've been writing for the best part of a year now. It's ideas and observations from running workshops on leadership for various people and organisations. You learn a great deal from running these events, Just as you learn a great deal when teaching. If you look at good leaders closely whilst they are working, they usually all share several, if not all of the same characteristics. They certainly are not in the business of collecting followers, but in making new leaders. Now you'll have read that quote in quite a few 'leadership' bibles by now probably. But what are the essential characteristics leaders display which inspire people to achieve great things for their organisations. I think you could possibly distil it down to the following list.

• Passion. All great leaders have a passion for their profession or/or business and/or organisation. This passion is infectious. It rubs off and inspires everybody else around them. No big inspirational speeches, just a constant enthusiasm for a clear mission which others want to be a part of. Good people want to be a part of something exciting and bigger and want to be able to say that they were a part of it. If you make these people feel like they are essential to the success of the mission, and give them credit that's due, your passion will inspire loyalty and that 'go the extra mile' factor in your team.
• Capacity-building. They always try to add value to their organisation by recruiting great people. its not the job of a leaders to gather followers but to enable more leaders to develop. Finding talented and creative people is a characteristic of truly great leaders.
• Excellence. This is not an aspiration but constantly and consistently modelled by great leaders. Your people can see by your example how they should be working, and they will set themselves their own goals for success based upon your example. When the going gets tough, they will model their responses on your behaviours and example.Everyone in the team is accountable for the success, but also for sharing the load. There are no favourites on the team; everyone is treated the same, with the same expectations of excellence from everyone.
• Lifelong learners. Great leaders are learners,but more than that, they are completely open about this. You don't stop learning once you get to a top leadership position, you just keep on going. They utilise the expertise within their own teams. If someone knows more about a particular area of the work in hand, great leaders are not afraid to defer to that expertise, not seeing this as a threat to their leadership, but an opportunity to learn by listening to the talent in their teams.
• Delegation. Great leaders give their team members the space to work, and to be creative and innovative. They don't micro-manage, but give people ownership of their work. They trust their people (who they've probably recruited) to do their jobs and perform their particular roles, giving them space to solve problems and challenges without the boss looking over their shoulders. Great leaders have their team members' backs and don't sacrifice them for their own personal 'safety' if something goes awry. 
• Mentoring. Great leaders are a constant presence mentoring everyone in their team where its necessary. People are not just recruited and told to get on with the job. Great leaders work with people to bring out the best in them and its a constant process of professional development. Regular feedback on performance is a hallmark of this mentoring. Great leaders also take an interest in the personal lives of their people. They know about their families, their interests and activities outside of work and make them feel valued by asking about these things. And this personal knowledge helps them to know when they can push for more or when they need to pull back.
• Experience. Great leaders can walk the walk as well as talk the talk. people who want to get on will go with leaders who they believe will bring them success. They know that a leader was once in their shoes. Great leaders expose their people to a range of skills and experiences to broaden the overall skill sets of their teams. They are genuinely interested in helping more of their people to become great leaders themselves and they celebrate success when their people are promoted or move on. They help them develop their professional learning networks and share contacts where appropriate. They'll never block you on Twitter or LinkedIn -where they usually have plenty of endorsements of their skills and experiences.
• Facilitation. Great leaders facilitate the success of their people. They clear the path, and help them to achieve success by smoothing the way as much as possible, flattening out or removing the obstacles along the way. They know what might hold back their people and remove these barriers. They take care of all the politics, freeing up their folks to do their jobs without distraction. 
• Bravery. Standing up for what's right, for their teams and for individuals is inspirational behaviour. Great leaders are visible. They don't spend all their time behind the closed office door, but out in amongst it mixing it up where the action is. They don't just follow the vision, they make the vision happen by fronting up to all the issues which can threaten success. They are not afraid to put their own jobs on the line where they believe that something needs to be said or done which might be viewed as controversial or a bit left-field.
• Fairness. Great leaders are scrupulously fair to everyone. They treat everybody in the same way, including themselves. They hold themselves to account in the same way as they hold their people to account, and never expect their people to do anything they wouldn't try to do themselves. Not afraid to dirty their hands and muck in with the team where necessary.
• Consistency.  They always deliver what they promise. They are genuine people with no falseness about them so that you always know where you stand. Hidden agendas are not a part of their modus operandi. Great leaders understand that their people take their cues from them and so they behave in a way they'd expect others to behave also. 

