AIF organised workshop to empower youths of Cotonou in Digital Marketing Skills

Amessinou described Youtube as the empire of video content with over one billion users worldwide and that, that can impact the growth of young entrepreneurs businesses.

In a major initiative to enable youths in using social media for business communication, the African ICT Foundation (AIF) organised a maiden workship on e-Reputation and Social Media for young entrepreneurs from the Republic of Benin in Cotonou. The was done as African ICT's core objectives of deepening ICT skills across Africa and expanding the continent’s businesses.

The workshop exposed young entrepreneurs to how they can use social media to drive their businesses, mastering communications vector, space and the ability to manage accounts securities effectively. The Foundation's Regional Director for West Africa, Dr. Kossi Amessinou while revealing the potentials of the social media to the young entrepreneur said that it is simpler, faster and cheaper to use the internet in promoting businesses than any other platform. Detectives and recruitment officers regularly investigate the digital identity of candidates through the internet, he added. Amessinou disclosed that well over 70-80% of journalists, politicians, public authorities, actors, sportsmen have one social media account or the other. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook are some of the veritable tools for driving their businesses effectively online.

He described social media as an excellent network of communication that offers the opportunity to share content and allow to disseminate conversations with public as well as the targetted audience. According to him, a tweet works like articles teaser, photos, videos, or Facebook post has the power to increase the customer base of their businesses effectively and that information dissemination could be done through visuals and could be term as e-commerce. He added that with social media like Instagram small businesses can market their products and service to celebrities because it allows for the creation and sharing contents in the form of images and videos, particularly by young people. 

With inputs from African ICT Foundation (AIF)