Jobs of the future are hard to predict. ...

Jobs of the future are hard to predict.

What will we all be doing in 5 years? Who can tell.I studied to be a journalist. No, I studied to be a print journalist. And now I work in and around mobile social networking strategy and development.Let's just quickly repeat that: Mobile social networking strategy and development. I am almost 100% certain that when I started studying at Rhodes University in 2003 that my current job didn't even exist.There is one job in particular that is going to need a lot more focus in the coming years:New media sales and advertising.The reason that I think this job is becoming increasingly important and increasingly neglected is because there is a marked lack of skilled and experienced people to fill this position.

What does this position entail?

Sales and advertising has traditionally (back in the old days) been about selling and advertising products. Getting people to buy in to your product or getting advertisers to place an advert in to your publication, on to your store walls or on your car and so on.Sales and advertising is becoming a much more complicated and intricate art. You cannot just sell banners, text links, full page adverts, splash screens, in-video sponsorships or product placements. Social networks and new media businesses need to have a salesperson who understands every aspect of the business. This person needs to be able to cross sell, integrate campaigns, work on new media, old media and media that might not exist yet.

What does this person need to succeed?

This person needs to understand CPC, CPA, CPM, CPSA and how to make these models work. This person needs to not only know what CRM stands for but what it actually is and how to make it relevant to the client.This person needs to know who the client is or should be and how that clients business or latest campaign fits in to the business of a new media business.Sales is shifting as fast as media is shifting and technology is growing and developing. The trick here is that technology, websites, mobile content and advancements can push forward as fast as they like but if there is no team able to monetize the products, there may as well not even be a product.It's time start thinking about integrated salespeople, sales teams, sales in relation to your core business and if sales actually might be your companies core business.

The Vida e Caffé tribe

The tribe is strong with this one.Last week (26 March 2009) saw the launch of the Vida e Caffé Twitter Account (follow them). I immediately followed them, then realised they were giving away free coffee to the first 60 direct messages. So I sent off a message and managed to get myself some coffee to collect soon at my nearest Vida, which happens to be Rosebank, Johannesburg.The very next day I decided to have a morning meeting at Vida e Caffé in Rosebank with my coffee and my mac. I paid for my coffee. I don't even care if I ever get my free coffee, it's the idea that matters, the offer that counts and the ownership I feel towards the brand that makes me loyal to the Vida brand.Hell, to be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure if I think there coffee is the best of the best, but I really don't care.Let me tell you why I don't care.I don't care if Vida has the best coffee because I like the service I receive when I order my coffee. I get smiles, jokes and laughs.I don't care if Vida has the best coffee because I like the way they operate their business.I like the placement of their shops. I like the vibe of the brand, the funkiness and the way they embrace the culture of South Africa in spite of the brand being more Portuguese.I like that their menu is simple and their food is good, however expensive it might be.Vida e Caffé has positioned itself as one of those brands that people would rather pay an extra R5-R10 for per coffee just to say it's a Vida coffee. Simple. People feel like they are getting more when they are paying more.The Vida e Caffé brand owns me and let me be clear here, I feel an acute ownership of the brand when I choose to have meetings there, drink the coffee or eat the food.

The best pitch email I've ever received as a blogger

Below is an email that I received on Monday in my capacity as SA Rocks Editor/Owner. Read it first and then I'll go in to my reasons for liking the way it is structured (albeit coincidentally).

Hi Editor,You won't know me - I'm a big reader of 2Oceansvibe and was referred by a link there.Anyway, I'm going to take a flyer here - just drop a little bait and hope for a bite...I'm a music producer at the moment, studied at UCT and now living in Johannesburg trying to hit the big time. My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album. In the mean time, though, we decided to record a couple of live videos of him doing some covers of cool and interesting songs. Basically it's just a way for us to get word out, create as much of a buzz as we can. We've had an incredible response to them so far and I thought I would share the videos with you:www.youtube.com/user/TimothyMoloiNow, I'm sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos. My favorite is the One Republic cover (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4fiPe4U_Ow&feature=channel_page), but feel free to have a browse around and prove me wrong! All the artists on the videos are South African - hope you're impressed!I'm not too sure what to say from here, man. I won't beat around the bush - obviously it would be in my best interest for you to actually cover us on your blog and for that I would be incredibly grateful, but if not, a simple personal reply would be fantastic - another viewpoint to see what we're doing right!Look forward to hearing from you!

