22 minute read
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CONTENT MARKETING
The A-Z of Content Marketing everything you need to Know
With the world going online and falling in love with social media, online platforms are providing numerous opportunities for marketers to engage directly with customers and potential markets through content.
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BY ALICE NGATIA
Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. According to Statista, an estimated 2.95 billion people were using social media worldwide in 2019. The same study projects this number to increase to almost 3.43 billion by 2023. It is expected that these numbers will accelerate with this new ‘normal’ that we are now in.
Social network penetration is constantly increasing worldwide standing at 49 percent of the world population as of January 2020. This figure is anticipated to grow as the lesser developed digital
markets catch up with other regions when it comes to infrastructure development and the availability of cheap mobile devices.
Actually, most of the social media’s global growth is driven by the increasing usage of mobile devices. Statista shows that the current number of smartphone users in the world today is 3.5 billion, and this means 44.98% of the world’s population owns a smartphone.
Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA) real-time intelligence data shows that there are now over 10.32 Billion mobile connections worldwide, which surpasses the current world population of 7.78 Billion implied by UN digital analyst estimates. Additionally, there are over 2 billion computers in the
world, including servers, desktops, and laptops. Consequently, 4.7 billion people worldwide have access to the internet, representing 56.9 percent of the total population. Further analysis and research contained in The Digital 2019 report by HootSuite and Wearesocial reveal that the average internet user spends more than a quarter of their life on the World Wide Web. The same report further shows that consumers are online an average of 6 hours and 42 minutes each. The total hours equate to more than 100 days of online time for an average internet user, more than 27 percent of each year.
The number of Google searches, Facebook posts, and WhatsApp messages sent in a minute is truly phenomenal. Smart Insights estimates that in under 60 seconds, the average online activity amount to 56 million WhatsApp messages, 350 million tweets, 78 million blogs, and 500 hours of Y ouTube uploads, 294 billion emails, and 4.4 million google searches.
The Opportunity
The above stats show exactly how huge the content is in the current world. There is so much content on the internet that one needs to consume, both by individuals and businesses. However, this is a double-edged sword in that it opens up a wider audience for both people and brands while at the same time possess the challenge of getting one’s message to stand out among the millions.
In what is referred as Content Shock, the huge volume of content also presents an issue for marketers and individuals who are researching best practice in different areas, as often, there are so many different messages that it is hard to know where to begin. There is just too much information making it difficult for one to know which to believe or know the original source of insights.
So, what will make a brand stand out when it comes to content marketing, and can you really convert sales with content marketing? Content marketing involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as articles/blogs, videos, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services. It is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience - and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Therefore, a brand seeking to make use of content marketing should ensure that
they do so in an effective manner in order to stand out. Impressions matter a lot in the digital market as it is a multimedia platform (majorly visual). With statistics showing that the majority of visitors to many sites never go back, the brand needs to leave a lasting effect on the first click.
It is important to understand that people don’t want to advertise when making purchasing decisions, they want valuable information - content. Therefore, it is important for brands to be careful about how they draft content. The number of people making use of ad blockers is increasing day by day with the number standing at more than 200 million people worldwide, with many others filtering the ads that reach them.
Great content marketing not only helps brands convey their expertise, but it also enables them to reach a wide range of goals such as lead generation, brand awareness, or talent acquisition. Creating high quality and consistent content can be expensive and time-consuming, however, the investment is worth it as it can grow the brand globally. When wrongly and hastily done content can prove to be more expensive, leading to a waste of valuable resources and can hurt the brand as a whole.
To stand out, it is important to position your brand as a thought leader and perfect the skill of telling a story. It is not easy or straightforward to position yourself as a thought leader, but if you’re consistent with your efforts, it’s entirely possible. To get started, establish a consistent brand voice that stands out, observe, and interact with other brands so as to network, make original content as well as claims. Stories demand an emotional investment to hold a reader’s interest. They can bring your brand’s message to life and encourage people to take action without asking them to do so. Think about what makes your brand unique and use that special something to create a story that aligns with your audience’s needs and priorities.