Have I missed anything out? please add your comments below. For great leadership seminars and workshops for your organisation, contact Nomsindo using the details on this site and let us help you to develop your leadership capacity. 

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About learning to code...

Many people in the technology wilderness don't realise that very many coders actually didn't start out their careers as computer fundi's. I started out as a visual and 3D artist.I became frustrated when as part of my course I was expected to create a website to showcase my work using a basic piece of wysiwyg (What you see is what you get) piece of software that actually didn't come near to satisfying my vision for the work I was trying to do. So I took the next step and googled how to change the html. 

 Within days I was hooked. I took a course on HTML. That led to eventually doing a course on graphic design and then to CSS, which led to javascript. I landed up buying Webmags and developing code from tutorials, I gleaned from the mags. Then I realised I could use Youtube to explore further develop ideas and opportunities and eventually all the best free online coding tutorials featured at the top of my browser bookmarks. This however happened over several years while I was still busy doing other things. 

 I must however stress one vital fact. I already understood the fundamentals of programming. The core the foundation. I knew what a string, and array and a variable was. I understood how different elements need to correspond and connect to enable any application to work properly, and the fundamental principles of any programming had not left me behind despite the fact that i learnt them as an add on course to maths in my 1980's high school years. So here are some rules to learning code for the beginner.

1. Learn the fundamentals.

You need to understand what it is that makes a programme in any language work, basically understanding the anatomy of any coding language. An analogy would be that humans, reptiles, mammalian animals all have similarities. They have circulation systems, respiratory systems, nervous systems. The concept is the same, but core body temperature is different, respiratory rate is different and brain function is different. They all need air, water and food to survive. So coding languages have a similar blueprint to enable the programme to exist, but they all function differently and they also evolve  as developers try to improve programming to their advantage. Spending the extra time at the beginning to build a strong foundation will payoff big time when you're tackling something new. Don't try a shortcut at this stage. Try out one of these kindle edition books to start you off

2. Pick something that interests you

If youre into web design HTML and CSS is the way to go. There is so much on Youtube and W3 that you'll be developing in no time, but be sure to be specific about what youre looking for. have a look at our free tutorial page on our website to get an idea of what you should look for. If you fancy developing phone apps have explore learning java. You may realise also that skills and knowledge overlap for example it is possible to develop Blackberry© products using Webworks™ and a knowledge of HTML 5.

3. Dont try to run before you can walk.

When learning online don't feel silly about doing tutorials that look they are designed for kids, or perhaps you feel you're learning something infantile. You can never learn too much and often you'll use these skills to make money building apps for the kids those courses targeted. Also you will often find that having learned one particular language another is quite similar it comes easy. the more you learn, the faster you learn more.

4. Keep learning

As you develop your skills, you will realise how quickly things change and move on in the tech world, so once you have a skill, keeping up with changes is far easier than having to relearn skills. Also remember that you can a lot online and completely free. Try resources such as greenfoot, openculture and code.org to start and update your new knowledge base.

5. Create a library.

We all forget things we learn. So keep notes and code that you have developed and written. Build a library of resources and info and remember that even sometimes you may have to return to the basics to review an issue you may have, several years down the line. In time you will have books, (If they're digital keep backups - its not illegal to copy for backup purposes) videos and record of your own projects.

6. Build a portfolio

If you eventually want to make a living from coding, keep record of your work and build a portfolio. This enables future clients to explore your styles and methods and you will find that you attract interest and custom.

