When businesses in West Africa decide on social media marketing they often choose someone who is “always on Facebook”. However, doing social media for business requires skill, and marketing experience. If you want to actually grow your business using social media then you need to have a social media marketing plan.
VR&C Marketing Company has done social media for business in West Africa since 2012. In Ghana we managed Aquafresh’s Kalyppo brand through the 2016 elections fever, and in Sierra Leone we kick started the Brewery’s most successful branded social media effort to date when we launched a campaign for King Leone Beer.
These are the first 5 things we do when we have a new social media client. If you’re planning on social media for business they might be helpful to you too.
The VR&C Marketing Social Media for Business Approach
- We Assess Your Existing Social Media
In order to develop your social media strategy, we start by looking at where you are. We look at all your social media accounts; what you’ve been posting, how often, and who have your reached. Is the tone, image, and community you’ve built around your brand in line with your business goals. No social media presence? Then we go right away to #4 and look at what industry leaders are doing, to learn the best practices that we need to apply to help your business grow with social media
- We Ask You Lots of Questions
This doesn’t mean we send you a form to fill, rather it means that we take the time to understand your overall business strategy, and your brand’s voice. We try to understand your vision, and what you believe makes your brand special, and the problems that you seek to solve for your customers. If you don’t know the answers we work with you to to arrive at them.
- We Study Current Social Media Trends
There isn’t a day that goes by that a new app, tool, or update isn’t released. Social media trends are constantly changing. To be effective with what we do, we have to stay abreast of changing algorithms, tools for engagement, and sales lead generation. In order to stay up to date; we read reports, follow social media marketing blogs, and try to understand how West Africa fits into the global social media data. What trends will affect us here on the ground? What are global industry leaders doing that we can learn from, tweak, and implement for your benefit.
- We Dive into Your Industry
Your brand is important but so are your competitors. What are they doing on social media? We examine the social media campaigns of your competitors, we follow them to identify the effectiveness of their efforts. We also look at their reach, response rate, and how they engage with their customers who are also technically your potential customers. The insights we get from the industry competitors and your potential customers is what guides the social media marketing plan and strategy.
- We Stick with What Works
Data is the key to social media marketing success. No other advertising medium is going to give you data as accurate as social media platforms. Whether it is Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Snapchat or Linkedin, you have to look at your data. When your social media metrics show us what is working, we follow those patterns. The engagement we get on social media is in actuality instant feedback as you would get from a focus group. We have to do active social listening so that we can always drive your brand towards what works.