The next step is to identify your audience. Your content marketing strategy is only as effective as the leads and audience it brings in for you. If you draw thousands of views every month, however, if only five among them are from your relevant
audience, it is nothing but a waste of your time and effort. Narrow down on where your audience is from (demographics), their ways of thinking (psychographics), the type of content they prefer, and where they get it from and finally chip in by establishing how you can be of help to their needs.
The next step is to lay the brand’s focus on queries that the audience would prioritize, then pick the best medium to convey the content. For example, some content will be best served through articles while other content will be better conveyed through videos. Google has begun prioritizing local recommendations, videos, quizzes, or other types of results (that aren’t articles) which give more attention to content that is addressing the audience queries.
It is important for a brand to diversify by publishing different kinds of content. Do not limit your brand to a single way of publishing content, invest in blog posts, social media posts, evergreen articles, press releases, how-to guides, infographics, photos, third party distributions, email newsletters, and videos. This will increase traffic and drive up sales.
Finally, ensure your content accurately depicts your products or services. The modern customer seeks a lot of information before deciding on what to purchase thus the need to avail as many details as possible. DO NOT be tempted to lie as it can be bad for business, it may work at first but it will soon turn against you.
The benefits of Content Marketing;
1. Increase in site traffic. Great content will attract an audience to your site, while consistency and quality will keep them. When people come to your site, they’ll also find information about your company and your products/services. 2. Another benefit of having great content is the increase in the direct customer conversions. Quality products, satisfied customers, and approvals do not go unnoticed, the customers will refer and recommend the brand to their contacts even without the involvement of the company. Statistics show that the modern customer is becoming increasingly loyal to brands, therefore good rapport with them will keep them and see them bring along a network.
3. Further, successful content marketing leads to improved indexing by search engines, Especially Google. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial to a brand as it is the way to get noticed above the rest. 4. Unique, authentic, and original content and products attract editorial links, which tell Google you’re important and authoritative. Google can also crawl your content, getting a far better idea of what your company is about, allowing it to return more relevant queries (including long-tail queries) to your site. The more people you reach, the higher you are and the higher the possibility that your site will generate sales.
In summary, each brand no matter how small should make use of the opportunities availed by content marketing. With content marketing, the possibilities for your brand growth are endless. Do you have a content marketing strategy for your brand? Are there any brands you admire that have implemented a successful content marketing strategy?
Alice has over 15 years' experience in Marketing, Communications and Product Development. Reach her on alice.ngatia@gmail.com
Mr. Kiriinya is the Director of Strategy and Advisory at Wylde International. Reach him via kirinya@ wyldeinternational.com.
Africa Needs Crowdfunding Now
As the world responds to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, crowdfunding is playing a key role in the response to the pandemic.
BY MATT ROBERTS C
Crowdfunding is playing an important global role both in fundraising for health and medicine and supporting economic stability.
In Italy, a crowdfunding campaign on behalf of San Raffaele Hospital in Milan has raised €4,492,680 through over 200,000 donors. In the United States, House of Representatives Patrick McHenry has proposed legislation dubbed “Crowdfunding to Combat the Coronavirus Act” to assist and incentivize start-ups and small businesses that are fighting COVID-19.
Crowdfunding is the fastest-growing trend in fundraising - and it’s a particularly useful tool in times of crisis. African crowdfunding platforms such as M-Changa and Back-a-buddy have produced early evidence for the industry’s potential and show the benefits of locally designed digital solutions.
In the fight against the coronavirus and other future pandemics, local crowdfunding platforms, governments, the private sector, NGOs, multilateral institutions and individuals must each play their role in implementing appropriate legal frameworks, increasing funding, and supporting cross-sector partnerships.
Crowdfunding in Africa is in its nascent stages, though activity across the industry has accelerated in response to Covid-19. The World Bank estimates Africa's overall crowdfunding market potential to reach $2.5 billion by 2025.
Currently, Africa's formal crowdfunding activity is just $24.16 million per year (Fundly). Given the enormity of COVID19, Africa's solutions must consider both international best practices and the local context. Crowdfunding, as a concept, is a very African phenomenon (The Swahili term ‘Chama’ refers to people meeting together to raise funds for a specific event or to pool and invest savings).