Let me break down the above email in to sections/reasons why I was taken by it and responded immediately.

References

The email references 2oceansvibe, I know I have a link in Seth's sidebar and therefore know (or feel) a little bit of legitimacy from the email's author.

Hope and a wish

The author openly admits that he is taking a chance. He isn't being too presumptuous and assuming that I will obviously respond and act. There are no orders coming from the email, there are hopes and requests.

Know the blog

James (the author of the email) clearly went and read SA Rocks. He knew that I liked local music, liked to help promote local artists and liked to support an underdog. So he appealed to these attributes with: "My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album."

Play on my field

Multimedia and new media content are integral to my world, it's how I make my living and how I interact with people. So it's a good thing James didn't tell me that he hated the internet and would never release any of Timothy's music online for the world to swipe. In fact, he did the opposite. He sent me links to a YouTube video of Timothy vocalising the hell out of a song I knew "Apologize" by One Republic. He had dropped the bait in my lake and I was not only staring at it, listening to it but chewing on it as hard as I could.

Play to my Ego

The crème de la crème, my ego. James played the game perfectly by stating the following: "Now, I'm sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos."How could any self-indulgent blogger possibly say no to a line like that? James got my, hook, link and sinker.

End the pitch

Do not linger, do not be verbose, do not become pedestrian and cliched. Write what you want to write, get it out, close it down and end the email. Do not linger. I hate it when I have to sift through ten paragraphs of shit to get to the point of the pitch. Say what you want and leave me alone.And here I sit blogging about James and Timothy and will be meeting with them very soon to see how I can help them in any capacity I can think of.James, well played. And to anyone who is trying to pitch to bloggers that might be reading this, take note: A good pitch will be responded to immediately and will have the bloggers commitment from the word Go.

The Onion writes off Sony as an advertiser forever

With this simple video, funny as hell, The Onion (unless they've planned this whole thing) have taken it to Sony, hard.This really does illustrate the independence of an online brand. Sharply contrasting how beholden old-media is to their advertisers. I love this sort of campaign, I love the brashness of it and I love that they had the balls to put it out there.

Honesty is the best business policy when selling online

Honesty in business, sales, marketing and advertising is by no means a fresh new concept. Yet it is fast becoming an integral one in the world that we inhabit.There are many posts that discuss transparency online in a personal sense. Don't lie, cheat, steal, defraud or do anything that might dent your reputation online. But I am referring more to the concept of honesty when selling online to the less knowledgeable.This has become an absolutely imperative part of selling and talking about online with people. Many companies and agencies are interested and intrigued by online at the moment because it is the direction in which the world is moving. But there are dangers.The main danger that I have come across is the overselling of the potential of online right now. Many companies almost have their finger on the pulse of things. But this means that they know of Facebook, Youtube and other sites that they can use in a social arena to promote their products. Yet many of them think that the viral nature of the social web world wide applies directly to South Africa. It doesn't. Viral in SA probably means, if you're lucky, a few thousand views of a video and a couple of blog posts. In the Western world viral translates to a few million views of a video and a few hundred thousand links to or embeds of a video. Those are the cold hard facts and expectations should be readjusted accordingly.Unfortunately the "people in the know" often oversell the potential of social media in South Africa to get the hype up and the profit margins higher. This is bad. This sort of selling is doing detrimental damage to the truth and success of the market in SA. This sort of selling makes it very difficult to create a consistent and successful stream of clients, revenue and business in the online industry. People are being burned and are staying away from spending money online because of misleading sales and delivery pitches. Return of investment (ROI) is being oversold and underdeliverd. Again, this is bad.Honesty is key. Clients need to know the truth and still want to go forward with a campaign and experiment, play in the space and engage with one or two hundred people in stead of hoping to gain one or two million. It wont happen so don't sell it that way.

