Nokia gets social with Ringaz

Nokia yesterday announced the virtual introduction of its South African blog, titled Nokia Ringaz (pronounced Ring-uz), http://ringaz.nokia.co.za.
Ringaz, which is South African township slang for “many conversations”, will host stories from in and around the Nokia community including its people, products and services, opinions, business, trends and beyond.

“In South Africa, Nokia has come a long way since we first started testing the waters with social media and the rapidly progressing online world,” says Tania Steenkamp, Communications Manager at Nokia South Africa. “It has been an incredible learning process, and I am so excited to watch Ringaz grow into the online dialogue we are hoping for.”

Nokia began its social media initiatives in early 2009 with a social media audit to gain insight into what conversations were taking place online in South Africa. With the addition of online reputation management (ORM) service, BrandsEye, Nokia established an understanding of the landscape, and an appropriate entrance strategy. From the initial research, the progress has been swift with Nokia engaging with many of South Africa’s top bloggers through various launch activities, the “Search for N” competition, on-going story ideas, competitions and an extensive device review programme. In addition, with the launch of the Nokia Music Store in April 2009, a NMS_ZA Twitter feed was opened to update South African music fans on free tracks, new artists available on the store and Nokia music news. This community will now become a broader Nokia South Africa channel where all news including Music updates will be shared with all the members, building on the conversations already started.

“The next major step for Nokia was the launch of our social media press office in South Africa in November 2009,” continues Steenkamp. “At the time, we were constantly trying to find ways to offer our content to bloggers in a format that suited their blogs or websites, and that was available at any time, night or day. NokiaConnect is a critical tool in helping us to scale to the demands of dealing with bloggers and media alike.”

Nokia Ringaz, which is loosely based on the official Nokia international blog, Nokia Conversations, was live from yesterday, the 23rd of June 2010. To get the conversation started, Ringaz launches with a month-long promotion, searching for a South African mobile technology enthusiast who will join the Ringaz team as one of the 4 bloggers, contributing on a weekly basis to the blog. Motivations for the position should be sent to Ringaz@ovi.com before the end of July 2010.