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.

Boardrooms, marketing meetings, and agencies around the world are abuzz with the words ‘Social Media’, however, “Social Business” is still a relatively new term that needs some clarifying.

Let’s start with the definitions:

Social Media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.

New research report by Cerebra, examines the social media and social business practices of Africa’s top 200 companies.

When ranking brand social engagement in Africa, telecoms companies lead the way, occupying four of the top five positions. In no particular order, they are: Safaricom (), MTN Nigeria (), Mobinil (), Maroc Telecom (). This according to the 2013 Cerebra Social Business Africa Report, a comprehensive study of the internal collaboration and external social engagement of Africa’s top 200 companies, powered by Fuseware.

This is a popular question and in order to give a meaningful answer, it's best to revisit what 'social business' means and then unpack how this impacts on business decisions.

At its core, a social business understands that people do business with people. A social business focuses on leveraging conversations and collaboration in order to more effectively achieve overarching marketing, sales, communication and business objectives.

Following the success of the inaugural Social Business Summit last year, sponsors Cerebra and WyseTalk have confirmed that , Chief Strategy Officer of Dachis Group, will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Social Business Africa conference.

Social Business Africa empowers business decision makers with insights and practical tools to transform their organisations from the inside out, and capitalise on the disruptive nature of social customers, employees, and technologies.