By Brenda Odhiambo

As part of its ongoing guest speaker sessions, the School of Science and Technology hosted Safaricom PLC’s Customer Operations Manager-Social Media, Ms. Annipha Nkatha, who spoke to the students on the importance of social media to the well-being of a business.

In her presentation, Ms. Nkatha noted that social media was critical for the success of a brand, adding that it was key for brands to invest in strengthening their platforms in order to ensure that they generated visibility for their brand.

“At Safaricom, we have made significant investments into our social media platforms and presence by investing in a dedicated team, top-notch systems for dashboards, routing and analytics, aligning our platforms to business strategy, among others. This has resulted into several positive outcomes for us, including customer loyalty, brand trust and sustained revenue generation,” she said.

“It is imperative for every business today to leverage social media use in the correct way if they want to position themselves well and survive in the long term. This is because today’s target audience is primarily found on social media, and they engage with their favourite brands and connect with them on different levels,” she said.

According to the recently released SIMELab report on social media use and trends, social media use has grown exponentially in the country, with WhatsApp being the favourite communication platform in Kenya, followed closely by YouTube and Facebook. The report further states that to target consumers better, businesses need to focus their efforts on adverts on both television and social media, which provides a great way to advertise the brand/product through niche targeting and affordable costs. This sentiment was echoed by Ms. Nkatha, who noted that it was important to keep up with developments on each platform, and do research on where your target audience consumed most of its information from.

“Before starting any marketing campaigns on new platforms, you must have evaluated and found out where your target audience consumes most of its information from, and where they discover new brands. This allows you to tailor your communications appropriately, while maximizing your returns from your campaigns,” she noted.

In closing, Ms. Nkatha underlined the importance of measurement, noting that regular analysis of the data collected from your social media platforms would allow you to optimize your business, as your decisions would be backed up by credible research and numbers.

“Reporting is key to see if you’re getting value from your investments across your platforms. At Safaricom, we make use of several platforms like Hootsuite, Crimson Hexagon and Google Analytics to assist in the analysis of our marketing efforts,” she said.

The School of Science and Technology will host more guest speaker sessions as follows:

SFE 4050A Software Process and Project Management

Guest Speaker: -

Dr. Leah Mutanu, PhD.
Software Engineering/Machine Learning /AI Specialist Faculty

Scheduled for Friday, July 10,^, 2020

Time 6.00pm-7.00pm

SFE 4050A Software Process and Project Management

Guest Speaker: -

Mr. Edwin Nyamanga

Software Systems Implementation Specialists and Project Management

International Representative and Director East Africa Region-Jonas Club Software

Scheduled for next Friday, July 10, 2020

Time 7.30pm- 8.30pm