7. Get to know other developers.

While in the corporate world projects in development are obviously confidential, coders like to share their knowledge as well as their problems in overcoming certain issues. Its amazing how when ruminating over a particular problem for hours one cant see the forest for the trees and along comes a fellow coder who looks at it from the outside and spots the problem in a second. This doesn't make you less competent, in fact it increases your knowledge base. So use groups such as meetup to grow your professional connections. Coders are human too and love to help people who share their love for what they do. So as long as you're not asking for spoon feeding but rather a resource or help that you cant find elsewhere, those more experienced are usually happy to help. Find a group like coffee and coding at meetup.com

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The Google workshop an introduction

Nomsindo is offering a FREE (You pay for your own coffee) Google workshop on Saturday mornings for any interested businessmen/women in Cape Town.

Did you know that even a basic knowledge of the FREE Google tools at your fingertips can rapidly change your web and digital presence?

If you are going to grow to the point that you need to appoint a social media professional either in house or from an agency will you know enough to be sure you're not instructing a dud?

Feel free to contact us here

Please fill in the contact form if you'd like to join us. The workshop is informal and will be held at a waterfront venue to be announced shortly.

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Best tablets for 2013

When Apple introduced the famed Retina display to the third-generation Apple iPad, it set a bar so high that the rest of the industry struggled to catch up. That's until Google and Samsung joined forces to produce the Google Nexus 10.

Incredibly, the display on the Nexus 10 has an even higher pixel density than the iPad's. Its 10 in screen is an IPS panel with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600, giving a pixel density of 300ppi, some 14% higher than the iPad's 264 ppi. The result is a screen with stunningly crisp graphics and super-sharp text.

It's also a good-quality screen. We measured its maximum brightness as 436cd/m2 and contrast as 807:1, so brightness is similar to that of the iPad but contrast isn't quite as high. In our subjective tests, we felt colours weren't quite as vibrant as on Apple's tablet, so images didn't have quite as much punch.

The tablet isn't as lovely to behold as the iPad, but we still like it. Instead of metal, the Nexus 10's chassis is built entirely from grippy rubber-coated plastic. The black chassis is curvier than the iPad's, and the bezel around the display is broader as well. At 603g, it's 49g lighter than the iPad, which makes it very comfortable to hold. We've no problems with build quality, and the fact the glass on the front is Corning's tough, scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass is another big bonus. The Nexus 10 feels like it would survive a drop better than the iPad.

It isn't short on features, either. Around the edges you'll find Micro HDMI, a 3.5mm headphone output and a Micro USB port. You can only charge the Nexus from scratch with the included charger, but it can be topped up via USB if you leave the charger at home. Wireless connections, meanwhile, can be made via Bluetooth, NFC or dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi. There's GPS, a 5-megapixel camera with flash on the rear and a 720p webcam on the front. The main camera takes pretty impressive pictures, but composing shots using an unwieldy tablet is never easy. The only thing missing is a memory expansion slot to add to the Nexus' 16GB (or 32GB) of storage.

With all those pixels to shunt about, you might be worried that the Nexus 10's dual-core 1.7GHz Cortex-A15 processor wouldn't be able to cope, but the tabletperforms admirably thanks to its top-end Mali T604 graphics core and 2GB of RAM. Critically, all the games we threw at it, from Asphalt 7 to Shadowgun, barely skipped a beat. The only problem is the screen is so good that it's easy to spot where the developers have taken shortcuts.

The Nexus 10 coped with both local and online 1080p video files, and notwithstanding the slightly below-par contrast, they looked stunning. This makes the Nexus 10 a far better device for mobile video fans than the iPad, given its huge range of available video players and easy drag-and-drop file transfer from a PC - no syncing problems or Dropbox workarounds here.

In general use, too, the tablet's Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) operating system runs very smoothly. There's not a hint of lag anywhere, whether scrolling from homescreen to homescreen,browsing through app launcher screens or, critically, when typing with the on-screen keyboard. The keyboard lets you type by swiping from side to side, as with the third-party Swype keyboard, but we found it more comfortable on a screen this broad to stick to traditional tapping.

