Social media is a very powerful, yet under-utilized marketing tool. It gives any individual or business the opportunity to interact with communities far away without moving a muscle. It’s more flexible, amazing platforms are being designed each day and the number of social media users is skyrocketing every year. Why are Kenyan businesses not taking full advantage of social media?
Well, many of them have little information on the capabilities of social networking platforms like Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn in marketing their brands. But, there’s nothing to worry about.
That’s why we are here.
With the world moving online, social media has created a space for internet users to interact. It has also provided brands a platform to interact with internet users. Reaching out to you potential customers has been made a lot easier. However, it is important how you place your brand on these platforms and how you interact with your potential clients through social media.
In this post, we are going to give you some awesome social media marketing tips to give your brand a major boost and even highlight some major issues that could be hampering your success in popular social platforms.
Social Media in Kenya – The Statistics
Kenyans use different social media platforms available. Your marketing strategies should always be focused on platforms with the largest following especially for your niche market. Social Media platforms popular among Kenyans include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin.
Kenya has 43.4M internet users. According from data from the Communications Authority of Kenya, active social media users in Kenya are as follows:
- Facebook: 7.1M Monthly Active Users
- Twitter: 1M Monthly Active Users
- Instagram: 4M Monthly Active Users
- Youtube 8 M Monthly Active Users
Social Media Marketing Mistakes You don’t want to make
Below are the 10 common social media marketing mistakes that you will never want to do for your brand.
1. Buying fans and followers
You buy fans and followers because you want to get social proof. What you don’t realize is that it hurts your brand in the long run. When the engagement is so low, search engines will not be showing your posts to many people.
This is because many of the people who have liked your page are not even interested in its updates. Furthermore, those people who sell fans and followers usually have made fake accounts that will be closed whenever the social platform notices the accounts are invalid so you risk losing all those fans you had bought with time.
You would rather have a small following of people who are actually interested in your products or services, rather than have your page liked by non-existent and non-interested followers. Every follower on your social media pages should be a potential customer. You will get a better conversion rate.
2. Failing to create a policy for updates
This is especially important when it comes to social media pages that are managed by several people. You need to have a set of policies on what can and cannot be updated on the site. You also need to lay out policies and rules on how to respond to feedback, criticism and suggestions. If readers sense some form of disparity in the way the communication flows on your page, they will not stick around for long.
Have clear guidelines with your social media admins on how to engage the followers. Individuals may have different personalities and a simple response on social media can end up damaging the image of your brand. To ensure that you maintain a good reputation, always have a policy for updates and engagement.
3. Being in every social network around
You can’t simply manage to be in every social network and give each platform 100%. Furthermore, it’s never good to be a jack of all trades. The social network that you focus on should be based on your industry and niche. Consider your primary demographic and the sites they like to use most.
Considering your products or services, one social media network might work better than the other. While Facebook works well for some products, others may use Youtube better to reach their target market. Find which one works best and invest more time there. However, always make sure the other platforms also have a bit of activity so that you do not lose out on any clients.
4. Failing to use hashtags
Other than using trendy hashtags and posting them on your wall, you also need to create hashtags of your own. You just never know, hash tags can become viral easily and you may end up giving your brand the visibility it has been looking for in years. When posting on the different platforms, make use of hashtags to improve chances of interested users finding your content.
5. Not using social media marketing with other activities
If you expect social media marketing to work alone, you are in for a big surprise. You need to understand that online marketing is a combination of advertising efforts in search engines, social platforms as well as other avenues like email. For instance, placing your Facebook or Twitter account at the end of your email when signing off is always a great marketing technique.
You should always approach online marketing holistically. Find out how you can involve other inbound marketing strategies such as SEO, Email Marketing and Content Marketing. You can also try and include in other outbound marketing activities that you may have.
6. Overselling
Don’t try to push people to buy your products or services on social media. Too much selling is considered a turn off by most social media users. People get to social platforms to interact with their friends and get to experience the brands they love on a lighter note. Showing your consumers that you are not all about selling stuff to them but you also care about their well-being, is a great way to develop a loyal following.
Create a social media calendar that can guide you in the type of content and information you will be sharing. Diversify your content and make sure that you are not always selling to your followers. Share content that your followers will find interesting and want to share it with their followers.
Always keep social media social.
7. Not using visual content
Content marketing is going visual and if you haven’t realized, images and video content are getting more attention than lines of text. To boost engagement, always include nice visuals on your posts. You will end up attracting people to read what is presented after they have been pulled in by the nice visuals.
Rather than always sharing content from other sources, try and generate unique and interesting visual content for your followers.
8. Not setting a good description
Many people have taken up the habit of including their full URL on the description slot only. As much as having your URL is important, it shouldn’t take up the space on the description slot. You need to give a relevant description of your business on your social media pages.
9. Ignoring comments
Social media marketing involves interacting with your customers on different levels. You need to be responsive to customers because it shows other people that they can also ask questions and have you respond. It also helps to create a loyal fan base.
10. Failing to measure results
Most importantly, social media marketing will be a fail if you don’t measure your results. You need to know how well your marketing efforts are paying off. Keep track of the updates that perform better than others and try to understand the reason behind their great response. If possible, calculate your ROI in social media marketing.
Final Word
Social media marketing is not a hard nut to crack. Many businesses can see a huge difference in their brand when they incorporate the tips we’ve mentioned above.
Have you tried correcting any of the above mistakes? We’d love to hear from you.
