Our Social Media Strategist was recently invited by O’Brien Recruitment to attend a presentation by Digital Media and Marketing Educator, Dave Duarte. The presentation focused on Digital Leading and was hosted at the Granger Bay Hotel School. Dave helps organizations and individuals to recognize, understand and use social technologies more efficiently.

The Digital Educator has an impressive collection of achievements including Business Blogger of the Year, and runner up for ICT Innovator of the Year. He has also been acknowledged as one of Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans and one of the 100 Most Influential People in Media and Marketing in “The Annual”.

Dave contributes tech features on Highveld and KFM as well. He does a regular show on GoodHope FM that focuses on the social impact of developing technologies. Dave has worked with the likes of Ogilvy, South African Tourism, Mxit, Naspers, Clickatell, Pearson, The United Nations and Primedia to name a few.

The presentation focused mainly on “Growing your Employer Brand”. Dave enlightened the audience with tips on how organizations can use social technologies, specifically LinkedIn to build a strong employer brand and reputation.

Here are a few LinkedIn tips:

• Embrace your profile as a branding tool – LinkedIn is a professional way to advertise your CV and professional profile. Make sure your profile updated with all your skills, knowledge and experience. Are you connected to the correct industry people?

• Make sure your team does the same – Uniformity is fundamental. Make sure all your team members have updated and professional looking LinkedIn profiles. Ensure their profiles are linked to your LinkedIn company page. There is no room for errors or shorthand here.

• Make sure your company page is all it can be – Make sure your company page is attractive, interesting and engaging. Use it to attract new talent, establish credibility, and connect with influential people and top prospects. Post interesting and interactive updates and monitor your efforts with LinkedIn’s analytics feature.

• Get serious about your LinkedIn followers – Be serious about building your followers. Interact and network with the people and brands you follow. Provide value-added updates on your personal profile and company page.

Growing your reputation connection by connection:

In South Africa 20 million people are connected to the web. It’s time to take advantage of those connections. Every little connection will add to your pile of stones and over time that pile of stones (your reputation) will grow into a huge reputation. The average person has approximately 200 connections on various social media platforms. If you connect with the correct people, your network will become that more expanded.

Everything you put online stays there for a while, even after it has been deleted. Whatever you upload on the web will assist in building your brand and reputation. Are you making sure what you put out there is linking to your vision and goals?

Key takeaways:

• “It’s better to be the best connected than the most connected.”
• “Digital technology changes the way we experience each other.”
• “To lead in your industry, you HAVE to outlearn the competition.” ~ Dave Duarte.
• “Social Media is leveling the playing field like never before, enabling organizations to articulate their brand every day, in many ways” ~ Dave Duarte.

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Volvo has taken their brand image to the next level. Their latest video has seen viral results in the past five days. With over 30 million views on YouTube and over 1.6 million shares on social media, Volvo has struck viral gold. Uploaded to YouTube on the 15^th of November 2013, the collaboration between Van Damme and Volvo is simply genius.

Barbara Lippert, an advertising columnist from mediapost.com com says, “This is completely unique. It’s an incredible human way to show the equilibrium of the steering of the truck,” she says, adding that “anyone who knows anyone who drives a truck or owns a truck will mention it to them. People love this stuff.”

By using social media as the basis of their campaign, Volvo used this strategically to target not only their existing target market, but they’ve begun targeting future truck drivers in the younger generation too. Smart move, Volvo. Smart move.

The video depicts the legendary action movie star demonstrating the stable and secure steering of Volvo trucks by balancing between them, one leg on each. As the truck moves back, Van Damme does the splits and holds it with a triumphant music score in the background.

Whether or not this video spectacular improves brand image or increases sales is one thing. But what’s for sure, is that this is one video that will be spoken about for a long, long time.

Check out the video here: Volvo Trucks – The Epic Split feat. Van Damme