I know how much patience I need to have with my father and to a lesser extent, my mother. Getting them internet literate is an arduous task sometimes. But dad has a business which turnaround time could be exponentially increased by using the internet / e-mail and has huge online marketing potential.

He has only installed DSL three weeks ago and very seldom uses it…

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the need to educate people about the potential benefits of social media and internet marketing. I think in this country the need goes even deeper, in that there’s still a big gap in the fundamental education - so many people don’t even have basic internet literacy.

Just one example: my wife teaches at an upmarket private school in Joburg, one that prides itself on its progressive approach to education, and certainly has the resources to adopt new technologies. However the computer curriculum consists of one period a week playing around with obsolete tools, partly because the school doesn’t have a decent internet connection and because the teachers themselves don’t know anything of what’s happening on the internet.

I don’t know who or what is responsible for the extremely slow uptake on new developments, but maybe this should be one of the areas of focus in educating schoolkids with ‘internet life skills’ rather than Wordart.

As you suggest Henré, the biggest obstacle to all this is the restricted telecomms infrastructure.

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Ive tried it before and it’s difficult which often leads me back to chatting with fellow web marketers.

But it’s something we need to do. I think the reason we’re struggling is because we want to preach to much at once. Back to basics should be the motto.

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But, I believe we charge for the wrong things at this stage. There’s a lot of money to be made, for both the businesses and the web strategists, but I don’t believe the infrastructure is in place yet.

I have a simple 3 step approach to this: Familiarize, popularize and then commercialize.

We’ve not even begun to complete step one.

How do we engage 300 000 businesses? I think offline is a good start. And offline includes these expensive seminars which I feel should be free.

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This is definitely a problem the SA online / social media / networking / blogging / marketing fraternity face all the time. We preach to the converted time and time again.

With regards to those uber elite marketing courses and presentations, the same old people seem to attend them aswell - and that has to do with the pricing model. Its just way to expensive for Joe Marketer that works for Joe Shop to attend.

I don’t have the answers on how to engage with those 300 000 SME’s you mentioned, but I’m sure as hell trying to find a way to!

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