Who is Social Edge? What does Social Edge do? We are a social media consultancy company based in Nairobi. We handle strategy, monitoring and management of brands on social networks. We are also working with Eyeballs Marketing in organizing Social Media Awards in November.
Why did you come up with this idea? Growth of social media in business and communication in Kenya necessitated this. The main aim of these clubs is to develop a talent pool of graduates with a solid understanding of Digital Media to bridge the knowledge gap and demand there is today for people with skills and expertise in various disciplines of social media.
Your target market? We aim to bring together different social media enthusiasts, speakers, developers, lecturers, bloggers, industry experts, digital agencies and organizations who have immensely contributed to the growth of social media in Kenya. Our primary target audience is the university students countrywide and the youth between 18 and 25 years. Our secondary audience will be lecturers, social media influencers and basically the Kenyan system and their perceptions towards social media.
Reason for forming the Clubs? The core objective of these clubs is to teach, educate, create awareness and impart/skills of social media to the university students. All to ensure students and lecturers understand how to tap into the potential online and approach social media as a business & communication tool and a teaching aid to lecturers. We want to revolutionize learning in institutions of higher learning because it will change the “how and when” lecturers create and share content with the students online and on social media specifically. These clubs will enhance collaboration, exchange of ideas within students, faculty and industry while nurturing creativity because students especially shall be exposed to the limitless possibilities online and they’ll also learn how to tap into all that potential therein. SocialPro clubs will also help university students refine their business ideas, find a high-potential commercial opportunity, gather resources such as talent & capital, figure out how to sell and market the idea and manage rapid growth. How? All the key partners they need for their start up ideas are on social media. We are currently working on a site that enables connect all these clubs online that will be an information resource.
Why Now? Most youths use social media mainly to access information of one kind or the other so we felt that we could form clubs that enhance sharing of opportunities, information, ideas and data then connect all these clubs through a website to enhance collaboration between universities and bridge the gap between the industry and the universities. We intend to use these clubs to tackle unemployment by enhancing collaboration as mentioned above and nurturing creativity to inspire development of ideas that solve the problems in our country. We’d also like to help university access information in a timely manner and connect them to key partners and opportunities. We shall also use the platform to sensitize university students and youths on responsible online behavior and how to use social media as a PRO. All this is meant to ensure the youths engage properly online especially regarding creating and passing hate messages online in this election period.Secondly we have witnessed growth of pages with porn content on Facebook such as “Campus Divas For Rich Men” being managed by young people thus we sought to introduce social media clubs to speak against such vices, create awareness on the legal risks and most important help the youths understand how they can use social media for business or gainfully through one way or the other. These clubs will also educate participants on social media etiquette, personal branding, job search on social media and various other disciplines.
This programme is endorsed by the ministry of information and technology and specifically Dr. Bitange Ndemo; the PS who attended out launch in October 2012.
Who are your Sponsors? Kuza Biashara is supporting SocialPro clubs by offering business training and coaching to students while Nairobi Hub will incubate start ups that students come up with in future among other long term strategic partners partners we have.Marketing Society of Kenya is on board too as the professional body for marketers. We are still engaging various other corporate and public sector organizations to support this noble cause.
How will it be implemented? To start with we shall not be forming social media clubs in campuses but we shall work with existing marketing clubs and AIESEC Kenya jointly during the pilot phase. After the pilot phase we shall roll out this programme across all universities in the country in partnership with university administration, students, the government with the support of corporate sponsors. We shall however have a website in place before the launch where all participates can subscribe to our weekly newsletters on various disciplines and topics on social and new media, entrepreneurship and careers. The newsletters shall be branded with logos of all our sponsors and in our website as well.
The pilot phase will take place in 5 universities in October and November around Nairobi. The shortlisted candidates are:
- University of Nairobi
- Strathmore University
- USIU
- Multimedia University
- Kenyatta University
The overall benefit to the students is that it will:
- enable collaboration and exchange of ideas among students in other universities and industry thus spurring innovation
- it will allow for information sharing with external partners and students
- constitute a healthy exchange of information with the industry will bridge the gap between the university and expectations of employers
- Will help students keep pace with fast moving events.
Help students network with top industry professionals, agencies and firms. - Help students understand the opportunities available in form of careers on social media.
- Promote innovation, nurture creativity and inspire development.
- Understand the realities, opportunities &requirements for the various disciplines of social media.
Other than that, the benefits to the lecturers are:
- Help lecturers embrace social media and learn how to integrate it into teaching
- Understand how to connect with their students on social media and gain valuable feedback, whilst sharing information
- Help the lecturers embrace social media learn how to communicate, engage and interact with students on social media
- Establish processes that control the publishing and monitoring of their content online & globally
- Help lecturers understand how to publish their content on multiple networks, optimize it for a variety of multimedia formats and optimize it for many types of screens to ensure it is viewed easily and consume
- Help lecturers understand how to edit the content into creative formats that entertain, educate and inspire others
- Help them learn how to create and share content for the different types of media such as video and text
- Basically they will learn how social media can make their work easier and more fun
