A new report indicates that in Kenya, most listed companies are not using the power of social media to its full potential.
According to the report by Cape Town-based digital marketing firm Interactive Concepts, known as Social Media Report 2014, there is a lack of personalised profiles and outdated tweets in the Twitter accounts of most companies.
The same problem applies to the LinkedIn platform and YouTube, as most companies have neglected to optimise their pages or upload company logos.
With video as a powerful tool, YouTube, the free platform for sharing videos, is also under-utilised by certain companies. The report found that the majority of companies with some presence on YouTube have outdated channels or do not feature a significant number of their videos in channels.
More alarming is the fact that the companies in question do not provide their YouTube account links on their websites to direct visitors to access their videos.
Due to a lack of understanding, inadequate resources or the absence of a content plan, most corporates have not yet embarked on blogging.
Platform-specific strategy appears to be absent from many social media accounts, which implies that corporates still need to realise the full benefits that social media platforms can offer them.
Highlighted in the report is that companies on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in Kenya that utilise social media tools do so to reach new audiences, encourage conversations around their services and their products and to manage consumer services.
As a result, certain companies are ahead of the game in establishing the agenda of conversations around brands, influencing their consumers in the end.
Japie Swanepoel, founder of Interactive Concepts, comments that social media space in Kenya is no longer restricted to individuals.
The study revealed that 68% of the companies analysed have a presence on Facebook, 57% are on Twitter, 43% on Google+ and only 15% have dedicated blogs.
Every company (listed on the NSE) was analysed according to set digital metrics to measure impact such as online presence, mentions, followers, conversations and dialogue. The analysis also included trends in usage across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+ and blogs the corporates run.
Says Swanepoel: “Social media has, in essence, empowered the end user to critique or complement, under the watchful eyes of other Kenyans who are also online. One experience can very easily translate into a common agenda, within the span of a few hours … corporates cannot afford to ignore the power and value of social media to help manage the image of, and relationships for their organisations.’
