Want to know how some of South Africa’s most-loved and followed social media personalities managed to build strong online presence that gets easily noticed by top brands? In this article, we unpack takeaways from the all-powerful Absa Women in Sport Personal Branding & Content Creator Masterclass in Johannesburg.
The day-long session brought together a sought-after panel of digital marketing experts and social media experts for an interactive and informative personal branding workshop, led by Absa communications executives Candice Thurston and Sadika Fakir, social media manager Sherilynn Douglas, media personality Nicole Capper, OnPoint PR content producer Nomfundo Mlaba, as well as the ever-knowledgeable wealth coach Samke Mhlongo.
Below are some sure-fire growth hack strategies you can apply to help create the ultimate social media strategy and grow your audience for social media platforms such as LinkedIn, TikTok and X (formerly Twitter).
▪️NO, LinkedIn is not your CV, it’s your digital profile
A CV/resume is a tool that you use to apply for a particular job position. Unlike a CV, in your LinkedIn profile, you’re welcomed to mention as many past and current professional experiences as you want; in every resume you list, highlight all the important job roles and responsibilities you were tasked with, even if they are not essentially related to the role you are targeting at that particular time.
Pay attention to how you market yourself as you list those experiences: “For every set of experience from your CV, highlight your top three achievements from every place you worked at and list them as your achievements on your LinkedIn profile,” advises Sadika Fakir, Digital and Media Executive at Absa.
▪️The importance of LinkedIn values and recommendations
You can use the skills and values endorsements from your LinkedIn connections as propositions for roles you don’t outrightly have experience in: “the LinkedIn endorsements are just some of the strategies I strongly believe in, so use that as recommendations for your skills,” Fakir added during a one-on-one session with NOWinSA Editor Tankiso Komane.
How to do it?
- Get proactive and ask your colleagues or friends you have as your connections to nominate you for the values and skills they think you possess, and they must say why and then put these recommendations on your Linkedin, urged Sherilynn Douglas, from Flume Marketing. This is the same as asking someone for a reference for your CV. If they know that you possess the said skill set, they’ll likely be willing to endorse you for it.
- Share/spread the love: do endorsements for someone else in your connections for skills you know they possess, so they can share the love and endorse you as well.
X [Twitter)
▪️Personal advice: tread carefully on X
The perception of X as a toxic platform isn’t going away any time soon. This is the one aspect that both Fakir and Douglas particularly highlighted during our one-on-one session.
Below, we unpack factors that contribute to the ‘toxicity on X’ and why you should move with kid gloves on the platform.
- Anonymity and pseudonymity: X is the one place where you find people/users operating under pseudonyms and anonymity, which may come with the lack of accountability for any harmful behaviour. While some users argue anonymity provides a way to express vulnerability and the messiness of real life freely and safely, as along as followers know its genuine, which has been a powerful building block of what X is about, this oftentimes encourage aggressive behavior and offensive comments that wouldn’t normally occur on face to face interactions
- Influence of high profile users: tweets from popular and influential users set the tone for topical issues, and often these users tend to influence toxic behaviors and made it look acceptable. These individuals can say the most toxic things, and not only defend it, but have other people support them.
- Home for cancel culture: I’s no secret that X has become a place that individuals who like to over politicise things come and gather under one roof. Any slightest ‘wrong thing’ that notably celebrities and brands also do can unleash the worst reaction and hate from these X influencers, resulting in them being unduly attacked and worse still cancelled. While Twitter started out as a cool place to share stuff and ideas and have other users comment on them with relatively short responses (tweets), the platform can sadly be outright scary if you don’t have a thick skin. So once again tread carefully if you’re in a sensitive profession, there are potential employers out there who will take your online moves into consideration when determining whether to hire you.
TikTok
▪️Incorporate venac (vernacular) / indigenous language in your content on TikTok to grow your audience
Inclusion and empowerment of indigenous communities: venac getting popular by the day on TikTok is something awesome to watch. Interestingly, incorporating indigenous language in your content, as Fakir goes on to explains happens to be one of the most effective ways to consider for those looking to organically launch themselves on the platform with a relatable community.
Not only has the video sharing platform become a go-to place for finding content in your native language to just consume and enjoy. As depicted in the ebook title ‘Decolonising Digital Media and Indigenisation of Participatory Epistemologies: Languages of the Global South‘ (as seen on ReseachGate), TikTok has played a critical role in decolonising the digital landscape, “ensuring that indigenous voices and worldviews are equally infused, represented, and privileged in the process of higher-level communication, exchanging epistemic philosophies, and knowledge expressions”.
Likewise, the platform enable users to utilise it as a learning tool. To do so, you can easily switch to your language of interest, be it IsiZulu, Tshitsonga or Setswana. They can consequently watch venec-tailored content like comedy sets and street interviews with real people making funny and useful content for other native speakers, and at times speaking slang.
The videos, often bite sized and can be repeated, can include memes in venec and with subtitles, making it easy for other users to not only participate and laugh at these viral jokes, but also get to learn some of South Africa’s most-spoken street phrases and slangs in the process.