Defining 08/09 - analysing the year past and the year ahead

It's fast moving towards the final day of 2008. What a year it has been. I usually (much like many bloggers) put together an end-of-year post that sums up a few things and pulls together events all nicely. I am going to be composing one of those articles but this isn't it.This post is a collection of answers from some of the top people, movers and shakers and industry leaders in the online market. I asked them two questions:

1. What was the single most defining moment in the South African online industry in 2008?

And

2. If you were to make one prediction for 2009 what would it be? And don't tell me that mobile is the next big thing!

So let's dive straight in to the answers:Fred Roed, CEO of digital marketing agency, World Wide Creative.1. Barack Obama winning the election. This meant that digital agencies such as World Wide Creative could justify their presentations demo-ing how messages are accelerated online. We could say ‘See! Look how he did it!’2. Hype around Mobile and Social Media will be removed from the industry, meaning that digital will go mainstream. Following the international norm, marketing agencies will increasingly use online as the major destination point for all the other channels to feed into.Vincent Maher, Portfolio Manager for Social Networking at Vodacom SA1. For me the defining aspect of the whole year is that there didn't seem to be a defining moment. There we a few things that happened but none of them were defining in the classic sense. In many ways this is a sign of maturity in the industry and an indication of resilience to smaller influences.2. The breadth and reach of social networking is going to increase through services like Google FriendConnect and Facebook Connect and this will also reveal several vulnerabilities in the form of viruses and spam across these networks. Location-based services are going to become more accessible on the API level for developers to incorporate and, importantly, the global financial meltdown is going to cull a lot of the flimsy Web 2 operations and make the industry a little more intersting.Andy Hadfield, The Internet & Social Media Guy, FNB1. The credit crisis. The credit crisis is probably going to precipitate Bubble 2.0 - which is excellent news. Unlike last time, there have been precious few IPO's, which means while many web startups may go down - they won't take public shareholders with them. And any bubble burst presents a great opportunity for web companies that offer REAL value to rise to the fore. Oh, and Twitter. But it seems 3 million really active users still counts for value in someone's book :)2. The battle to own the social profile will increase. FaceBook vs MySpace vs Google Friend Connect vs Et Al are going to muddy the waters for the first 6 - 8 months of the year. Hopefully, coming out of that will be value driven profiling services which allow you to centrally store your social profile, pick it up whenever you want and hop all over the web. Let's face it: storing a picture, bio and web links is not a value driven social profile. These companies are going to have push the boundaries a little to force consumers to make a call on where their social data and social networking time investment will sit...Heather Ford - Web social entrepreneur1. Quality Vacation Club suing blogger Donn Edwards(http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/) for defamation. I think it'simportant because, while the same comments have come from themainstream media, QVC has chosen to sue the blogger. It will beinteresting to see how this turns out - at the crux, I think, iswhether 'fair comment' on a blog is being seen by South African courtsas equal in importance to 'fair comment'.2. My prediction is that we're going to see greater diversity in theSouth African blogging community next year - people linking to thoseoutside of their social circles, invitations to bloggers' socialgatherings like the 27 dinner, and more training and connections(here's hoping!)Duncan McLeod, technology editor, Financial Mail, and editor of www.FMTech.co.za1. Definitely Altech's victory against communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri which now allows just about anyone to build a communications network in competition with incumbent operators such as Telkom, Neotel and the mobile phone providers.2. Bandwidth caps will soar -- people will get at least triple the bandwidth for the same price -- as Seacom comes online. This will lead to strong growth in online business in SA in 2009.Charl Norman is the co founder and chief operations manager (COO) for Blueworld Communities. BWCOM owns numerous niche social networks based in South Africa.1. Blueworld Communities (www.bwcom.co.za) being acquired by Naspers - this paved the way for other acquisitions in our local space - Zoopy and Afrigator soon followed with investment from Vodacom and MIH/Naspers. This created investor confidence in our small local market and enabled other startups to more confidently seek investment.2. The economic crisis will slow down venture capital investments and startups unable to figure out their revenue model will have their funding reviewed or forced to merge with other similar lower tier startups.Users will own their online identity (e.g. profiles) with tools like Google and Facebook connect. Users will carry this identity along with them around the web forcing online communities like social networks to embrace data portability technology.Social media will also become more mainstream as tools like Twitter will be adopted by the general public and not just geeks. Good companies will have concrete social media strategies as part of their overall marketing strategy.Catherine Luchoff is joint partner and founding member of MANGO-OMC1. There isn't one particular moment I can single out as the defining moment of 2008. Rather, I consider 2008 to be a defining year: One in which social media, crowd sourcing and micro-blogging found their footing and laid the foundation for converged campaigns that will, and have, defined the way we communicate and consume information.2. With filter failure on the rise and information overload rife, community manager positions and descriptions such as 'trusted filter' will become more prominent. 2009 will also be the year in which the foundation for a holistic measurement tool, one that takes all channels into account (online, offline and mobile), will be defined.Interesting stuff. Hopefully those who didn't get to the questions will be able to post their responses in the comments of this post. I sent the email out to ±25 people for their comment.