While international crowdfunding platforms are many, they must adapt to
addressing challenges at the local level. Local crowdfunding platforms provide effective fundraising solutions for individuals, organizations and businesses across Africa. They are designed to operate regardless of travel restrictions and social distancing. They enable global outreach and local currency collection. They increase accessibility through local payments (e.g. mobile money), customer care and low tech integrations such as SMS & USSD integrations for those who don't have steady internet access.
Donation-based Crowdfunding
The culture of giving is common across Africa's diverse cultures. In Kenya, there is a longtime tradition of Harambee (meaning "all pull together" in Kiswahili). The Kenyan based M-Changa has assisted over 40,000 Kenyan fundraisers to raise over $8,000,000 from 650,000 donations. As Africa's largest donation-crowdfunding platform by volume, M-Changa specializes in developing local technology for local solutions. Over 90% of donations on M-Changa come from mobile money, supporting the claims of CAF World Giving Index 2018 which ranked Kenya as the 8th most generous country in the world.
As of July 22, 2020, Kenya had reported 14,805 confirmed cases of Covid-19. An early response from the general public has led to over 130 COVID-related fundraisers started on M-Changa. Most fundraisers are raising funds for sanitization, PPE, and food provisions for societies' most vulnerable. M-Changa has created a community page to show verified campaigns in response to Covid-19 fundraisers have been started by various organizations including Rotary Club, Penda Health, Jacaranda Health and Religious Groups.
South Africa-based donationcrowdfunding platform, Backabuddy, has raised over $8.5 million, with over 200,000 contributions from donors both locally and abroad. Since the platform was founded in 2015, over 13,000 crowdfunding initiatives have been launched to support individuals raising funds for medical expenses, tuition fees, sporting tours, community projects and good deeds. Non -profit organizations across South Africa have also registered on Backabuddy to crowdfund for special projects, cover operational costs and create awareness for their various causes. In response to Covid19, South African campaigns have raised over $500,000 towards local projects, read the full story here.
Crowdfunding for African MSMEs
The financial crisis of 2008/9 was a Black Swan; Covid-19 might be
considered the Black Swan of 2020. Following the 2008 financial crisis, struggling businesses in the West turned to crowdfunding as an alternative source of finance, expediting crowdfunding to the mainstream across Europe and America.
In the current crisis, African MSMEs are suffering under Covid-19, a troubling reality since these businesses provide up to 70% of jobs across Africa. Whilst the potential across the continent is significant, the majority of African MSMEs are excluded from crowdfunding. African crowdfunding providers, supported by the global community, must act fast to expand and increase the inclusion of more African MSMEs.
Thundafund offers crowdfunding that appeals to African SMEs that banks can’t reach. Thundafund is Africa’s first
rewards and revenue-share crowdfunding platform, with existing operations in Kenya and South Africa.
Popular Thundafund campaigns include Fokof Polisiekar (raised $80,000 to launch an album), Manenberg Flats (raised $50,000 for building renovation) and Land for Lions (raised $140,000 for wildlife conservation).
Rewards-based crowdfunding enables SMEs to offer project-related rewards in exchange for funds, these can be an acknowledgment, a copy of the product itself (pre-order) or a unique experience and corresponds with the amount of money they give. This type of crowdfunding is ideal for early-stage businesses, creatives.
In the case of COVID-19, struggling businesses are supporting their cash flows by offering discounts and vouchers to their customers as rewards, enabling customers to buy now and redeem later. For businesses seeking individual investment, revenue share-crowdfunding enables individuals to invest in a project or asset, in exchange for a share in future revenues generated. This form of investment enables SMEs flexible finance without further perpetuating the debt cycle. Sugarbird Gin used revenue-share to raise $70,000 on Thundafund and managed to repay backers a 25% return 6 months after the project was funded.
For growth-stage companies and alternative funders raising in excess of $100,000, there are other crowdfunding options available. San Francisco based
Kiva has raised over $1.4bn for MSMEs worldwide through peer to peer lending with a 96.6% repayment rate. Kiva works through partnerships including microfinance institutions, providing access to 0% interest loans for the purpose of funding MSMEs.
South Africa based Uprise.Africa is Africa’s only active equity crowdfunding platf orm. A lte rna tiv e ly, S un Exchange and Trine are crowdfunding platforms supporting renewable energy companies in Southern and East Africa through peer-to-peer lending. A list of approved African Crowdfunding Association members can be found here.
