First off SoLoMo stands for Social, Location and Mobile. Snippets written below were taken from a presentation given by my Naija friend, Deola Kayode. He is an online marketer and project manager in Nigeria. He’s got vast experience in online marketing and branding and is currently managing partner at Teleios Consulting; an internet branding and marketing, social media and PR Communication consulting house in Nigeria.
- The fact that everyone has a mobile phone now and a set of social media accounts means that everyone is now a certified citizen journalist. This statement is made valid by occurrences where one will break news of an explosion on Twitter and Facebook and that stuff will go viral. Sometime, I think it was in 2009, an earthquake shook up Japan. Americans knew about the earthquake faster from Facebook than they saw a CNN or BBC broadcast. That is how powerful SoLoMo is. You’re Social. You’re at a crucial place to view happenings first hand. And you’ve got a mobile. SoLoMo. Perfect.
- This brings into play the dozens of opportunities that are out there. Or out here. Depends on where you’re standing. A funny story I heard recently is one of a Nigerian who lost his iPad on a plane somewhere in the World. He hurried back to the airport to check where he was seated coz he couldn’t find his treasured device. Unfortunately, or fortunately, he went back and couldn’t find the darn thing. He then proceeded to use an App called “Find my iPad?” See it here on the Examiner. I found that story funny.
- Something I saw online and was later affirmed at a conference is that 1 out of every 5 search queries has local intent. Local intent meant something somsone searches for could quite possibly lead to a sale or a booking online. So search optimization is good. Always think SEO.
- Lastly, because of electricity issues, the PC may never get to where the mobile phone is going. Apparently Nigeria had worse electricity issues than Kenya. They privatized the National Power Provider. Problem is slowly going away. KPLC could learn from this scenario. Someone do something.
Some tips for an online internet business:
- Define your business model – Talk about what you want to do. Establish a digital master plan on how you plan to drive traffic to your platform.
- Content is the future of online marketing – content in form of text, articles, ebooks, videos, podcasts and infographics. Content marketing cycles in research, create, optimize, publish, and promote, measure. If your website fails to load in about 5 seconds, you have lost your potential consumer/customer/reader. #wcke
- Solve problems and not technology – quit solving problems nobody has. The best place to start looking for a problem to solve is one you have encountered yourself. You can never go wrong with this.
- Leverage group-buying/coupons websites – this sometimes will work although it works best when you are working with mass numbers.
- Analytics/A Good way of doing a traffic Analysis – Someone wise once said “What you cannot measure, you cannot manage.” This is true. Always try and work with numbers you can see. There is nothing like goodwill of numbers and relying on goodwill of people either. Measure, hence manage.
