MarkLives.com

MarkLives and well respected marketing and media commentator and editor Louise Marsland have teamed up to launch an exciting new market intelligence resource to the advertising, media and marketing communications industry in Southern Africa.

TREND. brings together the research savvy of Marsland with MarkLives’ cool and sexy take on the modern advertising world. TREND. launched this morning at trendlives.info and will focus on trend forecasting, in-depth reports, insight and analysis relevant to the broader marketing industry.

The site will serve as a central curated resource for local and international marketing and media research as well as create its own unique in-depth reports that sources and charts influential modern trends marketers and their agencies need to note.

As with MarkLives, TREND. will will offer its content free of charge, and will be supported by site and report sponsors. Ornico, Quirk, Machine Agency, 60layersofcake Cape Town and John Brown Media are the founding landing page sponsors for the site.

The first in-depth Dissect report to be published on TREND. focuses on socialising the enterprise. Compiled by Marsland and sponsored by Quirk, the report, which runs to over 11 000 words, sets forth the effects of a socialised consumer base on the modern enterprise. Content is broken in readily digestible pieces for the busy executive.

Social media is not about a suite of social networks and tools writes Marsland. “It is now about the social enterprise, the brand that integrates social across all platforms of engagement. It is about living social.”

Marsland interviewed over a dozen local and international business men and women she had identified as high profile and knowledgeable in the social media enterprise field and through collating the results of these interviews, coupled with in-depth research and access to international reports on the subject, drew up a list of social trends South African marketers need to take to heart.

Some key take out points from interviews (with Angus Robinson, Melissa Attree, Mike Sharman, Lieze Langford, Prakash Patel, Sifiso Mazibuko, Michael Krynauw, Brett Greaves and Kaitlyn Wilkins amongst others) conducted for the Socialising Enterprise report:

• “Socialising enterprise is about more than teaching staff about Twitter, it is about breaking down barriers to assist business in integrating social ways of doing business.”
• “Corporate use of social networks tended to be a case of responding to media hype. The most popular social media platform in South Africa, Mxit, is used as a marketing tool by only one out of five large brands. This compares to Facebook, with nine out 10 using it, and YouTube, with two out of three.”
• “Based on Alexa traffic data, Pinterest is the 19th most popular website in South Africa. South Africa has the 12th most Pinterest users globally and is responsible for 1.6% of all Pinterest page views worldwide. In January alone, 328 000 South Africans visited the social media site.”
• “It is not about the platform, it is about how to apply social thinking around products, in the way brands interact with employees, in the way staff are rewarded and how they engage with customers.”
• “There are so many platforms, as a new one comes along, people get all hyped up and want to jump on board. Traditional research still applies. We need to focus on the ones our core target market is on, then when are we going to achieve, as a brand, by being on that platform in conjunction with current marketing communications strategy.”
• “Most brands on Twitter are just talking heads, there is no partnering with people to achieve what they want to achieve. They haven’t got the utility side of social media right – customers are not as interested in niche brand communities as brands think they are. People are very interested in getting discounts and deals via social media – customers want to know what you are doing to give back.”
• “ Nike figured out that people want to get fit and it is a social thing, so instead of broadcasting brand messages at people, they created a product that will enable people to get fit and share their social behaviour and experiences. People are becoming their brand advocates. Nike is one example of a brand that has really figured it out.”
• “Many brands successful in the social space still have limited ownership of their data, or indeed, of their communities which are built on properties which they have no control over, like social networks Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.”
• “The first step is to listen and engage, and the second is to take the feedback to the rest of the business for implementation.”

Want to guess how much FNB spends on its social media team? Read on under the subhead Social CRM!

Marsland has been the editor of iconic industry media brands such as Marketing Mix, Bizcommunity.com and AdVantage. Visit TREND. and remember to sign up for its regular newsletter which will update you every time we release a new report into market.