Opportunities in African Crowdfunding
For African crowdfunding to take-off, there must be more funds available for platform providers and intermediaries, appropriate regulatory frameworks and partnerships:
Funders should support local crowdfunding intermediaries through grant funding. Funds are needed for Research and Development to enable the expansion of existing solutions into new markets and to test and innovate new models. Funds can also be used to catalyze support through the use of matching fund incentives and first loss guarantees. Finally, funds can also support the creation of training materials, workshops and mass awareness campaigns.
At this critical time, Africa's slow and bureaucratic procedures are holding businesses back in a way it can hardly afford. The African Crowdfunding Association, an industry association for African crowdfunding platforms, has been funded by FSD Africa (UKAID/DfID) and has been working with African regulators to implement an appropriate legal framework for crowdfunding to approved crowdfunding providers. Adopting such a framework will open up the sector for new models of crowdfunding investment.
Crowdfunding is not a replacement for corporate investment or institutional donor funds. Instead, crowdfunding should be viewed as a way to democratize fundraising by inviting individual participation. For commercial investors, crowdfunding can enable early-stage businesses to grow, enabling companies to grow and become investor-ready.
Crowdfunding also demonstrates key entrepreneurial skills including their ability to sell a vision and influence a crowd, running a successful crowdfunding campaign can signal an entrepreneurs competence. Likewise, for international donors, crowdfunding reduces local organizations' dependence on international donor funds and demonstrates their ability to engage the local community. Existing partnerships between African crowdfunding platforms, the private sector and NGOs are accelerating the industry's growth. M-Changa has reached more grass-root organizations through partnerships with Aga Khan Foundation, USAID and more recently GlobalGiving where M-Changa provides support through local engagement and mobile payments. For example, Ol Pejeta Conservancy launched an emergency fundraiser on GlobalGiving to overcome Covid-19 travel bans which have deteriorated essential tourism revenue. By May, they had raised $43,795 of their $250,000 goal through local and international support to protect the last two northern white rhinos in the world. Thundafund partnered with SimplyBiz, powered by Nedbank Ltd in South Africa to launch
the BackaBusiness movement to support small businesses through the crisis. Thundafund also partnered with GIZ to support creative industries in Kenya.
There is a growing need for crowdfunding across Africa and results will come from local innovation, boosted by global support. The vision is for every individual across Africa to have access to crowdfunding, either as individuals, organizations and entrepreneurs or as donors, customers and investors. To realize this vision, we need to create awareness of the sector's challenges and opportunities, and we need buy-in from governments, private sector, NGOs, multilateral institutions, and individuals. Together, we can achieve greater financial inclusion for the world's fastest-growing continent.
Matt is the Experience Director at M-Changa, Africa's largest crowdfunding platform. Reach him via matt@changa.co.ke
Why don't Africans love themselves?
BY EMMANUELLA ABOA
Last year my son came back from school looking sad and perplexed. As our conversation went on, I discovered that his classmate told him that he would one day become a murderer because he was born in South
Africa (notwithstanding the fact that none of his parents are South Africans, but my boy was already labelled). "South Africans are murderer" the boy said.
The West African in me wanted to go to the school, demand to speak to the parents of the boy, and create some serious chaos. The religious part of me took over my emotions, calmed me down and led me to comfort my boy.
The classmate was referring to xenophobia in South Africa. Even though it has momentarily stopped, we all know that it will come back. Human beings never learn. We temporarily stop certain behaviors but always relapse. Xenophobia is in our DNA. Don’t we have the same skin color? Don’t we experience the same challenges? Why don’t Africans love themselves?
We saw it when George Floyd died and the online saturation of pictures and messages of denunciations, anger and general fatigue.
Some senseless people, however, kept alluding to the fact that by partaking in those protests (instead of creating some local ones) Africans were insensitive to the tears of their own people. There is freedom of speech but I was outraged by those comments.
George came from Africa. The color of his skin reaffirms the same. He was black and if not for anything, it was important to speak against this inhuman act. Racism is a system established to illustrate and reinforce an imbalance in power, and we cannot as black people keep silent before such atrocities.
