So, how much do you know about search engine marketing?
Take the survey!

A lot has been said about the $2500 Tata Nano.
Now that they’ve been able to create a small car for that price, how can the other manufacturers claim they can’t?
Having read how advanced TATA is in terms of technology, I was wondering how advanced their online presence is.
Well, dealing with a large number of motoring clients, I was amazed at the online offering on their web site, Tata Nano.
There’s a feature to create your dream car, share your first impressions, find a slogan, etc.
On their blog, their chief of marketing is leading a discussion on whether the Nano should be for sale online. All the comments seem to support the idea.
There’s also a chairman’s desk section with news and articles by Ratan Tata, chairman of the huge Tata group , a forum and general news section.

So, leading in one form of technology can surely spur a company on to take their leadership to other forms as well.
Now for those SA care manufacturers….

By now we’ve been hearing a lot about the US Presidential election primaries, leading up to the nomination of one candidate per party ( Democrats and Republicans) for the elections itself.
It is obvious that both parties are really fighting the online battle as much as the TV, speech and road trip battles.
I thought it interesting to spend a few minutes on the sites of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to see what they offer a prospective voter and what differentiates the one from the other.
Both sites have an annoying splash page that requires you to sign-up to get access to the site. If you only press submit button, you can’t enter the site and then have to look for the skip signup button to continue.

Because they each have so much information about themselves, the states they are hoping to win, their issues, fundraising, etc, I decided to only focus on their media sections.
Obama’s media section has a TV page where all his videos are hosted. The TV “channels” include most recent, listed in states, issues and people section, your story (people’s own videos) Barack’s story, Michelle’s story (his wife), speeches, townhalls, podcasts and up close.
The close captioning section takes you to a page that has videos with close captioning.
There is also a Espanol section with videos containing Spanish subtitles.
The mobile section on Obama’s site offers great mobile features. Besides general text message updates, you can send a short code to only get updates for certain issues, such as health, education, etc.
It also offers 4 cellphone screen savers and 6 different ringtones!
Obama’s blog has links to Del.icio.us, Stumble, Digg, Newsvine and Facebook

Hillary has a section called the Hillary Hub. Here one finds links to any reference of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the news, whether it be a video from a TV station, a podcast from a radio station or a link to a news site. The page has a separate listing for references to her campaign on blogs. Each of the links have a send to a friend link.
She has a video section with a plain listing of all the various videos and a link to her blog.
The blog links to Digg, Technorati and del.icio.us

Next I’ll be seeing what is being said about them and what they are doing themselves, on Facebook.

The World Economic forum is all over CNN and SKY every time you turn on the TV ( in the hotel…)
This issue, that matter, this concern and that problem.
If you want to get involved, or know more, see videos, ask questions or read Jeff Jarvis’ blog posts, see flickr pics, see webcasts and get the link to the WEF discussions on Second Life, the Davos Conversation is the place.
The Official World Economic Forum web site is at www.weforum.org

Some provocative thinking from Naseem Javed

2008 boom times

Clicks and more clicks. Anything that generates a click and results in a cascade of events will boom. There will be special gadgets to special services, from special click-based programs to special offerings. A kind of new click-sound to the click-economy, supporting search engine-based marketing, where the emphasis will be placed on finding a match between a customers and immediate consumption issues is where advertising and marketing will park themselves. The middlemen or the layer of services will offer clear, ROI-based campaigns and will, at times, have a huge surprise windfall for their highly productive campaigns as extra bonuses. Though, at the same time the big drawback will be privacy, as there will be extraordinary amounts of information made available to target customers.

The New Trends

A new emergence of a global desire to aim and create a Five Star Standard businesses is almost upon us, just like a five star hotel, with services, quality and style, this desire to operate a business and offer services just like a five star standard hotel will reflect not only on the corporate brand and the product and services as goodwill ambassadors, but mainly in its hospitable services and 24-hour availability of staff to address those issues. The difference between a luxury home and a five star hotel is the hotel keeps an on-call staff, open switchboard, open kitchen the entire facility and the room service. This is how the corporations of the new era will have to function in order to earn the respect in a click based round the clock society.

