Cerebra

That awkward moment when you ask your boss what your job actually is.

That’s actually how it all started, a conversation between and myself about what my job entails, after nearly four years as a Community Manager. When he asked what I meant, I simply stated, “Is my job to make the community care about the brand, or to make the brand care about the community?”

It was a tough question; we hadn’t considered that it could be both.

Social media has brought along with it a chance for brands as a whole to interact with their customers in a way they were never able to. The main difference is that we’re now behind digital code, which for the most part, doesn’t hold personality as well as the corporate communications spokesperson or CEO.

Not only are brands grappling to define and refine their online personality, they also have to ensure consistency across all channels. Accurately defining your ‘social personality’ is incredibly important.

Africa is the final economic frontier. Marketers are actively looking to market their brands on the continent, yet very few are investing time and effort into the continent to really understand it; even less into its social media habits. Mike Stopforth, CEO and founder, Cerebra, maintains that over the last five to six years of business, social media has forced companies, globally, to acknowledge the humanity of their brand and their staff.

"It is not about Facebook or the actual channels, but about people connecting and communicating differently than before. A company that says we want to be social and assumes that if they have a Twitter account and videos on YouTube they are... that's just wrong.

Mobile communications company Vodacom is the only African brand to have its social media platforms, run by integrated strategic communication agency Cerebra, recognised by the 2013 Social Brands 100 report.

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Inoxico

Cerebra is happy to announce that as of January 2013 they will be adding Inoxico to their list of PR clients. Inoxico is a registered credit bureau providing business intelligence solutions based on specialised commercial credit information. Inoxico’s services include the Association Matrix , a web-based application that allows you to track and audit company and individual associated relationships within your organisational ecosystem.