Nothing should however stop anyone from starting a national movement should a crime be done against their own people. It took close to one month of protests for America to undergo some reforms. Let’s do the same without pulling our own people down. Black is black irrespective of where one resides.
We also see the xenophobia in this "buy country X, build country x" mentality. I have seen it in Kenya, in my own
country Cote d’Ivoire, and in many other Africans countries.
Do we realize that African foreigners pay more taxes in their country of residence than in their birth countries? These taxes are used to build hospitals, create job, build infrastructures and develop many other projects.
Those foreigners will eventually leave but the infrastructures will remain and impact generations after generations. This regretful mentality continues to pull us down and creates barriers and a sense of competition instead of collaboration.
We like to use this old adage in our businesses "if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together" but we forget to apply the same to build our own nations. We should be promoting the following slogan "buy Africa, build Africa." Greed, corruption, selfishness, xenophobia take the better part of us. Why don't Africans love themselves?
When the first case of Covid 19 was confirmed in the country, as people saw chaos, I saw opportunities, and was wondering why I was not in the manufacturing industry.
We all know what we need to do to protect ourselves from this disease. The recommendations by WHO are the same irrespective of your country of origin. We just need to apply those rules and reinforce the regulations.
As we started talking about closing the borders, I naively believed that we would close businesses to the rest of the world, and open it to African countries to strengthen inter-Africa trade. I was wrong. Kenya imports palm oil from Malaysia yet, palm oil can be found in West Africa. They are issues of volumes and quality that must be managed but we can deliver by investing in and strengthening those sectors while insisting on quality products.
I often laugh (and agree) with the standards imposed to Kenya when exporting avocadoes. We followed every demand to the latter. But the quality sold locally is not the same. Why don't we apply those same standards locally?
Most African countries got their independence in the 1960s. Fast forward- i want us to forget about what we have achieved, and think briefly about what we have not.
Even though infrastructure has improved in most African countries. we are all indebted. Some debts are necessaries for growth but we are cognizant to the fact that most African leaders take debts to enrich themselves, never thinking about the impact those actions will have on the society at large.
Lets’ take education for example. “Statistics show that the literacy rate for sub-Saharan Africa was 65% in 2017.” (Alphonse, 2018), yet we know that lack of education is a major problem in Africa. How do we expect people to vote wisely when we know that they don’t understand the law?
Every 4 years, some politicians throw some money at them in exchange for their votes. When you live under 1$ a day, that seems sufficient. But when you are educated, you know better.
Recent events have shown that despite their wealth, many celebrities date men and women who are below their social classes. And because these individuals did not get the exposure they needed to transform positively their lives and those of their communities, the right to education to question the status quo, the opportunities they would have had, had we invested in skill development, value creation, health care, they got attracted to this new life and eventually destroyed their partners. They don't know any better.
Even though we pride of having international organizations in our individual countries and use those statistics to attract investors, they are mostly led by people from the West. We worship them, promote their goods yet, treat our own people as lesser beings, simply because they do not belong to our tribe or country. There is no problem being patriotic but the problem arises when we believe that this patriotism gives us no significant obligations towards other black people.
As we fight less important things, we need to realize that colonialization is still around the corner. The second colonialization is more powerful and highly undermined. It is the regulation of data. During the first colonialization we sold our wealth for "common" items because we didn't know any better. But now we do.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking over the world. Ownership of data is the biggest asset any organization and nation can have. Facebook and Google and the United States are currently leading the industry. We are happy to provide our personal data for free applications not thinking about the repercussions they will eventually have on us.
People WAKE UP! We are a population of over 1 billion people with a very strong voice we can use to regulate and own data. This cannot be done individually; we need to unite our African countries to take a stand. We need to support Africans, partner with African businesses, and promote African products and services.
I am not a politician and I may not know what goes into politics and agreements between nations BUT it reaches a point where we need to ask ourselves whether we will take the bold step to love ourselves enough to make a world in which all Africans can live together, or if we will continue being taken advantage of.
Emmanuella Aboa has over 15 years experience spanning through corporate governance, business development, marketing and content development, she has helped individuals and businesses thrive within their ecosystems. She founded and runs Transolution Services Africa and has authored a number of books.