Asia is now beginning to offer 24-hour, fully-supported banking, buying and selling of properties, insurance, travel, and all kinds of hundreds of new services.

Now, the customer demands and decides whenever, whatever and wherever the need is to be met. Only the players equipped to meet these spontaneous demands will have a chance. The creation of a fully supported, 24-7 operation that will never close and perform transactions instantly is the new future. You would like to own those special glasses to see that blanket of streaming data hugging you right now… wouldn’t you?

I reluctantly have to admit that I failed!
Yes, my promise to have found 10 SA corporate blogs by the end of this week has not been fulfilled. I am of course very embarrassed about it and even more concerned. Here I was telling all my clients how corporate blogging is the way to go and how big international companies are embracing this channel and how their leading SA counterparts are doing the same.
This morning I visited the following 10 sites to find just one blog! Alas, nothing.
www.coronation.com
www.bhpbilliton.com
www.telkom.co.za
www.barloworld.com
www.anglogold.com
www.africanbank.co.za
www.alexanderforbes.com
www.sasol.com
www.edgars.co.za
www.distell.co.za
I will continue my quest and will now start focusing on small to medium companies to see if they have a different attitude to the blogosphere.

Well, by now we’ve all read about Neotel’s plans for increased bandwidth and how they will offer their services to the corporate market first and the news of the multi million ( R 378m) SITA deal.
How does this impact on me and my relationship with the beloved Telkom, I’ve often wondered?
Well, just today I’ve noticed a whole team of guys digging trenches and laying cables just outside my house ( in Bloubergstrand). I did of course not pay much attention to it and did not even bother to give it a second thought.
Upon arriving home this afternoon though, I noticed a Neotel branded bakkie parked near the work team and interacting with them.
Does this in fact mean that Neotel will soon be on my doorstep ( or in fact under my house)?
I will make work of finding out what’s cooking and keeping my fingers crossed for faster, more reliable and, hopefully, a cheaper connection.
Their website does in fact mention the roll out of services in the major metropolitan areas in “early 2008″

Well, 2008 trends about emarketing, consumerism and branding trends are flying all over the place. Because I did not see blogging and corporate blogging per se, featuring on those lists, I started wondering about the future of the blog as more than just an opportunity to rant and rave about politics, sport and IT matters.
Sure, Afrigator lists 1169 blogs, Amatomu lists the top 500 and there seems to be just over 200 blogs on 24.com
How many of these blogs overlap , how many are active and how many SA blogs aren’t even listed on those aggregators, I cannot say.
My interest of course is mostly in seeing companies use blogs to communicate with their clients, suppliers, investors and the general public, that way making themselves more accessible to their clients. In the same manner, I would like to see those same companies interacting with community, consumer and expert bloggers when describing their experiences in dealing with those same companies.
So, I am on my quest to find those big company blogs. Granted, many of them (giving them the benefit of the doubt) may have internal blogs for the purposes of communicating with staff, in itself a great use of a blog.
I am of course interested to find out what those companies want to tell me about their business, its ethics, social responsibility and interest in me.
So, I started with those things around me and started looking up their sites to determine whether there are indeed blogs out there run by corporate SA.
I thought I’d go to the sites of my and my wife’s cars, our PC’s, my favourite drink, my favourite restaurant, my bank, my wife’s bank and the estate agent sign accross the road. A fair mix, don’t you think?
So, here goes:
Nissan:
no blog here
VW Polo
nothing
Apple
takes you to www.apple.com/za. There I found a link for RSS feeds for news, music, podcasts, etc. No blog though…very surprising to me. ( unless of course I just looked in the wrong place)
HP
Newsroom and feature stories. No blog. There is however a podcast section! Although the first listed podcast is from May 2006, I did find a January 2008 podcast lower on the list. Don’t understand the order of the listing. Also has RSS feeds for news.
Foundry
No Foundry web site found, so I had to go to www.brandhouse.co.za. Nope, niks!
ABSA
lots of info but can’t find a blog on their site
Nedbank
nee! RSS feeds for corporate news in the investor relations section, but no blog.
ReMax
alas, no blog!
Bukhara restaurant: no web site found, no blog either!

I will persist and continue my quest tomorrow to find at least 10 SA corporate blogs by the end of the week.