Business growth and social media

On a daily basis, about three million Ghanaians combine their routine schedules with the fidgeting of their mobile phones on Facebook, trying to catch-up with their friends and families, replying messages and/or reading about events in the country and world.

A similar number of people, if not more, get glued to their smart devices, exchanging messages, pictures and/or videos on WhatsApp, Instangram, twitter and Youtube – the four most popular social media platforms after Facebook.

While this trend has created a huge source of employment to many Internet-savvy Ghanaians, mostly the youth, it has caused the collapse of many businesses while reshaping the growth of others nationwide.

This has become imperative for businesses to be innovative in other to be able to evolve with the times else they risk dying as a result.

To help give the business community and audience insights into the dynamics of the new trend, the weekly motivational radio talk show, Springboard, Your Virtual University, dedicated its June 28 edition to issues on social media and how businesses could capitalise on it to grow their business.

It was a continuation of the series on entrepreneurship and business growth introduced two months ago to help expose audience to the rudiments of entrepreneurship and the running of existing businesses. 

The discussion featured two experts in the online space. The two, the Country Manager of Google Ghana, Ms Estelle Akofio-Sowah, and the Founder and Managing Director of PopOut Ghana, Mr Maximus Ametorgoh, took the audience through the rudiments of social media, certering on the theme: ‘Social media as enablers for business growth.’

Relevance

Underscoring the relevance of social media in the country, Ms Akofio-Sowah said global research had showed that many people were trooping to social media platforms on a daily basis. The time they spent on those platforms was also on the increase, she said, quoting data from Socialakers, an international company that analyses events on social media.

“For the businessperson, what this statistics (that a quarter of the world’s population is online daily) means is that your business also needs to go online,” Mr Ametorgoh said.

“If 68 per cent of the three billion people online are on social media, then it means if your business wants to connect with your consumers online, then social media is one of the things that you must consider,” he said.

This will ensure that the business stays in touch with its customers to be able to gain customer insights.

She, however, noted that most businesses in the country were not able to properly exploit the benefits of social media due to lack of understanding how those platforms operate.

“A lot of people aren’t getting it right. Some just think that you can create a Facebook page and everybody will know about you. No, that is not necessarily going to convert into the kind of engagement that you want, be it for them to buy something or know about your product offerings,” she said.

That not said, Ms Akofio-Sowah added that Ghanaian businesses were not investing the right amount of resources into the use of social media to promote thier products and services, something she said needed to be changed for the benefit of the business community.

Getting the dynamics right

To be able to properly exploit the various social media platforms, Mr Ametorgoh said businesses needed to align their marketing objectives with that of social media to be able to clearly define what they wanted to achieve with those platforms. She said businesses needed to familiarise themselves with the features and operations of the various platforms as well.

To be able to do this, the founder of PopOut Ghana advised businesses to familiarise themselves with the facts, objectives, features, functionalities, feeds or contents, fans, formulae, success stories, finance and the future of the various platforms to be able to use them to their respective advantages.

This, he said, would help businesses to be to be able to leverage on the tool to its advantage.

The 10 things to consider when using social media to promote your business

1. Facts: Know the number of users, profile of users, areas they reside and age groups, if possible

2. Objective of the platform: Know the objective behind the creation of the platform. That should help you know what promotion to run on what platform

3. Features: What are the peculiar features of the platform you want to use and which platform uses them?

4. Functionalities: How are the features you identified used and what do they mean? What is feed, hash tag, trending, like, share, comment,

5. Feeds: What are the success stories of the platforms? Have your competitors succeeded with that platform? How did they do it?

6. Fans

7. Formular

8. Success stories

9. Finance: It is good to know how much a campaign on the selected platform cost and how that will be will finance.

10. Future: What is the future of the platform? Will it stand the test of time or it could carve in with time?

Top three companies with largest audience on Facebook

Ghandour Cosmetic: 1.15m fans

Airtel Ghana: 509,158 fans

MTN Ghana: 474,948 fans

Top three companies in Ghana with largest audience on Twitter

Glo Ghana: 82,074 fans

MTN Ghana: 53,828 fans

Vodafone Ghana: 53,240 fans

Success stories

While acknowledging the ability of social media to help grow a business, Ms Akofio-Sowah said businesses needed to know that using them was not an easy task.

“It’s not simple (to use social media), so do not just think that you can integrate social media into the running your business and you are not going to invest resources behind it; resources in the form of finance and experienced people, who can be learning and staying abreast,” she said.

She mentioned Azonto, a local dance style, as one of the strategies that was recently leveraged on by businesses on social media platforms to promote their brands.

On the national front, she said the likes of Ghana Decides and OccupyGhana, two events that were trending in the country recently, as some of the other events that gained currency.

She said Tonaton and Lamudi, both online retail outlets, had, over the years, leveraged on social media and the internet to grow their brands.

These developments, in addition to the live streaming of various local events, showed that institutions and people in the country were embracing the use of social media.