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“Ryan Hogarth is a phenomenal speaker. He has great insight and is very interactive with his client. Our audience thoroughly enjoyed his presentation content and technique. We would love to use him for future events.” Tasnim Mutan, South African Council of Shopping CentresRe-engineering Business
I am a professional keynote & business speaker and Social Media Catalyst.
I present on how business can be re-engineered through Social Media and I work with businesses to do just that.
I'm available right now to discuss what you need: +27 82 4418417 or
Ryan@Hogarth.co.zaClick here to get more information on my presentations.
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Author Archives: Ryanhogarth
Document your Tweets & Make a Timeline Movie – Two Cool Things this Week
Two quick cool things I discovered this week, one on Twitter and the other on Facebook. The first I discovered courtesy of a tweet from Ogilvy who had a social media masterclass last week, hosted by Melissa Attree. After the event they sent out a “TweetDoc”. This is a very cool service, which I discovered has been around for 3 years already! Essentially it’s a way to document all the tweets for an event. https://twitter.com/#!/OgilvyJoburg/status/163886111209435136 Go to TweetDoc.com, enter a hashtag and it will produce a PDF document of all the tweets during the event. A very cool addition for … Continue reading
Posted in Social Media, Tips
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Twitter can now Selectively Remove Content
In a blog posted on their site on 26 January, Twitter explained that as they grow and expand into new countries they are faced with freedom of expression issues unique to each country. While Twitter is incompatible with countries that outlaw any kind of speech freedom and therefore it cannot exist (at least at this time and in this form) one example listed was Germany where freedom of expression is encouraged but certain views are outlawed such as anything pro-nazi. The only way that Twitter could previously comply to content restrictions was to remove content. However such removal had to … Continue reading
Posted in Social Media, Twitter
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Social Media by the Numbers? No, by the People
It is our very nature to be seduced by numbers, by things that are big and shiny. Return on Investment – ROI – is the constant question of social media. Nothing gets social media people hemming and hawing and mumbling into their shoes like the ROI question. And given the newness of social media it is no wonder there has been no definitive answer. For many though it seems quite straightforward: Followers, fans and Klout score. However, to an ever growing number there is the realisation that building a loyal, communicating community is a much greater prize. This realisation comes … Continue reading
Posted in Social Media
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Follow your Pinterests
I, like most people that are actively connected, get 3-5 invitations every month for some new social interest. If it looks interesting enough I may register in order to reserve my username in case it makes it big one day but most are ignored. So it was when I heard about Pinterest. But then I saw an article about them, then another. By the third I thought it was time to check it out. I signed up for an account and experimented a little and spoke with some people that have used it. Following is my description of … Continue reading
Posted in Social Media
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Never sweat a hard drive crash: How to get onto the Cloud
It’s happened to most of us: An unexpected and fatal laptop crash. I was 12 hours away from a presentation in Durban. I turned on the laptop to have a last run through of the presentation, only to be greeted by a message that went something like “hard drive? What hard drive?”. As I swallowed my panic I realised I had copies of my presentation on Dropbox and Google Docs. I downloaded it onto my tablet and the following morning I delivered a killer presentation. As our business lives become more integrated there is a greater demand to be connected … Continue reading
Posted in How-To, Social Media
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Your Business, Five Years from Now
When it comes to social media or social business this is the article of the year. Written by Dave Evans who in 2007 wrote Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day. It’s an article I wish I had written. In it he makes the case for dropping the term ‘social’ since being connected has become (and will be more and more) the central point from which we depart. That is to say, we must recognise that ‘everyone’ is connected. I understand that in an African context this is not quite the case but it is changing rapidly – half the … Continue reading
Posted in Social Media
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Will your bank ever send you a friend request?
Customer service is the bane of the business/consumer connection. “Relationship” is defined as: the mutual dealings, connections, or feelings that exist between two parties, countries, people, etc: a business relationship. “Friendship” is defined as: a friendly relation or intimacy; friendly feeling or disposition. Social Media has radically changed everything about how our world does business and interacts. Perhaps the modern conundrum of customer relations needs to be turned on its head and the social medium is the way it will be done. Looking at the definition of relationship above, it’s a little cold. This certainly describes my interaction with say Vodacom … Continue reading
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Internal Corporate Communication: Going Social!
How to communicate effectively with your whole team? A question that has plagued execs since there were corporates. And the bigger they get the bigger the plague. Today I sat down with Gerry Skerrit, Managing Director of Dream Team Catalyst, probably South Africa’s premier Team Building company. With their head office in Midrand they have 20 staff including 4 in their Cape Town office. I discovered a couple weeks ago that they use a social media platform for their internal social interaction and communication called Yammer. Since I’ve been billing myself as a social media expert I was embarrassed to admit that … Continue reading
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South Africa’s 10 Most Popular Company Facebook Pages
I just read a blog by Jeff Bullas covering the world’s 10 most popular Company Facebook pages. That lead me to thinking which are the top 10 pages in South Africa. It is very interesting to note that there is only one company that features in the top 20 overall in South Africa. The rest are all musicians, celebrities or sports teams. I was stunned to see that Cell-C didn’t make the top 10, languishing with just under 5000 fans. If the list tells us one thing it’s that there is real estate to be claimed by companies and brands that think quick … Continue reading
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The Dog Ate my Observation
Businesses, both large and small, are at an interesting juncture in South Africa with regard to social media. There is a sense of anxiety about it. Businesses are aware that they should be “doing” social media – the numbers are just too overwhelming to be ignored. But all too often there is a knee jerk reaction to it – slapping up a Facebook page, opening a twitter account and working desperately to rack up the followers and ‘likes’. After a rush of excitement the pages go stale and the Twitter account lies dormant. Or worse, negative sentiment takes over and … Continue reading
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