As it comes with Android 4.2, the Nexus 10 also supports multiple user accounts - a first for tablet devices and something that's unlikely to be available on iPad ever. If you live with friends or family, this means you can share the device, with each user having their own email, bookmarks, apps, home screens, settings and preferences. It's a brilliant implementation of a feature that's been well overdue on tablets. Buy one, keep it on your coffee table, and let all the family use it.

If there's anywhere the Nexus 10 struggles, it's with complex, picture-heavy web pages. This may sound strange, considering the tablet has enough grunt to play back movies and games with barely a dropped frame, but on the Flickr website and the BBC home page, for example, scrolling and panning lagged and stuttered. It's not a horrendous problem, but it's enough to be noticeable.

More serious, though, is the fact that this high-resolution screen saps the battery. When playing our test video on loop at mid brightness, the tablet lasted only 8h 34m, which is almost two hours less than the Nexus 7 and a long way behind the iPad’s 11 hours plus. It's still enough to watch four films in a row, though.

The slightly below-par battery life, and the fact there's no 3G (or 4G) version of the Nexus 10, are its only real drawbacks, and it's hard to argue with the fact the tablet is £80 cheaper than the equivalent iPad. The Nexus 10 really is a bargain, and anyone looking for a good-value alternative to the iPad should be sorely tempted.

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Apps for informal and micro business

Nomsindo is offering Apps for small businesses from as little as R285 No you didn't read it wrong - only R285!

While many micro enterprises are disinclined to spend on websites, e-commerce and more complex digital presence, mostly because of an affordability and maintenance problem, many are acutely aware that far more people in South Africa have smartphones than PCs or laptops.

It has also not escaped the average entrepreneur that the average smartphone owner uses their device for a lot more than calls and SMS and therefore even the large corporations are cottoning onto using mobile technology to increase their reach into communities previously hard to access.

This has become obvious with the speed by which FNB with their Mpowa and Nedbank with their PowerPOS have followed the Western European and US trends to enable small businesses to access merchant retail systems in remote locations and with little digital infrastructure.

While this is commendable, the proof in the pudding will be in uptake and understanding and therefore also the returns on their investment in the small businessman. While the African economy is often very misunderstood by the west it seems that their own financial institutions have hit it on the head and are taking every opportunity to open up new markets (thereby increasing profits).

Its incredibly exciting to see South African banks responding so quickly to international trends and applying them to the local economic culture. It also makes the battle against poverty and imbalance of opportunity so much more worthwhile.

We at Nomsindo have adopted a similar approach. Any and every local enterprise should be able to access the local digital market.

We have different app products, but the approach is the same. 

If a regular customer wants to know what their opening hours are, if they stock a certain product or directions to their premises, its much easier to navigate one or two simple clicks and have the info on hand, than to search it online while walking in the street. What they want to access is an instant type business card from which a simple click will enable them to make the phone call.

So why should these folk download a business card in app format. At Nomsindo we realise that apart from the cellphone fast becoming a necessary utility it is also used for entertainment, so why not combine the two?

When designing apps for charities we have created games that enable a user to dress and feed a homeless person. When they buy the upgrade, the cost of the game actually goes to feeding and clothing the homeless person, that the charity supports. Its win -win. The person gets a fulfilling cellphone activity and the charity can fulfill its purpose.

The concept is transferable to small business. A customer uses a free to download App and gets a voucher - They use the App when visiting the small business and present the voucher - every time, bringing repeat business. For a small hairdresser or second hand furniture business this is far more cost effective than paying for print ads that are usually completely unaffordable to informal and micro traders.

So why is it successful? Mainly because we train the small businesses to utilise other social media to enhance their mobile digital presence with apps such as foursquare, offering the mayor an enhanced discount, and multiple check ins rewards. The Social Media training session comes FREE, when a small business orders an App design from us, even at R285

How do we do it profitably? - We're not greedy and the rest is our secret..... and every business has its trade secrets.

Nomsindo provides mini apps and social media at discounted prices for small business groups and organisations to offer their members- email us for more info

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