Young people are leveraging social media to boost retail channels

Young people are leveraging various social media platforms to either start new businesses or expand the reach of existing ones, so are big brands.

Bunmi Fayose, 20, whose mother sells yam tubers at Mile 12 market in Lagos recently posted images of her mother’s shop and wares on Instagram which attracted over 500 positive comments and reactions. Some of these promised to visit and make some purchase.

Similarly, Linda Ugwu, a 24 year-old chemical engineering graduate turned fashion designer does most of her marketing on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. She has reported a conversion rate of 30 percent, which means three out of ten people who comment or react to her posts become customers. This shows how much is changing in the way retailers are creating value and reshaping marketing strategies.

Global demography is evolving in interesting ways with significant impact for business. WeAreSocial, a forward-thinking global agency that estimates the use of internet and social media in different parts of the world, puts the active users of social media globally at 2.31 billion in 2016.

In Nigeria, for instance, the figure stood at about 15 million in January 2016 (with a ten-percent growth since January 2015), and out of the 15 million social media users in Nigeria, sixty-one percent falls between the ages of 13 and 29, a testament to the fact that a great majority of social media users in Nigeria are teenagers and young adults – probably still in school or in the early years of their careers.

The Youth Insight Report this year began to address the question, because there has been a lot about social media marketing of late. Brands have learned the importance of transparency, relevance and shared conversation versus traditional push approaches. In addition, young people are big users of social media and 97 percent in a recent survey use Facebook and 45 percent are on Twitter. However less is known about what they really want and expect from brands through these platforms.

Social media marketing statistics in general

Online adults aged 18-34 are most likely follow a brand via social networking (95%). (Source: MarketingSherpa) Think about your audience and see where they are most likely to follow your brand.

Seventy-one percent of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others. (Source: Ambassador) Use social media as an effective customer service tool to increase brand engagement and win new customers.

There are 1.65 billion active mobile social accounts globally with 1 million new active mobile social users added every day. (Source: We Are Social) Make sure to optimize your mobile social media campaigns and since mobile ads are relatively cheap and easy to produce, test multiple versions to see what works the best.

Ninety-six percent of the people that discuss brands online do not follow those brands’ owned profiles. (Source: Brandwatch) Companies need to go beyond their own channels and monitor those unbranded conversations in order to gain valuable insights and manage brand health.

Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. (Source: HubSpot) Flying Point Digital has a great post on how to create an innovative content strategy on social media.

STEPHEN ONYEKWELU