Twiva Chief Executive Officer Peter Kironji.
Marketing as a business practice has significantly evolved over time. Today, any brand that does not leverage on digital platforms is losing out. And with the ever shifting consumer needs, today’s client wants to be reached in a manner that directly relates to them.
Brands and businesses have noticed that their clients are online, particularly on social media, and they follow and listen to celebrities and various personalities who are then able to convince them to make purchases. This is now what is known as social influencing, influencer marketing or affiliate marketing.
It is this business model that Peter Kironji (below), the chief executive and Founder of Twiva, took advantage of. Twiva is an online influencer hub where brands can meet social influencers who place their products on their social media platforms.
“We saw the struggle businesses have trying to gain visibility online and thought of leveraging on this potential to market businesses across the three major social media platforms that are popular in Kenya; Facebook, Instagram and Twitter,” Kironji told The Innovator.
Similar to the gig economy
Twiva works with a range of influencers and content creators in several ventures who are able to take up jobs - a similar model to how the gig economy works.
As a business, when you sign up for operations with Twiva, your work request is posted on the platform. After posting the job there the influencer whose profile fits the needs of the job then picks it up and an agreement is arrived at on the payments, contract and the content generation plan.
Kironji says that the most important thing is the content plan and how it will be released to the target market.
“Many people confuse the number of following for influence online. It doesn’t always work like that. Also working with a celebrity doesn’t guarantee conversion. We have tried it before and failed terribly," he says.
"Yes, numbers are key but sometimes what matters is the content strategy and how it is shared across the platforms.”
“Likes, retweets, clicks mean nothing if there is no conversion. There is need to make sure the impact of each post is felt and the only way to infer is to see the conversions in volume sales. It’s the content, its placement and measuring it and correcting it for better performance.”