Take a joke Lolly Jackson

I recently wrote about a new mobile initiative called Comedy Twist.Subsequent to writing my review of their launch they began an advertising campaign on billboards around Johannesburg. The approach they took surprised me somewhat as it's a dangerous game they are playing.The chose to take on Mr Lolly Jackson of Teazers fame. They created a mock-teazers billboard that had a similar looking logo, a male blow-up doll and other recognisable Teazers brands.Apparently Jackson didn't respond well to these billboards as they were taken down.They were replaced with this:As I've said, I think Comedy Twist is playing a very dangerous game here but as everyone knows, any publicity is good publicity. Whether Comedy Twist or once again, Lolly Jackson't Teazers is gaining the most exposure remains to be seen.

Did Viral Marketing start with god?

The phrase "Viral Marketing" has become quite the buzz word of late. But I personally don't buy it. It might be fashionable and working for now but it most definitely isn't anything new. Even Wikipedia's definition refers to the use of existing social networks. Pah, as if the web can claim this form marketing.

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.[1] Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.[2] Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable.

The Hypothesis

I'm going to dive right in to my hypothesis. I think that if you go as far back as the birth of christianity you will find viral marketing. Maybe it appeared in different forms (godly or other) but it was present even then.Jesus was a man of old, but his story spread throughout the land back in the day. How? Very simply. He did something amazing, incredible, unbelievable even and word spread. He basically created his own viral video without the video. He did something that no one had done before or seen before and the word spread like wildfire. He created his own version of the Rayban, Evolution of Dance, Avril or Dead Terrorist Youtube video and then the public did the rest.

The Scale

Yes the scale of the word spreading might have been significantly less than the 2 Billion people worldwide who are online today but the principal was the same. Humans like to be astounded. On top of that human beings like to socialise, be the first, follow the group and participate in communities and all of this applied then as much as it did now.

The Message

What was being spoken of, spread around and "preached" back then is significantly different to the content that has become viral nowadays. Christianity and other religions spoke of a life-changing concept that was the word, a god, a set of laws, rules, beliefs and ideas that intended to change people and their way of life.Today content is funny, clever, different, advertising, movies, music videos and clever tricks that fascinate people and keep them occupied for just long enough to want to send on the video, blog post, article, website or concept to their friends and their friends and their friends. Yet again, the basic concept remains the same. I like it, I like to participate with people in what I like and thus I will send it on so I can discuss it with them, debate it with them and enjoy it with them. God, The Bible, a video, blogger or mp3, anything can go viral and has been going viral for centuries.

