So, Why does my business need to be using Social media?

We get asked this question a lot! Prospective clients often feel confused and even scared of being active on the web, and think that having a website is enough... well, its not.

Not any more. Websites are static and difficult to use for conversations. They are the 'Shop Window' for your business, but nowadays, a good website will be integrated with social media. Here are a few reasons why you can't afford not to be using social media for your business..

• Answer and address complaints quickly. Increasingly, businesses are using Twitter and Facebook to handle complaints. Just check out KLM, Vodacom, and Virgin for good examples.If you want to see badly used social media,look at the KFC South Africa FaceBook page!
• Get feed back on your business activity. If you want to gauge the possible reaction of consumers or customers to something you're planning, Social Media is almost like an instant polling station! Just ask your questions on Twitter or Facebook for almost instant answers.
• Share photo's and video of your business activity and products. Its a vibrant community out there and with the right images, you get wonderful free exposure. 
• Word of mouth marketing is a powerful way to boost your sales. And without the cost of radio or television campaigns either. Its quick and effective, and all about making connections.
• Increase loyalty. Your social media activity will make your connections feel a strong sense of loyalty to you. After all, you're not just broadcasting to them...you're engaging with them
• Market research. You can easily search your business area or market and see what's happening. People will be talking about it, that's virtually guaranteed on social media. 
• Your competitors will be on it. So you don't want to be left out and lose business. If they're not already on social media, they soon will be!
• Statistics tell a story. You get tons of useful information from the data provided by social media activity. Web analytics and traffic reports tell you where your activity is coming from and allow you to position yourself vetu clinically to where you need to be.
• Become the expert in your field. Using content curation (collection and aggregation) positions you as the expert to ask questions from in your field. People will come to your sites for information and advice. before they even get near your competitors.
• Brand protection. You don't want people to criticise you on line, but if they do, you need to be able to talk with them instantly.Just look at HMV in the UK - they ignored social media and were driven into bankruptcy by a barrage of negative social media commentary they failed to answer.

                                                           creating conversation...

Social media is how you can engage with your customers and business contacts in real time and almost instantly. Increasingly, its how we do business, search for purchases and perhaps most importantly, make complaints about poor service or products. 

Social Media is growing and is a powerful force in marketing and brand protection. Nobody wants folks out there saying bad things about them on Twitter, facebook, Pinterest and all the other platforms which give people a genuine voice. That voice is affecting the way we buy products and services. Social Media sites are replacing traditional search engines (YouTube is second to Google for the number of searches recorded).

But you need to be positioned on the right Social Media platforms for your business. Thats where we can help. The advice of a good social media consultant is vital. A good consultant will live and breathe social media. They won't design websites, or do advertising. They'll just know exactly where you need to be on the many platforms that exist out there. 

This is our business. Social media is what we're all about. So we can help you with your website...from a social media integration perspective. But Social media is our speciality here at Nomsindo. 

We Create Conversation for your business...

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Six digital publishing startups to watch

We like the look of these, especially the new blogging tools. In fact, they might be set fair to take blogging to new and different directions. And thats the thing,because new technology should be disruptive...

Check them out ... and enjoy. And tell us what you think!

Six digital publishing startups to watch

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Social Media - What we do

We've been asked a lot recently just what is it we do for our Social Media clients. So here it is..

• We carry out a full review of a client's existing social media and web activity.
• We ask lots of questions about their business.Its important we 'get' their vision and mission to be able to understand just where they need to be on social media and what their market is.
• We would seek to understand where and how the client feels they should be using social media.Contrary to popular belief,its not for everyone!
• We'd want to talk about possible budgets. Its important to us to know how much they think it might cost to have a social media presence managed for them.
• Following this, we'd make a series of recommendations based upon our analysis of their needs. Some social media channels are a 'must have' for most clients. Others are more sector-specialist. Others are more related to the demographic of their potential markets/clients. For example, Pinterest has 65% of its hits coming from young women, whereas Google+ is more male oriented.
• We'd then offer a setup package which would include social media integration with their website, setting up of a blog and other social media platforms as necessary.
• A monthly management contract sets out the level of activity we'd undertake, as a minimum. For example,number of daily tweets, facebook posts etc. This is always flexible to suit changing business needs. We'll do the work and then talk with you later!
• We provide a detailed monthly report including web analytics and social media activity so that you can see where your traffic is coming from and how your social media presence is growing and effective. After all, you need to know what the return on your investment is.

And there it is....in a nutshell.

Nomsindo - We Create Conversations. 

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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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