Have a clear social media strategy

Going online has gone far beyond the era of just developing a beautiful website. The evolving demand for online media marketing and social media engagement requires clear policies, guidelines and experienced staff that will involve employees in every aspect of your business operations – Human Resource, Customer Service, Branding and Marketing.

It also involves profiling your target audience before pouring resources into Facebook. Several PR tools will be useful in this regard. Don’t be busy spending money on ads if your audience is busy in traffic or with their phones.

Be prepared

Dealing with social media attacks require a robust crisis plan. Brand haters exist but unlike the past, a coordinated attack can easily be organized against a brand. Consider the Boycott British Airways campaign organized by the Nigerian Village Square and Respect Nigeria Coalition when officials of the UK Police forcefully ejected Ayodeji Omotade and about 136 other Nigerians from a Lagos bound flight from the UK. Thousands of online signatures were collated which later saw British Airways apologizing for its misbehavior.

When opening your brand to social media, you relinquish ownership of the brand, so before the case ever comes up you need to be sure if your agency has a community management expertise to avert or mitigate a social media crisis? Have a set of best practices been established? Think again.

Classify mud-slings and don’t fight dirty
Ok the deed is done and you have a crisis in your hands, what do you do? The next step is not to have a hurried response to your online audience. The next step is to determine the type of response necessary. It doesn’t matter the kind of crisis, one rule is critical – stay positive. Being bitter and negative about comments is the easiest way to expose your brand to bashing.
Some problems or complaints direct you to a particular challenge your customers are facing with your product/service, nicely thank them for bringing it to your notice and deal with it. If the comments are as a result of customers not understanding your methods and policies, you score a bigger point. Simply thank them and explain why you do it that way. You won’t take all suggestions, but be careful to win their loyalty and trust by being appreciative. But then some mudslings are downright dirty, they are designed to draw or bait you into an unnecessary I-am-right-get-lost fight thereby exposing you as inept and leaving your organization at the mercy of a community of angry comments and future readers of the page. Nescafe (international) will never forget this lesson when they multiplied their challenges by mishandling Facebook attacks during protests by members of Greenpeace.
Finally, in going social, always remember a Facebook page isn’t a social media strategy. Using social media engagement strategies includes identifying your brand personality, profiling your target audience and going to engage them. If your brand is hoping to leverage on social media, it should be ready to create new teams to proactively listen, learn and engage your customers in real time. Cheers

One confession: after the euphoria of the Indian movie revolution in the early eighties, when we were kids; watching the “Shole”, “Shakti”, “MARD”, “Yer van dera”e.t.c. I lost the Indian movie appeal. American movies top my collection list now, forget those Nigerian movies- never a fan. Especially when I have a multimedia project to work on, I love a movie playing in the background, as a result of this, there’s hardly any series movie I’ve not watched.

The staggering accumulation of 6 Oscar awards by the film, Slum Dog Millionaire caught my attention. It was about the story of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who was one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” When the show took a break from the episode, the anchor got the police to was promptly arrested arrested and interrogated on why a boy from the slums was so “brilliant” as to be able to answer the most difficult ones but could not answer the basic simple questions posed to him on the hot seat.

Jamil takes his interrogators through the maze of his live, from living and playing in the midst of the squalor where he lived along with his mother and brother, and how his various experiences exposed him to the solutions coincidentally being asked on the hot seat. The plot gradually unfolded itself into a story of love and betrayal, which included his brother and Latika, the young girl he loved and lost at various stages of his life.

Your background does not mean your back must be on the ground

Anyone pricing Jamil like the child traffickers did when they caught him, his brother and Latika, are sure to under price him. Anyone looking at another’s past and judging him is sure to look foolish unless the person accepts their verdict. You may not have control of your past; your place of birth, your parents, your siblings, the kind of education you received, but then, the future has no right to catch you by surprise. It was important to note the persistence of Jamil and his brother. They made do with what they had, lived on what they could glean, and took every opportunity available for them to change their fortunes.

Though the road was tough, their condition never became the verdict.

Love may not be well dressed

Who could have thought they were going to be together after years of incidences that threw them apart. Even from when they were about four and in the midst of abject poverty and an uncertain future, they never hid their friendly love. Most of us have checklists for whom we want and how we want them to look, so if the packaging of the person is not right we won’t go for it. The best opportunities in life might come in work clothes. They may not look too nice today. The job might be frustrating, but be patient.