The crusades

The great era of the crusades which were so quickly forgotten by many people today is not necessarily an example of anything viral. It is an example of aggressively marketing a concept to a market that is possibly unwilling or isn't aware that they like the idea just yet. That is, until you shove it down their throats with a blade.Much like today's corporations. If you don't use Google you probably aren't getting the best results. However there are people who use ask.com, yahoo.com, cuil.com (are there people using Cuil?) or any slew of other options. Just as there were people believing in Allah or any number of other gods or demi-gods. If you aren't using Google however it is hard to get away from them, their spokespeople, their marketing - however subversive it may be - or their word of mouth presence. You will succumb to the Google Crusade if you haven't already.An estimated 2.1 billion christians exist in the world today. That is around and about 1/3 of the worlds population. Wouldn't you say that is the greatest viral campaign of all time? I would.

Preaching, Indoctrination, Propaganda and Sheep

Let's be frank about this, we are all sheep of one kind or another. The christian, muslim, hindu, agnostic, atheist, google, mozilla, microsoft, opensource, closed source or any other source out there. We all subscribe to opinions, likes, dislikes and beliefs. It is thanks to this wonder of humanity that viral marketing is and always will be the most phenomenal way to market a product or concept. People like to below, to prescribe and subscribe to something.Coca-Cola, Nike, Google, Apple, Honda, Toyota, Pepsi and Microsoft are all some of the most recognisable brands in the world because there are people sharing the brands and associated products amongst their friends, family and social groups. Viral marketing is not a web 2.0 revolution in marketing, it isn't even a web concept. It's a practice that has been used for millennia to make people money, spread a word or punt a product. Welcome to the wonders of history repeating itself.

An Example: FAIL

The recent "FAIL" trend that has swept the web is the perfect example of a viral concept shared amongst social groups. Everything is a FAIL. It has become a cult that is practiced offline as much as it is online. It started with one simple fail and expanded in to blogs, websites, videos, songs and more. It has transcended race, gender, age, culture, technology and platform. People can fail online, brands can fail with offices, products, articles or just about anything that exists.Viral marketing is most definitely not a FAIL but many have failed at viral marketing.

Win With Doritos Taco - a relative flop

Doritos has been everywhere lately, all over the radio, a few other ads here and there. Basically they have been punting their Facebook page.I eventually saw that one of my friends on FB had joined the group as well as ±1500 people.My immediate reaction is that this is a flop of a campaign. Advertising on radio is no cheap affair but an affair it is. You face the risk of being caught out by your better half - the listeners or target market. And to me it seems as though this has happened to Doritos.

Why I think this is campaign was a flop?

Coming off the back of a great advertising campaign with their "Moment of boldness" A few years ago I can't believe that Doritos could have done so badly with this one. That campaign was a viral campaign before there were viral campaigns. To this day I know many people who still joke about their moments of boldness.At the time of writing this post there were 777 122 people from South Africa above the age of 18 on Facebook. That works out to about 0.2% of the users on FB, from SA actually bothered to become a fan of the brand. In my mind, that's a bit of a flop.

Why this could be perceived to be a successful campaign

Theoretically what we could be looking at here is quality over quantity. Involvement and activity over masses of inactive users/fans.But let's look at this for a moment before we get ahead of ourselves. The available features on the FB page of Doritos are: Notes, Photos, Video, Wall Comments, Events and Discussion Board.To analyse these in a bit more detail:Wall313 postsDiscussion Board Topic 1: 120 posts by 95 peopleTopic 2: 29 posts by 25 peopleVideos12 fan videosPhotos44 photos5 albumsEventsEvent 1 - 6 confirmed guests, 4 wall postsEvent 2 - 28 confirmed guests, 6 wall postsNotes7 notes144 commentsLooking at the above breakdowns I honestly cannot say that all the money Doritos must have spent on their mainstream ad campaigns was worth it. 44 photographs and 12 videos is really not a good response in my opinion. Especially considering that there are ±1500 people in the group and over 750 000 people in SA on FB. That means that less than 1% of the fans on the page posted a video and almost 3% of the fans posted a photograph.I'm not sure about you, but I've posted, viewed and commented on hundreds of photos on FB, that should've been the saving grace but alas, it wasn't.

