Ghana is in its election year and as she prepares herself for the upcoming December 7 polls, the euphoria to the buildup has already started, with various persons posting all manner of content including image, text, video, and voice on social media platforms especially Facebook and twitter to promote their political agenda, excitements and aspirations. One of them happens to be a recent picture of Ghana’s opposition leader and the New Patriotic Party Presidential Nominee, Nana Akuffo Addo sipping Kalypo; a fruit drink.
The post is believed to have been posted by his political opponent in an attempt to mock him. A situation that moved his followers post photos about themselves sipping kalypo on social media in an attempt to show solidarity towards Nana Addo.
Whiles this challenge started with a political undertone, as a student of digital marketing /social media my concern is to elaborate on some key lessons social media marketers/strategists can learn from:
Analysis of #kalypochallenge taken from Twitter
1. Relationship (“like”, “love”, “defend”) : Relationships flourish when you cultivate them, and the relationship you build with your customer leads to loyalty and your customers will support your brand during both the good and bad times. Building relationship on social media moves from a prospect/stranger just liking your social media page, but it involves consistently nurturing that prospect through addressing the needs of the prospect/motivating and inspiring through well-crafted content and generally doing things that benefits each other and create a mutual connection. This leads to successfully turning the prospect to become a brand champion or an advocate who will defend your brand no matter the situation.
In relation with the #kalypo challenge, the supporters of Nana Addo, whom Nana has developed a very strong relationship with, who believes in his cause turned what might have been a dent on the opposition leader to a success and creating a whole fun out of it.
2. Fun, Engaging, and Easy: While the #kalypo challenge was to show solidarity towards the opposition leader, the challenge in itself was fun, engaging and easy to participate thereby drawing non-supporters of Nana Addo to join the challenge. All one had to do to be part of the craze was to post a picture of themselves sipping Kalypo on social media
The clear social media marketing lesson to learn from is the power of bringing out engaging content that brings smile to your audience. It is said that ‘social media users are very savvy. They want to buy, but they don’t like to be sold to. Instead of trying to sell, give your audience some cool and fun stuff to consume’. By researching to bring out content/campaign that is fun and easy to participate and not going straightforward to slap your audience with promotions will cause a greater social transmission which will make your campaign/product go viral
3. Made-in-Ghana angle: The idea that by posting a picture about you sipping a kalypo , you are promoting a made in Ghana product was a major contributing factor that pushed a lot of people including non-supporters of Nana Addo to participate in this challenge. Made in Ghana angle made the challenge a good cause for all to participate.
Therefore as social media marketers/strategists, we must strive to find and support major cause behind the campaigns we run. Finding a good cause to support with your product will go a long way to cause your audience to engage with it. Eg. A cause to help small businesses with your products, cause to promote peace as election approaches.
4. Power of social influencers: The power of social influencers; bloggers, celebrities who participated in the kalypo challenge was a factor that made the challenge a success with Nana Addo being the largest social influencer.
In the era of social communication/marketing, influencers are the new brands. Influencers are individuals who have built large and trusted audience and have the ability of influencing others to follow a movement or cause. It’s important to note, as social media marketers/strategist, we don’t underestimate the power social influencers possess but rather use them in our social media effort to help increase awareness about our product.
Author: Gad Ocran (Digital Marketing Strategist)
Digital Marketing Strategist with 3+ years experience in digital marketing/social media marketing with a documented record of success in increasing online presence and brand awareness.
