Preparing a Plan to Enhance and Develop Social Media Marketing for Ambitious Africa Cameroon ( AA Cameroon)

Abstract

The rise of the Digital Media has brought about new developments in marketing technol-ogy and provide new ways for organisations to communicate. Social Media information dissemination achieves three times as much coverage as traditional information releases. Today’s marketers must understand information release via social media are only effec-tive when incorporated with the right content and right platform. The advent of new mod-ernised media relations and interactions, requires practitioners to embrace new method-ologies and technologies and learn how best to communicate and interact with their audi-ence. Incorporating interactive and multinational content must be done in a way to en-hance story, in ways traditional media could not. More than ever before worldwide, com-panies and various institutions make use of Social Media platforms to gain outreach, connect and interact with their audience, the so-called Social Media Marketing. This the-sis, therefore, proposes a social media marketing plan using a model that will enable the commissioning company to be consistent in its social media marketing efforts and attract the right audience.

The dominant explanation for this trend is the increased popularity and usage of social media platforms, driven by the increased availability and affordability of mobile devices and networks. Online marketing has in no way come to take over the traditional ways of marketing, but it is a way to facilitate the operations of various institutions, so that in no time, they can achieve maximum outreach to their potential clientele and interested groups.

The author collected data by means of qualitative methods via interviewing three sub-groups connected to the commissioning company and by means of the Inductive ap-proach and thematic method of analysis, finding and identifying patterns across all re-spondents and grouped them into specific themes of - needs, content types, engage-ment, goals, objectives, partners and more, to compose the need for the commissioning company in making effective use of social media platforms to gain outreach. Secondary data was also used to observe and analyse the social media platforms of the commis-sioning company.

From data collection and analysis, it was revealed that, the need for the commissioning company to enhance its social media marketing is largely attributed to the lack of a well-structured communication strategy rather than their presence on social media. The com-missioning company’s outreach is less than 1% of it targeted population and have less than 10% engagement rate from its contents by the audience, making its presence on social media almost non-existent. The effective use of social media platforms will enable the commissioning company to have an active social media presence, connecting and interacting with its communities. The primary objective is to create awareness for in-creased participation and membership subscription, reaching donors for financial support, and establishing a position for thoughtfulness for further building their community and brand tribe.