What Doritos could have done differently

Expanded their "moment of boldness" campaign to an online network of viral campaigns. Blogs, videos, podcasts and "fake events" that could have boosted the reputation of the brand for the young and socially in touch.I can picture the blog and videos now; South Africans all over filming their moment of boldness, recording fake jumps, dares and ironic, satirical parodies of the "bold" factor.Doritos could have done more with their Facebook group. Updates, invites, ads, coupons, giveaways, freebies. Sometimes it just takes a bit of gritty interaction to spread the word for a fan page, not an entire radio ad campaign. Other than giveaways the Doritos fan page gave nothing to its members. No community offering. I know a lot of people who feel an affinity to Doritos, it's their choice chip, but they were not enticed to join this group. People like Apple Students has it right on their page. They have a community, not a product.Below the line marketing would have worked better. Get bloggers involved, send them a box of crisps and ask them to eat them, rally a party around the chips, get other bloggers in on it and spread the word slowly to all their readers via the subsequent posts.Print would even have worked better than radio. More people will sit near a computer while reading a newspaper/magazine than will be listening to the radio, so why put it on the radio? You are probably driving in your car when you hear about the Doritos fan page, not sitting by a pc with internet access. Bad move.I did try to contact Doritos, the admin of the group or anyone but no one responded. I gave them a few working days. I'd love to know if they consider this campaign to be successful or if they are looking in to recovering from the flop that I see?

Find a story, construct it and set it free...everywhere

Irrespective of the medium in which the story is being told the key is that the story needs to be good.That is my basic premise and that is what I stand by.In today's market stories are able to be told in various mediums with various levels of interaction, lengths, research and dedication. This can be a wonderful movement in the right direction. However if merely taken at face value story telling can be lost and misused.Good stories will prevail and let's be honest if there is anything that we learned from the Carte Blanche story on Web 2.0 it's that audiences are not stupid.Basically what I am trying to get across is that primarily journalists are just that, journalists. This is their charge in life, their career, reputation and job. I live my career and am passionate about the maintenance of my industry, the ethics and self preservation (ofcourse).The order of things is simple: The story, the building of the story, the medium used to promote the story and the audience the story reaches.I think that in the media industry today the above order has been marginalised and isolated.In other words, a journalist (whether multimedia, writer, photographer or whatever) works for a magazine for example, has an idea for a story and creates it. Then gives it to the magazine and they publish it.The magazine's target audience does not change week to week depending on the story so basically it's up to us (media producers) to make that change, not so? No, not so apparently.The other way of looking at this scenario is how the story is changed to fit the medium and target audience. In the process the story becomes twisted, warped and loses its thrust. Thus not portraying its initial and intended message effectively. Perfect example of this for me is the Carte Blanche story.The situation there was simple and in my mind two things could have changed the outcome of the story.Firstly: The medium for Carte Blanche is television. Therefore there isn't much time to get in to the nitty gritty of a subject like web 2.0. Yet they still wanted to appear to be "cutting edge" so they stuck with it. Their deadlines were tight and had three days to compose a story. The justification for their failure to find more sources was that they were in Cape Town.Considering the story is about technological developments and web 2.0 why didn't Carte Blanche really cut some edges, get on to skype, twitter, Facebook and other mediums and do interviews in that way?That's what I call using the tools to make a story. The story idea was there, their market is solidified in many years of broadcasting so all that was left was to construct a story that they could put forward effectively. Using these mediums altogether would have expressed some sense of "web 2.0" and communication developments.Furthermore, why didn't Carte Blanche push the story on to their website? Whatever could not have been done on TV could've been carried over to their website, more integration, more solutions, wider audience and effective use of the tools available to them.Secondly: Change the name of the piece of you couldn't get the right information to fill the story effectively. Simple.Back to the point. The essence of what I am trying to say is that mentality needs to shift in media organisations. Most, if not all major media houses have established and consistent audiences who use various media resources to gather information. Take a story and mould it in to three of four different beasts and set it free. More exposure from a wider audience.I have made a decision to slightly change the angle of my blog, as you can see, I am heavily embedded in the media sphere in South Africa (as many of you already know) and I believe that this is where my passion and my experience lie. So that is what I will be focusing on. The posts might be less frequent, but will hopefully be more in-depth regarding the media in SA.

