Social Media Marketing in Kenya
Social media in Kenya is a great instrument of communication that all businesses must embrace. It’s actually a website that doesn’t only give you information, but also interacts with you while giving you that information. The interaction could be simple as requesting for your comments or allowing your votes on articles.
It could even be as complex as Flixster recommending movies to you based on the ratings of other people with similar interests. It’s a two-way traffic that gives you the ability to communicate too.
Adopting Social Media in Kenya
Care must be taken not to confuse social media with social news. It’s a fact that a social news site is also a social media site because it falls into that broader category, although this is very confusing. Social news is not and has never been the same thing as social media.
We should be careful as we choose websites for social media in Kenya. It should already be engaged in driving business agenda. Different social media sites are designed for a particular set of people and groupings. This is based on interests, social standing, perception etc.
Assess the nature and popularity of your social media choice; evaluate its applicability to your business before you put in your personal details hoping to create a market for your products. Some social media websites are specific to some sections of society or business segments.
Websites for Social Media in Kenya
Social media websites enable you to interact with the website and interact with other visitors. This is a very powerful tool in this era of information technology. The many websites for social media in Kenya allow creation of information by many people for many people.
Social media websites can be categorized as follows;
This includes Del.icio.us and others. It allows you to tag websites and enhance your searching through websites bookmarked by other people. This can be very important for managing teams during project implementation.
Good examples are Digg & Reddit. They enable you to interact by voting for articles and commenting on them. Voting and commenting gives you vital links that increase the value of your website.
This is where Facebook, Hi5 and Last.FM fall under. They allow you to interact by adding friends, commenting on profiles, joining groups and having discussions. There is great potential in use of Facebook as the Y-generation starts their work life and start making and spending money.
- Social Photo and Video Sharing.
We have the likes of YouTube and Flickr which facilitate interaction by sharing photos or videos and commenting on user submissions. Sharing photos and videos creates a new real life experience especially for news reporting.
This covers Wikipedia, Wikia etc. Interaction is mainly by adding articles and editing existing articles. This has found favor with scholars looking for verified materials. It’s possible to edit wrong information posted from a far location.
The Future of Social Media in Kenya
The above is just but an example of social media websites. They are not the only social media websites we have. A website that invites you to interact with the site and with other visitors falls into the definition of social media.
There are many more websites for social media in Kenya and the world today. The beauty of the internet age is that, one success in a social site will be replicated all over the world. As such we cannot continue thinking on a micro level.
Kenyans have to engage themselves in blogging. It presents a powerful tool for business. Blogging involves writing comments and articles in your websites. You could also be doing this on a social site that allows those on your network to read your posts instantly such as in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Both blogging and micro-blogging can be used to market articles you have published. This can be through your won initiative or through your network members. Once a member picks a thread, shares it with his/her own network, there is no telling how far the article can circulate.
This creates traffic to your site which is a major factor to drive business online. Traffic will give you publicity at no extra cost. Having done an SEO’d and Themed article, you stand to gain a lot through increase in traffic.
Traffic can be used to market products through affiliate marketing, Google Ad sense and even BackLinks. These are powerful tools in inbound/Internet marketing. The use of social media in Kenya can therefore generate revenues for the business through very many channels.
April 8th, 2012 
Daniel Muguko 
