An update on Eskom’s Online Marketing

A quick update on my previous post about Eskom’s Meatball Sundae… It seems that the beleaguered power utility has been paying a bit more attention to its online reputation management and marketing (perhaps someone read my post and approached them ).

First, a Google link search on Powering South Africa now returns 116 results; whereas, before, it only had two inward links over and above one or two internal links.

Second, whereas a search on ‘Eskom’ returned a lot of highly ranked negative results a month ago, Eskom’s own sites (main and subsidiary) dominate the first page of the search results; and the first truly negative link is only halfway down page 2.

It may be partly explained by the fact that there was much less load shedding in March, and that they haven’t been getting flamed as much lately, but they definitely seem to have been doing some work on their online presence too.

Never under-estimate the power of humour in marketing

Never under-estimate the power of humour in marketing. Last week, I started receiving Eskom jokes and cartoons by email. It happens like clockwork, doesn’t it.

After consulting with one of our spokespersons, I decided to include a “Lighter side of load shedding” on our new blog. I created a Humour category, and posted a couple of humorous pics on Friday.

New DA blog on Eskom load shedding

Last week, we set up a new blog for the DA to write about Eskom’s load-shedding and other energy-related matters. We’ve called it “Shedding Light“.

We want to shed light on the energy crisis using all avenues at our disposal – parliamentary questions, portfolio committees and other sources – and make that information available to the public. But we also want to hear from anyone who’s got a good idea, who wants to comment on our ideas, or who just wants to vent, and have someone take note.

We do post our press releases to the main DA website; but, besides sending an email using one of the maillinks on the “Contact the DA” page, it’s rather limited to one-way communication. We’ve picked up from emails we’ve received over the last couple of weeks that there’s a lot of interest in engaging us on this issue, and we’d like to hear from the public and experts alike – especially on our proposed solutions.

So have a look at the new blog, and let us know what you think.