The pains of today might be pregnant with tomorrow’s joy.

God is the scriptwriter, we are the actors

As if he was being deliberately prepared for the moment, all things were working for him. It was almost unbelievable how his life experiences prepared him for the questions that were being asked on the show. Just like that, our lives are weaved around our personal experiences and challenges such that, how we responded to those challenges may be our saving grace tomorrow. I’ve seen great achievers tell their stories and they seem like they were in a movie. Some truth, God is the scriptwriter; we are the actors.

I remember the sign-off of the Nigerian movie super story, Super Story- we are but pencils in the hand of the creator.

Whatever you are doing today, pay day comes.

It is wrong to write anyone off, it’s wrong to maltreat others because there’s always a pay day. The people who love writing people off are cheaply escorted out of the game of life. What happens if the boy you maltreated yesterday is now in a position to determine your fate? Life cannot just be life without repercussions. Our life is divided into two faces, one consisting our sowing, the other is to receive the benefits or punishments for what we did in the first half.

In all the film was good, considering most Oscar winning awards can barely be classified as entertaining.

Now to the book, the cost is a bit on the high side, but the print quality is one thing you cannot complain about. Of course, when the print is good you get to appreciate the content. I think he should create some books that will be easily cost-accessible to the new young and aspiring students to which the name Alder is fast becoming a buzzword. I personally was interested in him when I got to read his “Nigeria, a sigh in the dark”, as an undergraduate at those times when it was free on the internet. The black book on business, which is about 153 pages physically defeats the normal business books and manuals you find on most book shelves. Well, the black reveals the depth of pragmatic thinking you will find in the book. The mixture of colours and pictures used in the book reminded me of Re-imagine, another book which is focused on management and marketing. The idea is to make it more appealing to a generation in love with pictures, sights and sounds. Well, it’s working.

The book is divided into 4 parts, which covers the various insights on starting and managing a business; UPFRONT, FUNDAMANTALS OF STRATEGY, MANAGEMENT AND RELATIONSHIPS. They may not be business management topics, but nonetheless, without these insights even business scholars might nosedive their businesses. An example of this insight is the philosophy of underachievement, which I had previously blogged about (check here).

He began by asking a fundamental question in his first chapter; what do you really want? You know there is a difference between making money and building a business. You need to really ask yourself these questions before even thinking about the idea you want to follow. He shared his story on how a seemingly simple seminar changed his life…you’ll learn that those who live on excuses assign luck to those who dared. He went on to classify the genotype (business) of business starters and exemplified on the 10 passions of the business entrepreneur; creativity, drive, peace, emotional energy, and 6 other traits.

His second subdivision saw him moving in for the kill after subtly welcoming us with subtle tips. His brand genius comes to light as he explores the fundamentals of business vision, mission, values and business culture; and pulls an author’s stunt by teaching us how to relax.

Under the Strategies of Management, I loved the Technology of money. Actually, I wanted a part renamed the technology of poverty, but he named it- biodegradable technology. He identifies the struggles of business start-up by telling how to balance between the big-money projects and the small projects earning money bits on your road to stable business. The ever insightful Molue 101 points out 12 important business lessons.

The man behind Alder then moves on to flaunt his stuff. Do not be deceived by the topics chocolate boxes, table end analogy and the Y, YO, YYO, YOYO scenarios. Page 122 lists the 100 business lessons you know, but always somehow forget. Then the analogy of an entrepreneur, and the four drives that hold the key to conjugal and matrimonial bliss. He went ahead to point out the importance of relationships in business management, and highlighted the 4 portraits of lust. He rounded up by exemplifying 40 lessons on thinking big.

It’s a powerful book, especially if your business is up and running and you plan to blow it big. The insights are timely at a time when most businesses are starting up and failure rate is high. Leke Alder’s book is particularly impressive in that it is coming from someone who did a career switch as a lawyer and started business as a “credibility-deficient” entrepreneur. He teaches business management in a simple and strategic manner that show this man knows his stuff.

Leke’s book is an awesome buy that will not only add to your armoury of books. it will refine your business intelligence.