How to brand yourself online

Here are some points about branding online and how one can do it quickly, easily and almost for free:1. Get a dotcom or dotcoza, such as this one (nicharalambous.com). Some others, daveduarte, mikestopforth, vincentmaher, matthewbuckland, justinhartman.2. Get Linkedin3. Get on to FaceBook4. Find people with established personal brands and latch on to them like a cub to its mother.5. This is the big one, Start your own company (doesn't matter what that company does, just start it).I might be taking the piss, I might be serious, it depends on your outlook, these things have at some point or another helped me and others I know. However some of these points have also been the downfall for some I know. So take caution when moving through the perils of personal branding. It is a cutthroat industry filled with many people. Some who are actually better than you.

Online Business Is Tough

Let us be perfectly honest. Making money online in SA is difficult unless you are employed by a big media house (which in itself is tough).Those who know me or read this blog will know that I am an entrepreneur and media practitioner and not necessarily in that order. This means that I am broke some of the time. This gets old really really fast, if you don't know, trust me on this one.What I am getting at is that it's tough to make a living online, it is. I am really curious to know if there are gabillions of online entrepreneurs in SA who are making boatloads of money or at least, are making a living? Are you out there? If you are, let me know cause I wanna know how you did it.Who am I kidding? As if anyone who made the dosh is going to splurge their secrets to me on this blog? Are you?

Working From Home

It's hard to work from home. There are distractions all over and reasons not to work keep popping up. Is it wrong to watch a movie when you should be working? Is it? I think it is but sometimes I just can't help myself.I overcame the early mornings (I am now awake at about 7:30am every morning) and have overcome the breakfast issues (I now eat breakfast). The next hill to climb is gym.I think the best alternative is to get offices. WiredWorks is going to need offices, soon. I think that it is important, not the most important, part of a new company, offices. The corporate identity and brand that offices offer are invaluable. In spite of being an online media company I think that real world organisations like to see some sort of professionalism in small to medium size enterprises and start up companies. Offices, in my opinion are a helpful way to create this identity.There are others ways to achieve this of course, but I think that for me right now, I need to get out of the house.[techtags: corporate identity, startups, branding, marketing, image]

Don't Preach...Sell

I have been in meeting after meeting this week. People pitching me ideas, concepts, website, companies, organisations and people pitching people who know people who can possible do something for me.If there is one thing that I cannot stand it's when people don't know when to stop selling. Learn this lesson quickly: Pitch me your product, tell me about what you do but then stop. Finish. End. Quit and let me think about what you are telling or selling me. Do not try to resell and rephrase and re re re re re. I got it. I'm a quick learner (or so I've been told).Another thing that has irritated me beyond belief is self proclaimed experts from abroad who have learnt how to "fix" our "problems" here in SA. Do not preach to me about the airs and graces of the United States of America (said with a pseudo-American-twang). Do not go in to a meeting with a South African entrepreneur and tell him that South Africa is 20+ years behind America technologically. That is not a good way to sell me on your product or concept.The next thing is research. In today's day and age it is possible to gather a vast amount of information about someone from the internet. Look at this blog. I have my personal details on here, I have links to things that can help you clue together my background. Go and visit my LinkedIn profile, its all there. Then come in to a meeting knowing about who I am, what my company does and where we are planning on going. Research, research, research.These are basics that I have seen in maybe two of the eight meetings I have had this week. How can people still be missing this stuff? It's simple. If you haven't thought about this before, then you are hearing it now. Think about it and you will soon realise that if you do not prepare you will not be successful. You can't invade a country without weapons, you can't sell yourself without research.

