This Forrester study (How Marketers Can Transform Their Business With Online Marketing) commissioned by Omniture emphasizes that strategy skills are the most important skills for an organisation to consider when interacting with clients or prospects online. "What’s clear from this study is that online marketers must go beyond their traditional role as the owner of the online presence and content to focusing on customer behaviour and insight generation. This requires marketing organizations to bolster their current skills portfolio to include strategists and analytically-focused talent that can understand consumer behaviour and generate insights to support changes to go-to-market strategies and create operational efficiencies that impact the top and bottom line."

Business networking Internet is still in its infancy as a business discipline. It is starting, however to create formal inroads in many large and small business strategies, processes and procedures. South Africa is also starting to use the Internet to keep in touch with likeminded professionals and unify businesses with common challenges. It’s used as a platform to network effectively to efficiently gain impetus to lobby to the government and other organisations. Internet Communication Professionals Africa is a very new example of a professional network that intends to grow into a representative voice for business. A shining example of this a global professional network is LinkedIn.com. It is a professional networking tool that is free and has 45M users (August 12, 2009), has had 331M page views (June 2009) and is valued at $1B (2008), it has been profitable for 2 years. It has been noted as a site with a younger, more affluent, more influential and harder-to-find audience than the leading business sites; Wall street journal, Forbes and Business Week.

 

 

There are 337,360 South African professionals on LinkedIn. A large number of these are marketers and human resources. There are 11,697 results for ZA, Marketing and Advertising, Market Research professionals and 6,675 in Human Resources. The ability to filter and communicate with specific segments of this community makes it a powerful lead sourcing and research tool.

 

There are 337,360 South African professionals on LinkedIn. A large number of these are marketers and human resources. There are 11,697 results for ZA, Marketing and Advertising, Market Research professionals and 6,675 in Human Resources. The ability to filter and communicate with specific segments of this community makes it a powerful lead sourcing and research tool.

 

I recently incorporated LinkedIn into an Internet Strategy for a client. The research conducted into the benefits and opportunities was astounding. Further, the global business network is embracing LinkedIn and business networking lie never before. South Africa has an opportunity to expand their information horizons way beyond what we could ever have imagined. All it takes is a little focus and willingness to learn and cautiously test the waters. Soon South African business could be leading the developing world riding the in vortex of the global business information wave.