How to exploit some features of Whatsapp
Social messaging is the new digital phenomenon revolutionising the way people communicate, share contents, do business and build communities. Social messaging is expected to overtake social media and become the smartest replacement for SMS. One of the fastest growing mobile messaging platforms or applications is WhatsApp, which is growing at one million new users every month.
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Globally, WhatsApp has over 800million monthly active users who share over 700 million photos and 100 million videos daily. About 64 billion messages are processed on WhatsApp every 24 hours. It has overtaken SMS by its 30 billion messages sent every day as against 20 billion messages sent using the latter. Averagely, WhatsApp users spend 195 minutes every week on the platform. Businesses cannot use WhatsApp effectively if they do not know the features of this growing and innovative platform to engage their consumers.
Features to exploit for business
WhatsApp has innovative and smart features businesses can exploit, such as:
1. Contacts
WhatsApp uses the mobile phone contacts of its users to setup the accounts and identify the users. It is easy to find out who is on WhatsApp because the app populates your account with your contacts, you can see the people who have also installed on it on their phones.
How to exploit contact: Publicise your WhatsApp contact number in all your communications and on brand items so your customers can engage with you using the platform. Telephone numbers are becoming old school. Use a WhatsApp contact. Let people subscribe to your WhatsApp messages by sending some keywords to your contact.
2. Chats
There are two types of chats on WhatsApp namely Personal and Group Chats so you can chat with an individual or with a group of people, respectively. Chats enable you to communicate using text or audio messages directly to any WhatsApp contact. You can share images, videos and audio files in your chats. Group chats enable you to engage with a group of people instantly with every member aware of the interactions within the chat. You can also share your location or phone contacts with anyone you are chatting with on WhatsApp.
How to exploit chats: Engage your customers, shareholders and even employees using your WhatsApp contact to share different contents. Share your adverts, flyers, product demos or documentaries using WhatsApp. Send your location to customers for them to find location to your business premises. You can let people send audio messages when it is necessary to get detailed information from them.
3. Broadcast list
Unlike the Chats, this feature enables you to send bulk messages to a list of 256 contacts at the same time. None of the members will know the other members on the Broadcast List. You can create multiple Broadcast Lists and edit or delete existing ones.
How to exploit broadcast List: Create Broadcast Lists based on your product categories, customer demography or business client type so you can send messages as and when it is necessary. You can create Broadcast List such as “New Arrivals”, “Unisex”, “Executive Wears”, “Mothers Deals”, “Retailers” or “Shoes”.
4. Status statement
You can state your availability or activities on your Status. There are default statements such as “Busy”, “Available”, “At School”, “At Movies”, “Can’t talk! WhatsApp only” and others. You can also customise it to let people know what you are doing or add any information. Anyone with your WhatsApp contact can see your Status Statement.
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How to exploit Status Statement: Feature your business profile, promotions, products or service, news, announcements, brand promise or other communication messages as your Status Statement. Change it as often as you can or whenever there is something new to write.
5. Tell a friend
You can invite friends or any mobile contacts to use WhatsApp via E-Mail, SMS, Twitter or Facebook. WhatsApp will send the contacts a customised message to install the application if their phones are compatible with it.
How to exploit “Tell A Friend”: Send your customers who do not have WhatsApp on their phones to install it so they can communicate with you any time and at a cheaper cost. It is cheaper for you and them.
6. Profile
You can profile your business on WhatsApp using your business name, logo or product image. It is a quick way to identify the owner of the WhatsApp contact within chats. When you send a message, the receiver will know the one who sent it. When they click on the image, they will see the bigger square version.
How to exploit Profile: Change profile image with an e-flyer for your business or products. When running promotions, use the images of the products as your profile image. Frequently change the image with different products or services. You can change your profile name into the name or text of the featured product or the campaign, respectively.
7. Chat Settings
This feature enables you to customise your chat wallpaper using your own photos, moderate your download preferences whether media shared with you should download automatically depending on the Internet connection you are using, and set the backing-up of your chats.
How to exploit chat settings: Set your chats to be saved automatically online so you can have access to them any time you want, from anywhere. Automate media downloads so you can get photo, audio or video contents saved on your mobile phone or desktop. Customise the wallpaper with images with details of products or services so you can easily refer to it to send it when your customers ask for them.
8. Account
It helps you to manage your WhatsApp account in terms of privacy, payment information, changing of WhatsApp Number and Network Usage. You can prevent or permit people from seeing your profile picture, status or the last time you were on the platform. You can also block contacts you do not want to engage with.
How to exploit account: Allow your contacts, or everyone to see your online time, status and profile photo. You can turn off the privacy setting after working hours so people will know you are not available. Manage can check the amount of data you consume under the Network Usage so you know how to budget for your data consumption.
Note: WhatsApp now has desktop version for computers which works perfectly for the business environment. But works online when the mobile is active.
The writer is a digital marketing strategist, social media expert, app developer and technology instructor.
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