Source: Fayaaz Akoob
What is Iman-Net?
The Iman-Net conference aimed at linking Muslim organisations with Tech vendors to facilitate collective growth & development. What worked very well was the fact that the Media and Tech professionals who offered their presentations, their keynotes were on solving real world challenged faced by Islamic organisation.
In attendance:
- Muslim Organisations
- Educational Institutes
- Muslim Dawah Organisations
- Muslim Charities
- Masjid Boards
- Muslim Media Houses
- Muslim Businesses
Tech Vendors who were in attendance
- Graphic Designers
- Marketing Professionals
- Website Designers
- Audio/Visual Vendors
- Print Houses
- Social Media Experts
- Media Experts
Awqaf SA attended this event as a delegate and we decided to share a brief report on what was shared at the conference.
Vendor Showcase
Muslim Central
Muslim Central is the biggest Audio bank of audio lecturers from islamic lecturers from arounfd the world. The site boasts a Quarter million users on site. The website is unique in that there are no adverts on the site, however they are dependant on donations and Muslim Central is a registered NPO
Muslim Central boasts audios lectures from Islamic scholars including Shaykh Faaik Gamieldien, Mufti Menk and Nouman Ali Khan. See full list here
Lote Tree Media
Hosted a Competition at the conference and a lucky delegate won a website designed by the agency.
80% will be content marketing
Keyline Graphics
Is a Adobe Authorised Training Centre and offers Adobe Photoshop and Video post production course.
Keyline Graphics shared the following content marketing tips with regard to rich media content:
- There has been an explosion of Video content consumption of the past five years.
- it is the ultimate medium
- the medium organises information in a memorable and dramatic way
- it’s an opportunity to gain customer loyalty
Key notes
Mohammed Zaoud /Marketing & Brand Specialist
The Madhab of Marketing
Background
Mohammed Zaoud is currently the Head of Marketing – MENA, at Al Jazeera Media Network where he leads the marketing strategy and team for Al Jazeera’s flagship Arabic channel and AJ+. Mohammed previously worked in brand management at Johnson & Johnson, Colgate Palmolive and McDonald’s Australia. Mohammed has extensive experience working within the Australian Muslim community and currently holds positions in many Muslim organisations in Sydney.
Keynote Highlights
- Muslim community is very fragmented, but there is a growing crowd cluster globally.
- to succeed in the muslim community, you need to spend.
- Strengthen relationships with key opinion leaders
- Trust is king in the muslim community
CRM (customer relationship management)
- Develop and nurture a strong database
- Respect your donors on your database
- See Zoho and Salesforce for examples
Social Media
- Have a robust Social Media strategy
- 70 % Engagement – have valuable content for engagement
- 30 % sales – have a soft sell approach
- Plan and execute your comms plans
- Stay disciplined
Apps for productivity
- Launch good – a crowd funding application
- Shoebox – video tool
- You zign – graphic design tool
Salaah Media
Humanitarian media
was defined as telling human stories
Salaah Media started in January 2016 and with a help of smartphone documented the plight of drought in affecting the community of Aliwal North. They interviewed affected members of the community and documented the starck images of the dry river banks. This was the start of of Operation hydrate and with the use of social media was able to collect enough funds to send bottle water to the area.
Social Media is an enabler in communities development.
“Our mission is to take the muslim voice and story to the world.”
Azhar Vadi – Salaah Media
Recent projects
Vegetable garden with the aid of borehole pumped water to ensure sustainability for the community.
Zaheer Khan
Technology Trends
These are the highlights from Zaheer’s talk about the Organisation and the donor.
- Are you using make use the latest trends like Pokemon Go to bring in donors?
- QR codes should used more, its part of our daily lives now, we no longer print our Airport boarding passes, instead we scan the codes from our smartphone.
- The greatst technological Innovation came out of economic downturns in the global economy, namely
- Air Bnb – there was a need for cost effective accomodation
uber – there was a need for competitive solution to costly for transport
Trends
Digitaltrust
- Technology vision evolution 2014 – 2016
- Islamic revolution is going a revolution
Intelligent Automation
- It is a threat to the jobs of the convetional labour force
- It can’t be ignored as it creates an economies of scale in business.
- Adapting to new skills is required.
- Knowledge should be upgraded all the time.
- Raising the expertise gives you a chance to scale.
Platform Economy
Connecting all devices, watches, fridges, phones, tv’s eg: Samusng and Apple
- predictable Disruption
- there could a margin of growth if an NGO utilises this platform.
Digital Trust
This involves the relationship between the donor and the respective organisation.
- Security is of classified details should be assured
- their info has not been used or sold.
- transparency of how donors money is sold.
- donors sms and email contacts.
- researching the popi act will help
What is you appetite as an organisation?
- do you want to change the game?
- where do you want to be?
- how are we changing that feeling have when people walk into your branch
- the feeling they have when you speak to you donors over the phone
Tools
- Exchange mail
- Federation – for collab work and sharing info
- Data Zen – generates analytics from Excel
- Casemaster – check on duplication in our work, the system has been implemented with Sanzaf
- Astana project management tool
Market Research
A study was conducted by Iman-net and a report was generated. Click here to view the report
It was a brief survey of Muslims organisations across South Africa and scored them on the online media profile. the following type of organisations were interviewed:
- Media (Radio stations)
- Organisations
These organisations were scored based on the following criteria:
Photo highlights
Click here to view
Official Photos
Click here to view
