Local firms embrace Facebook to market themselves and brands

A growing number of businesses are making Facebook a vital part of their enterprises in a bid to find new customers, build online communities and tap into information relevant to them.

Businesses in Kenya are taking advantage of social media to build their reputation and brands.

“Facebook has a large Kenyan community and so it enables us to communicate to people at an affordable cost,” said John Karanja, the proprietor of Whive.com.

Mr Karanja has set up a social media platform, mainly targeting people in the region, to share ideas and react to the content on the website.

He has set up a page, with at least 2,000 people, that drives traffic to the website.

He is one among many entrepreneurs in the country who are utilising Facebook to sell their wares or ideas.

Facebook has more than 500 million active users, with the average user having an average of 130 friends, according to the site.

In Kenya, mobile phone penetration has made it easier for more people to log onto the internet, especially Facebook.

Insidefacebook.com says that as of March Kenya had over half a million users with an average monthly growth of 2.4 per cent.

This social networking website has grown in the past few years, from being a campus website to having a global reach with pages translated in other languages including Kiswahili.

For small businesses, Facebook is the best place to start.

Companies open pages that are different from personal profile pages or groups to attract fans who get updates on what the firms are doing, especially in relation to new merchandise.

One can easily create a web presence on the social sites, even if they do not have their own websites or can direct traffic to their sites.

A growing portion of some of the most valuable demographics is spending more time on Facebook and less on other channels, while the advertising system provides instant feedback with metrics like the number of clicks on items.

Most small business owners start by asking their friends to become fans of their pages so as to have a crowd before the pages start growing organically by word of mouth or by advertising.