How to become a successful social media manager in Zimbabwe?
As a social media manager or if you are managing any social media pages/accounts, you need to constantly stay up to date with trends and skills in your chosen market.
In one of the previous blogs, we talked about the Social Media Manager Must Have Skills outlining that you need to be able to test and track your social media strategies accurately. So here are some of our tips on how to achieve that.
Your Audience
In order to be a great social media manager, you need to be aware of where your audience spends most of their time and these are the most used social media sites in Zimbabwe. (2017 vs 2022)
Facebook – 47.08% / 45.67%
Twitter – 22.5% / 28.54%
Pinterest – 21.44% / 15.05%
YouTube – 7.03% / 5.63%
Instagram – 0.8% / 2.96%
LinkedIn – 0.38% / 0.92%
As you can note from the above statistics, the biggest growth was in Instagram and LinkedIn whilst Facebook’s popularity is (slightly) declining.
The Internet penetration rate in the country has increased significantly from 2017 to the whooping 30.6% in 2022. The mobile penetration in Zimbabwe for 2017 stood at 102.7% and is currently down to 94.5%.
Latest statistics also show us that only 15.9% of the 13+ years population is accessing social media platforms and we already ranked above the most popular ones. Full We Are Social report can be accessed HERE.
What is interesting and surprising (at least to me) is that men constitute a higher percentage of social media users ( 57.1%) versus 42.9% being women.
Link Tracking
With the growing usage of WhatsApp and Facebook as messaging and marketing platforms, UTM tracking links are a great way to track and analyze how your content is doing through all different platforms.
UTM tracking links are URLs that have several pieces of code attached to them – called UTM parameters – that ultimately help you track each link in great detail.
For example; what content is being opened the most and where? And ultimately track your Return On Investment (ROI) across all platforms.
Data Analytics
As a social media manager, it is essential now more than ever to keep track of how your company and its products or services are doing. ,
In order to achieve that, you need to learn data analytics skills.
Many Social Media Platforms such as Facebook provide useful insights for you to track Post performance and engagement and it is your job to learn how to interpret this data and use it to monitor and target user engagement and click-through rates.
Paid Advertising
As a social media marketer, it is important to understand Pay Per Click (PPC) and Ad Bidding. Many people find that even after boosting their posts or promoting their business their Facebook page may not do well or they might not be targeting the right audience.
This is an essential skill to master as it will help you understand what posts to boost/advertise, and how much to boost to achieve a desired ROI.
Time to Post
Last but not least it is important to know the best times to post on each different platform.
For example; the safest times to post on Facebook include weekdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m as Saturday has the least amount of engagement for the week.
Notably, high engagement times include Monday at 9 a.m. and Tuesday at 6 p.m. The best time to post on Instagram however is Wednesday at 3 p.m., Thursday at 5 a.m., 11 a.m., and 3 to 4 p.m. and Friday at 5 a.m. Thursday is the best day to post to Instagram.
As a social media manager working on different campaigns and with different clients it is important to continuously grow your skills in your chosen field and become the best Social Media Manager you can be.
What should you do next?
If you are currently a social media manager and want to upgrade your skills, consider our Professional Diploma in Social Media Marketing.
You can now enrol for this globally recognised and certified diploma in Digital Marketing right here in Zimbabwe and save nearly USD 800.00 from the internationally offered prices. Contact us today.
Bye for now
Nikolina & NKDigital team
Updated October 2022
