What is occupying the minds of those responsible for managing Stakeholder Communications, Public Relations and Marketing in South Africa?
This is a subject that we obsess about, and we believe it is critical to use data to help inform our response to this question. To that end, we use data including Google Analytics, Keyword Analysis, Social Media posts and trending media articles to help us develop relevant solutions for our clients.
We typically run these reports between the 10th and 14th of the month and analyse the data accordingly.
Based on our data for November, the following trends are emerging:
Event attendance and no-shows:
A social media post from Rich Mulholland on LinkedIn tops the list of trending posts on our radar.
Rich Mulholland is one of the leading speakers in South Africa and the founder of Missing Link.
In the post, Rich highlights that pre-pandemic it was normal to work on an assumption that there would be 10% “no-shows” when you arrange any event – in South Africa this has now grown to 30% no-shows for clients
The post received over 130 comments from a variety of industry participants and continues to receive interactions and comments with many affirming that 30% – 50% no-show is becoming the norm for event planners.
Warren Wheatley and Altvest remain trending
This remains an overhang from the listing of Altvest on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in October 2024 but continues to attract significant search traffic to our site.
Our interview with Warren post the release of the Altvest results remains a trending blog post for us.
Warren is also featured in our second most popular blog post where he makes a suggestion around ownership of the Springbok rugby brand.
“Investor Comms” is rising
Based on our search data, we are seeing a [relative] increase in the number of South Africans searching for the phrase “Investor Comms” (Investor Communications).
While this is a bit of an isolated data point at the moment, we do note that JP Morgan was quoted by various media sources – including Engineering News and Fin24 / Bloomberg – that they anticipated a “surge” in Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) on the JSE.
LinkedIn is back in vogue as an owned-media asset
An interesting trend we have noticed in the last 4 to 6 weeks has been the number of executives and entrepreneurs revisiting LinkedIn as part of their “Owned” media strategy.
With the South African traditional media sector under pressure, we are increasingly seeing our clients looking to develop LinkedIn-specific content including newsletters to help position themselves as industry thought-leaders.
The Youth Content Collective (YCC) makes an appearance
This is a social impact project that we are particularly proud of supporting and it is great to see it being picked up through Google search traffic.
The Youth Content Collective (YCC) was a project developed in conjunction with the Youth Employment Service (YES) and aims to give work experience to young creatives including videographers and photographers. In essence, one of the big challenges that young creatives face is that if they do not attend the right design schools, it is very difficult for them to get work experience in the right agencies and build portfolios.
The YCC allows these youth to gain 12-month work experiences while working on briefs for a variety of partners from large banking and financial services groups through to smaller entrepreneurial organisations through initiatives like the #Youth4Tourism programme.
As part of their work is subsidised, you are able to get trained videographers and photographers at below agency rates and help these young creatives build up a portfolio and ultimately access supply chains.
Donald Trump, Mauritius and Social Media
Finally, we can’t ignore two other events where the role of social media versus “Mainstream Media” is trending.
The first is Donald Trump winning the US elections and the role that social media played in his election. There is an interesting column from Koshiek Karan on Biznews which is worth a read.
The second is the social media “shutdown” imposed by the government of Mauritius following the release of incriminating leaked audio clips. This was the first time that social media services have been shut down in Mauritius.
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