Infographic: Over 7.5 million Africans on LinkedIn; South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt account for over 60% of users
Africa is the world’s second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. Social media in general is taking Africa by storm . Over 7.5 million Africans use LinkedIn, over 20% are entry-level, and the majority of the users are ages 18-34, most of them are male. LinkedIn is quickly gaining popularity among working class professionals in Africa though it is still far less popular compare to Facebook and Twitter. Other countries with the fastest growing number of users include Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Morocco, and Cameroon as seen in the images below.
Social Media Marketing Strategy
Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites. Social media can also be viewed as a monitoring tool, widely used to inform customer service, product development and marketing activities.
Social media marketing uses technology to build relationships, drive repeat business and attract new customers through friends sharing with friends. Social media marketing not only increases branding and website traffic, it is a powerful influence in overall search engine optimization.
Social media marketing can help you increase the activity around these top goals:
- Website traffic and user behavior (external and internal tracking)
- Conversion and sales tracking
- Page views, ad exposure
- Raising brand awareness
- Creating a positive brand association and keeping it there
- Broader customer reach
When shifting gears from traditional marketing to social media, it is important for a company to prepare a scheme. The strategy begins with a focus, which include goals. And those goals can include short and long-term goals. When you think about social media, it is important to remember to set realistic business goals. For example: Are you going to generate leads, answer complaints, engage with customers, or something else? Will you be doing all the above? How will this relate to other functions and tools, like the rest of the marketing plan or the rest of customer service? Try to stay focused and be specific.
Social Media Strategy (ROI and Audience)
Social Media Marketing is not necessarily a direct sales tool, but is effective at engaging your audience, conversations, expand web presence, build brand awareness, generate expose and provides SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefits.
Some marketers say social media has no ROI but is great for:
- Brand building
- Relationship management
- Product development
- Reputation management
- Customer interaction
- Customer feedback
- Customer support
- Community building
Jeffrey Hayzlett, former Kodak CMO said: “Social media is not a campaign. It is a commitment.” Meaning a social media plan should cover your immediate and short-term while keeping an eye to the fact that technology changes all the time, if not daily. Don’t be surprised that some of the tools you chose are outdated by the time you get around accessing them. Flexibility is the key to success in business today.
One of the most frequent questions is that how do you measure ROI on social media? It is possible, but it’s not black and white. The same question could be asked about how can you measure ROI on organizational emails. The absence of social media, a striking example: an email in your organization would lead to an implicit cost of being in business. You can get greater profits using social media marketing that can help cut expenses and increase revenue.
For example: more traffic equals more profit.
Marketing
“Marketing takes day to learn. Unfortunately it takes a lifetime to master”.
(Philip Kotler, 1931 -, US marketing guru)
The Marketing Explorer 