This month the AlterSage team is celebrating its third birthday. We've come a long way since Christine opened AlterSage's doors in 2006: Our team has grown, we've moved to bigger offices, we've redesigned our website and we've added more services to our SEM offerings. Most notably, our client portfolio has experienced fantastic growth, and features a significant number of well-known clients, both local and international. So it's a very happy birthday to Altersage - here's to many more successful years!

With the celebratory toast out of the way, it's time to get down to business! In this edition of the newsletter, we highlight some of the top events that took place during the last month, as well as upcoming events, client news and articles that the AlterSage team found interesting - and wants to share with you.

What We're Up To

Together with about 500 others we attended the Silicon Cape event on 8 October at the Bay Hotel in Camps Bay. Initiated by Vinny Lingham, founder of Yola.com, and Justin Stanford, CEO of 4D Innovations Group, the event focused on the challenges and opportunities surrounding the creation of an ICT innovation hub in the Western Cape. Special guests included Premier Helen Zille, Dr Mamphela Ramphele and Johann Rupert. You can read all about Silicone Cape on the AlterSage blog.

Out and About

On 27 November the next Cape Town 27 Dinner will be taking place at the Societi Bistro in Gardens. Register on the website to reserve your seat.

Due to a busy schedule, our Social Media Marketing workshop has been postponed to the middle of November. The interactive workshop will discuss social media's role in today's marketing campaigns, and explore the most effective social media platforms available. We'll also talk about the uses of social media, social media monitoring and guidelines for corporate social media engagement. The investment per attendee is R495 (excluding VAT) and includes notes on the seminar, parking and snacks. To book, or for more information, please email Carla.

Client News

Although it takes between 12-18 months for SEO campaigns to mature, we are sometimes approached by individuals that would like to ensure that their foundations are solid, but are not in need of a continued managed SEO campaign. We are very pleased to report that the once-off SEO implementation for Petra Jewellery has already made a difference to her website post implementation. Compared to the benchmark taken prior to implementation where the website was hardly ranking for general terms on search engines, post implementation Petrajewellery ranked in the top three search results for key-phrases such as 'custom jewellery design South Africa', 'professional jewellery designer' and 'fine jewellery design South Africa' amongst 20 other Top 10 terms, across various search engines. AlterSage further increased total visitors to Petrajewellery by 14.18%, and traffic from search engines (organic traffic) made up 74.29% of the total traffic to the site.

Industry News

Mobile marketing in South Africa
Did you know that South Africa is becoming a mobile web leader? Rick Joubert, the founding chairman of the South African Mobile Association (MMA), discusses why South Africa is considered a mobile marketing pioneer. With 37 million cell phone users countrywide, South Africa consistently ranks in the top six markets of major global advertising networks. Moreover, services like MXit and The Grid both have a user base that extends beyond the South African market.

Have your brand where your customers can see it
We all know that the Internet is immense. According to Internetworldstats.com, there are an estimated 1.6-billion people online - representing just under a quarter of the world's population. And people are pretty passionate about being online too: A study published on Net Imperative in December 2008 showed that consumers in the UK would be more likely to give up fresh fruit and vegetables than their broadband connection to save money in the recession. How do you get these users' attention? This article discusses why Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is still the most effective way to target the right audience and increase quality traffic to your website.

Interesting Reading

Corporate social media marketing
Social media is changing the way business is done. More and more brands are experimenting with social media - yet it seems as if many are doing it only to tick "social media" on their marketing activities list. Very few brands invest time in creating a social media strategy, and even fewer have someone dedicated to the brand's social media activities. Here, we discuss how corporate brands should consider approaching social media marketing.

Digital divide bridged by mobile
The digital divide is steadily being bridged by cell phones. According to Rick Joubert, founding chairman of the South African Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), South Africa has more than 10 million unique mobile Internet users per month, compared to just over 5 million unique desktop Internet users per month. It is interesting to note that less than 30% of mobile Internet users have easy access to desktop Internet.

The Last Word

We would like to welcome another Sage to the team. Debby Querido joins the AlterSage team as Content Team Leader. Welcome Debby!

As always, we’d love to hear from you. If you have any comments or queries, feel free to contact us or send us a tweet @altersage. Until November, keep well!

See the possibilities,
Christine and the Sages