Stop. I do not want to think you are about to sit down, go through different social media pages and come up with ideas for content for your client. Please tell me you do not fall into that category. I mean truth be told there is actually nothing wrong with that, you know how the old saying goes; there is nothing new under the sun.

I am a marketer and honestly I feel sorry for the sun sometimes. It has got a whole lot of recycled stuff to look at and not a lot of it is good either. So I asked myself one morning after being brutally subjected to the stuff on my Facebook feed, why are we up to our heads in dull content, and I got a very interesting answer back…CONTEXT.

We spend a lot of time talking about creating content and how it can generate engagement but lots of times, content associated with a brand might be less relevant to the audience due to the context we determine appropriate for our social media strategy.

You see we are in Africa; we have got a whole lot of good usable relatable stuff just lying there. I am pretty sure if they had voices they would all be saying, “pick “pick me, pick me.” So why do not we? I am still trying to figure this part out. I think it is high time we stop repeating the things we see on Western social media.

We now have to do what our audience can identify with. It is that simple. “Our job as marketers is to listen.” Permit me to use some definition here. “Owning the experience with right content targeting the right person via the right medium at the right place at the right time based on their past behavior and current need is what we need to do.” I know; it is a mouthful, sorry.

Content is King; we all know this, but it is truly King when it is in its own Kingdom not somebody else’s and that is where our content is, in another place. We need to bring it home.

I cannot say my opinion works for all the countries in Africa, but I can say it works to an extent for West Africa. We need to tell more stories that leave nostalgia of younger years, we need to be more relevant because what lies in being relevant is a type of authentic quality and uniqueness that other creators do not have. We need to provide value to consumers by actually creating.