Times are hard. No debates about that. The cost of data in Ghana typifies this claim. That notwithstanding many young people find money to buy data and spend much of it on social media, unfortunately, aimlessly – very often than not.
So not many will resist $15 per tweet. In fact, a good number of people may quit their current jobs for this offer. It’s even better when you have to tweet about your hobbies and maybe, still keep your current job.
The challenge though is who will pay and where will you find them? And how do you even convince family and friends you tweet for a living, what is that job called?
Well, Nana Oye Kumordzie and her friends organized the Social Influencers Summit to provide cutting-edge analysis for burgeoning social influencers at the Impact Hub last weekend. You will find excerpts of insights shared by speakers and participants in this piece. First read comments of the co-organizer, Nana Oye Kumordzie.
“There is a lot of Facebook, Instagram advertising etc that the average user sees every day. But unfortunately, there is that fatigue around ads. How can brands reach the audience they are targeting? That is where social media influencers come in. Also, influencers are looking for brands to help promote their goods and services. Some to don’t know how to approach these brands or how to build authentic brands. So the Summit is to connect the two to learn in a practical way. Both Influencers are growing and brands are growing.”
“The Summit focuses on how to find and manage influencers knowing their reach an audience, how to work with extractive industries as an influencer…how to price a gig. Paid influencer marketing brands pay influencers to tweet out a new product or a new service.”
Among the speakers was the Senior Director of Communications and External Relations for Newmont Africa, Adiki Ofeibea Ayitevie. She had an interactive session with her audience on the extractive industry and social media influencers.
“We believe in working with people and supporting people. We’ve being on social media and we’ve being thinking about how to move our social media strategy to the next level. So how do you identify people who are influencers in social media and how do you work with them to put out factual and accurate information. And once we were approached about this event, we thought that it’s a good platform to come and learn about who social media Influencers are in Ghana and how we can partner them to drive our branch and social media strategy.”
In 2017, 357% increase in Google searches for social media Influencers tells you this has become increasingly important.
She shared an instructive experience of how the company engagements with its followers on social media.
“Social media is about building true and personal relationships with people online and interacting with them. We’ve used traditional media a lot but we also wanted to have our own voice and have control of our own story. Unfortunately, in April, we had a devastating accident where we lost 6 of our contract workers. As part of our approach of being transparent, we put our media statement on Facebook.”
“We know that losing 6 people is a terrible thing. So we expected there will be a lot backlash out there but to our surprise, we had our community come to our defense to say look, we are so sorry to hear this. We know Newmont is passionate about safety. We see all the things you do about safety. We don’t know what went wrong but we know that with your strategies you can turn things around.”
“So they supported us and for us, that was what helped us in terms of putting out there what we have been doing on safety. That’s was for us, a return on investments, and social media made us understand why it’s important for you to build genuine relationships on social media so that in times of trouble that community will come and tell your story for you. And they are more authentic because they are a third party so they become your advocates. Social media has its issues. But you need to understand why you are on social media. You need to have a clear mind and you need to have your crisis management plan.”
A Freelance animator and graphic designer, Louis Appiah, creator of Tales of Nazir took his audience through pricing gigs, a controversial topic that got his audience actively engaged. Here are some of the thoughts he shared with his audience.
“New social media influencers tend to think they need a lot of followers or be on sponsored ads to get likes or followers to attract brands, but often these brands look for different things like your analytics, the power of the platform itself, your engagements with your followers etc. Do not overcharge, do some research to know your market value and learn to defend your quotes. Slowly the industry is picking up. We have corporate organizations, both government and private taking advantage of adverts with animations. People should just stick to originality and they will be good to go.”
Nii Ayitey Tetteh, Property and marketing space said:
This has been useful to me. We tend to under estimate the power we have as Influencers on social media.
Being a social influencer is not only a question of numbers. We found out today it’s all about engagements. If I have 500 followers and I am able to engage 20 or 50 people and their profile is such that whatever any company is looking for in promoting their product, then they will meet their target so its not only about the numbers, its a question of quality.
You have to align your personality to your posts or whatever you are promoting. If you suddenly begin pushing an agenda you are not known for people will question your credibility. So your personality and what your passion is has to align with what you push on social media. Even if I am able to push an agenda but I don’t have a such a strong presence on social media but I am able to rally people around an agenda, I am still an influencer.
Mavis Nelson, an Arts teacher, and entrepreneur said:
It was awesome. The pricing session was very insightful to me. He taught us how to price in a way you don’t go overboard with your pricing and you don’t price too cheap too. I learned not to just post anything at all. Your posts have to have meaning.
Esinam, Aspiring social media influencer who’s passionate about customer support said”
Splendid and fabulous. It was an eye opener, it really helped. I learned how to use pictures and videos as an influencer. I learned a lot about how to carve your niche and be an authentic brand because you need to be consistent and place value on yourself as a brand influencer.
When it comes to government and social media we know there are MPs who are afraid to use social media because of backlash and negative comments. But we know there is the positive side where we are not just sharing products but also connect with the electorate. In terms of community engagement and all that they can use social media in a very powerful way.
They can use Instagram IGTV, for example, to tell a story on work is done or the story of someone who has been helped through government initiatives, there is so much that can be done.
Source: CNR