Observations on Silicon Cape’s Social Media Success

[Eshaam Rabaney]

Was it the 140 blogs mentioning the phrase “Silicon Cape”, perhaps the ±140 average views of the Silicon Cape video footage or the hundreds of #SiliconCape tweets, tweeting its way to a GLOBAL trending topic?

Whichever it may have been, Silicon Cape has impressively embraced social media less than most, gathering over 1500 participants to its community, 470 followers on twitter and 206 fans on FaceBook in the process. All in the space of just a little over a month since initiation.

But, what were the elements of Silicon Cape’s social media success?

1) A SIMPLE CALL TO ACTION. The first thing Silicon Cape asks you to do is to #SiliconCape tweets.

On the campaign website (www.siliconcape.com), in the top left corner, you are greeted with a link to the introductory blog post. Skimming through it, but not missing (in bold) “Follow us on Twitter via @SiliconCape and tag your tweets with #SiliconCape!”

• Some followers started replacing the name “Cape Town” with #SiliconCape
o E.g. http://twitter.com/wjbuys/statuses/5041324197
• And some followers embraced their Savvyness by using 3rd party twitter services such as:
o Twibbon – Creating a support badge for Silicon Cape. http://twibbon.com/join/Silicon-Cape
o Twubs – A Twitter group built around content aggregated from #SiliconCape http://twubs.com/siliconcape
• Then some even went as far as replacing their location in their Twitter profile from Cape Town, South Africa to Silicon Cape, South Africa

All together truly showing how that simple hash tag turned ordinary @SiliconCape followers into media participants and produces of their unique support to the cause.

2) Created a STRONG SENSE OF BELONGING between the participant and vision of Silicon Cape

o What is it? - When finding out more about the Silicon Cape at the website and its objectives, you will read and feel a “MANIFESTO” kind of mode. I say this because it is extremely daring yet powerful at the same time. Daring because of the nature of problems Silicon Cape aims to solve, but powerful because those are problems faced by hundreds of South African’s involved in the SA Web/2.0 space.
o It’s a Revolution – With Silicon Cape’s democratic style of approach, this “Manifesto” mode is then very well complemented. Encouraging participants to nominate, then vote in who they believe should make up the steering committee. Putting the power in to the participants keystrokes, leaving them feeling in control and able to take a stance an act.

Success, of course, would be creating a campaign that moves people to act, is easily passed along, and brings members to your cause or organization. Three ticks for Silicon Cape right?

As Silicon Cape now enters the execution phase, the non-profit organization will soon be established to begin working that manifesto.

With Silicon Cape’s social media success and the fact that NGO’s need to constantly raise funds, I’m curious…will Silicon Cape be leveraging social media to raise money? And if so,
When does engagement lead to money?

Note!
The Silicon Cape website recently under-went a small change in design, no longer linking to the introductory blog post, but rather to the about section. Find the blog here

If you are unfamiliar with the Silicon Cape, you can watch my short presentation summarizing it here, or visit the "manifesto" here.