Go Pepsi Yourself

I have been listening with great frustration to the Pepsi radio advert campaign. I am frustrated because I actually prefer drinking Pepsi to Coke.The adverts on the radio sound something like this:I Love Pepsi, but what if we Pepsi together and our Pepsi doesn't Pepsi properly then we'll have a Pepsi and our Pepsi's will be Pepsied. So lets not Pepsi tonight, let's wait till the Pepsi and Pepsi when we are properly Pepsied. But the Pepsi might not be Pepsi then and our Pepsi will be Pepsied for Pepsi. What a Pepsi if our Pepsi doesn't Pepsi like it used to Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi Pepsi.You get the idea.I think it so unbelievably ridiculous that this actually counts as advertising. This is subliminal advertising without the subliminal part. This campaign shamelessly lacks creativity and innovation in my opinion. It simply spews out mindless words that force you to say the word Pepsi, think the word Pepsi and talk about the stupid advert from Pepsi. There is no choice here, there is no option, there is no thought behind it there is just...Pepsi. And it disappoints me.There will be those people responding to this post who will argue that the advert does its job because even though I hate it, I am still posting about it. True. The advert does its job, and oh so well but this is what I find problematic. As consumers we love stupid things like this, we allow marketers to make us look moronic and mindless. We (myself included) do not stand up and shun the advert, complain or boycott the product.I am not an idiot and refuse to let marketers and brand managers at Pepsi think that I am one. I will not be drinking Pepsi, they have lost a client and I hope I am not alone on this one.

Inherent Corporate Indoctrination

I have just completed a corporate freelancing job at a Certain Cellurar provided that I wont mention by name. I am astounded as to the consistent remarks that i received regarding the interviewees (recent graduates) impression of the company.There two opinions were so congruent that I can't help but think that they were coached. I am almost 100% sure that they were not coached in their responses, however the comments were remarkably close. This has led me to question the inherent corporate indoctrination that is present in major corporations around the world. If you are getting paid enough, if you consistently happy at your job then you shout praises for your employer from the rooftops. Whether the praises are the truth or not, they are true for the person shouting them.I have also completed an interview with another major corporation in South Africa that deals with electricity in some way or another. The human resources manager is incredibly good at what he does and honestly made me believe that this corporate was the best company in the world to work for, in spite of me conducting the interview. While back at the ranch the public profile of the company is in absolute disarray.These scenarios are much like the movie Thank you for smoking, which i loved. Can you justify selling cigarettes to a 16 year old if you are getting paid well enough?At the end of the day it is a personal choice but one that I think I might be struggling to come to terms with.

Camel Gets Some Flavour

It appears as if Camel Cigarettes have quietly done a bit of a marketing ploy. Not advertised ('cause they can't I suppose) in the media at all, no little boards up at the Petrol Stations or anything of the sort.I simply stumbled upon the new, new camel box below at the Petrol Station:Now what the lovely pack above involves is an outer label that looks like a box. This is covering a Metal Box that is branded with Camel which houses the regular Camel Pack. This all cost me R23-ish. It's a mere R4 more than simply buying the regular hard box so my question is this; Is it worth Camel's while to make this promotional box if it is only earning them R4 extra, it's not advertised or marketed and their customers are only moving to the metal box when they stumble upon it like I did?Either way I like it, wont use, but think it's a nifty little gimmick.

Away all day

I will be in a sales conference for the whole of Thursday. Freelance job one has subsidised the course for me. Hopefully I will learn some interesting things regarding marketing and sales and can pass on the knowledge. Woop woop for large corporations paying freelancers to learn interesting stuff they wouldn't normally pay for!

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