[Digital branding] The big deal about social media for marketers

So what’s the big deal about social media and blogging in South Africa? Internet guru Arthur Goldstuck attempted to answer that question for marketers…

1. It’s an entry point for individuals, ie, marketers wanting to engage with the Web 2.0 community.
2. It’s an amazing barometer of collaboration in marketing, branding and innovation by individuals on the Internet.
3. Web 2.0 represents the culmination of the promise held by the Internet for the first decade of its commercial life: it levels the playing field for innovation.
4. This year saw a tipping point in the Web 2.0 environment in SA (from March to August 2007): the arrival of Afrigator in Africa to aggregate and track content on the African continent; Amatomu which aggregates and tracks blogs; the launch of My Digital Life by ITWeb; launch of The Times which dragged multimedia, blogging and Web 2.0 into the mainstream; the growth of Facebook in SA from nowhere to 410 000 people registered on by end-October; Thoughtleader.co.za for M&G ‘bloggomists’.
5. Blogging in SA: 25 000 blogs in SA at end August / 2900 active (11%) / 39 900 posts in August / 621 000 unique visitors to blogs in August / 5.1 million page views on SA blogs… More content now being produced in blogs than in mainstream media in SA.

And this doesn’t measure international blog traffic from South Africans. So even in the absence of hyping with international stats and clicks, you can see how dramatic the growth is in SA in all these social media tools, says Goldstuck.

The next question you might ask is: what’s this got to do with corporate SA?

Goldstuck again: your brand is involved in social media just by virtue of being in the market and being talked about, whether you like it or not. Your consumer is engaging online and any new online initiative by marketers must take into account the online environment.