Corporate Tweeting in Mauritius: It’s a Gag

I went to Twitter to try to find out how many companies and individuals in Mauritius use the instant status update service. Well, for a country whose top executives are always with their Blackberries, Iphones or other Smartphones, the level of tweets is quite low, as if the intelligent hub of the Indian Ocean did not know or simply did not want to use social networks throughout your extension. Why is that? Do we have that kind of apprehension enough to keep us prisoners of limited resources? Some kind of midget complex?

• Orange, (yes Orange! You know the phone, the ISP thing) last tweeted on May 14th.
• Le Defi Media (yes Defi! Radioplus and the newspaper group) = 1 year ago
• Some local SEO company (yes, SEO! You know the ones talking about site optimization and site traffic development) = last February
• Enterprise Mauritius (yes EM! You know investment facilitators) = last March

OKAY! It might seem like I’m hitting hard, not understanding that for some local corporate entities, Twitter is only used as an advertising medium and that’s it! But on the other hand, I find it unnecessary, so wasteful and almost efficient to tweet like drops in the ocean and expect some kind of return on investment. Indeed, this echoes a deep problem underlying the use of the web by businesses in Mauritius. How many times have I browsed local corporate sites only to discover that the latest updates were a year old? I just couldn’t count. Mauritius businesses don’t care about quality content, they just think of their website as a storefront that needs to be cleaned and rearranged once every budget day. This is not normal in 2010! It’s not normal to see investment in cyber presence as the bottom quarter of a dime. Today, more than ever, the presence on the web is essential and must be handled with proper strategic planning by professionals, whether internal or outsourced.

Obviously, it comes down to cost and budget, but the right strategy yields high ROI in the long run. In fact, it is about branding and making the brand breathe every day, bringing the brand closer to people every day, widening the target for better target acquisition. Orange, more than anyone else, knows that in Mauritius there are more than 200,000 Facebookers, that by the end of 2010 one of every two Mauritians will be connected to Broadband, that in Mauritius we have more Mobiles than inhabitants (1.5/inhab) and that the online penetration is at the 53% level. And yet his Twitter account only has 354 followers, including me. This is abnormal, it makes no sense for a company with such important imported branding knowledge. I’m sorry to fall on you guys, but that was the main example that hit me in the eyes.

To be fair to ORANGE, I will say that its closest competitor is not there either.

• EMTEL is not on Twitter and even has a “non-corporate” account. I even tried EMTELNET, without success.
• The MBC, yes. The Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation does not socialize even though they walk into people’s rooms every day.
• I have seen all the RADIO UNO in the world but not the one in Mauritius.
• No trace of RADIO PLUS either and the list goes on and on and on.
• As for the local papers, I guess they’ve never heard of social media.

I talk and exchange every day with dozens of Japanese DJs, journalists, publishers, editors, actors, singers from all over and I cannot understand the emptiness of Mauritius. In contrast to that, France’s L’EXPRESS tweets every hour, a BBC channel almost every 15 minutes, France 2 TV almost every 2 hours, O2, the UK mobile operator, tweets to announce that there are no new announcements and offers technical support. through tweets. WOW! That’s another world really!

Do not misunderstand! It is not about doing things on the same scale but about doing things the right way, with planning and efficiency and not because it is fashionable to tweet or socialize.

All this has to do with the name, the product, the brand and in this century, Social Media and Networking are hard parts of any Branding strategy. It can generate a lot of ROI, credibility and relevance if managed and targeted properly. It consumes time and resources, but it is very rewarding, beyond the profits.

The brand revolves around people. They are at the center of the universe and need to be comforted in their beliefs. They are the ones who decide the popularity of a brand, when to end one product line and start another. They are the creators of the relevance of a brand. Talking to them, informing them, entertaining them, socializing with them in a systematic way is nothing more than helping your brand become stronger and more popular every day, in every ADD. The best example to date is Domenech’s French soccer team, which had not communicated for more than 2 years. The powerful brand “Les Bleus” has just imploded in 24 hours and along with it reduced merchandising sales… up to -50% in some franchised stores and we haven’t talked about its real electronic reputation level yet.

With the new web and social model, it is the people who create the product, it is the product that reaches them, it is the information that falls into their pockets at any time of the day. They are the ones who make the decisions. Believe me, social media is the key to success if managed properly; however, any loose work can spell disaster.

Social Networks… To handle with care!