It goes without saying that there are a lot of social media users in Kenya. Social networking is the main factor behind the adoption of a lot of low-cost smartphones, as mobile applications for the same are now extremely common. Given that social networking is super relevant to brands in Kenya, the issue that comes to mind is where do brands ‘act’ when it comes to the most dominant social media sites used by Kenyans? It goes without mentioning that there are normal suspects and those who are not as usual. That being mentioned, we tried to compile the five biggest social media sites in Kenya which are as follows:
YouTube:
Vlogging is not as easy as it appears to be. Building a YouTube channel and a following is literally hard much like writing academics without writing a dissertation. YouTube used to be known only for videos, but then we woke up with what it was all about, and that is when certain people were powerful. Kenyan vloggers aim to express their life stories with others. But among the multiple Kenyan Youtubers, there are those that stick out to be the greatest.
The Green Calabash has more than 21,000 subscribers and 2,183,548 videos. She tells the journey of her kin, the joys, and the struggles they encounter. While some people share a little too much of her life, her suggestions are genuine and have benefited many mothers and families as well. Shiku has shared images in which one or more of her family members have become ill and how they have treated it. She is polite and engaging with her subscribers.
Mandi is renowned for her exceptional culinary abilities. The explanation her follow-up has expanded so much over the years is that she uses Kenyan products that are simple to locate and recipes that are easy to follow. Mandi Sarro is known as the Throwdown Queen, as is Kenya’s media personality and food blogger. She is a radio host at Capital FM. She posts images of herself preparing various recipes with easy-to-follow menus. It also contains all the products that it used to produce the meal. In her posts, she offers her understanding of food making, which is one of the factors that made her one of the famous Young Kenyan Youtubers.
Facebook is by far the main social networking site in Kenya. As of this writing, Facebook has approximately 5 million active users and is rising in Kenya. In view of its scope and uptake, Facebook has become incredibly relevant for marketers to develop their communities and even to execute digital advertising campaigns. Indeed, Facebook has become so popular that many Kenyan grandparents use the website to keep in contact with friends and relatives. Therefore, from this viewpoint, it is a no-brainer that you need to use Facebook to make some sort of decent impact across social networking in Kenya. There were 7 544 000 Facebook users in Kenya in October 2018, accounting for 13.8{dfba7e737e838285fc4d803ca4f092c43fd5acc19a228103c932fdd82820eaa1} of the overall population.
Many of them were men-58.6 percent of them. People between the ages of 18 and 24 became the main consumer community (2 900 000). The greatest difference between men and women occurs in people between the ages of 18 and 24, with men leading by
500 000.
LinkedIn, including Facebook and Twitter, has been around for as long as they have been in Kenya. The biggest caveat about LinkedIn, though, is that the obligations there are for practitioners and, as such, are more geared towards corporate commitments than the more versatile ‘sound of speech’ on Facebook and Twitter. That being said, LinkedIn can not be defeated for significant work-related and business-related problems, and many people are seeking employment there, and companies are even searching for candidates there. LinkedIn has around 1.3 million users in Kenya, which makes it smaller than Twitter in Kenya. Brands can purchase LinkedIn Ads for campaigns in Kenya.
Instagram, because of its very existence of posting ‘filtered’ photos, has rendered it highly open and popular, particularly among young people. We do not have any accurate numbers at this point, but we can guess that there are probably 2 to 3 million Instagram users in Kenya making it bigger than Twitter or LinkedIn. It has also recently become possible to run Instagram Ads in Kenya using the Facebook Ads dashboard, and a good number of Kenyan brands have been trying it out with great success.
Snapchat:
In Kenya, as in the nation, Snapchat is quickly gaining acceptance among young people in particular. Snapchat took quite a while to catch up here, but it is beginning to happen. The major appeal for users of Snapchat is that you can post ‘snaps’ which are short messages that would be deleted within a fixed amount of time. Kenyan labels have not really jumped into Snapchat yet, although this is expected to improve next year. Label our terms, sir. We do not have an exact figure, but we believe Snapchat might have as many as 500,000 users in Kenya as this one.