I believe we can all agree that Grenada has gone digital, every Grenadian with a smartphone has one of many Social Media apps on it. The problem with that is it makes our attention very fragmented, we are no longer just watching GBN or just listening to Boss FM. We are now consuming content daily on one of the many social media apps on our phone.
As a matter of fact, when we watch something on GBN or MTV or hear something on Boss FM or POWER, we take the conversation about that thing to Facebook. What does that mean for the business community in Grenada? It implies that Entrepreneurs and business owners need to understand the Grenadian digital media landscape and learn how to tell stories on social media to create an emotional connection with their customers/potential customers.
The Only Asset That Matters
Whether you are a charity trying to sell people on your cause, or you are trying to sell tickets for your show, or you are trying to sell clothing or food. You, first of all, need people’s attention. You need my attention before you can tell me how amazing your Independence teeshirts are.
That’s why it’s so important to understand the digital media landscape because today that’s where the attention is. It may not always be there but who cares, that’s where it is today, and we all need to be marketing and communicating using the technologies of today. Not those of the past and not those of the future.
The 2018 Digital Media Landscape in Grenada
Luckily, the research into the Digital Media Landscape in Grenada has already been done for us by Hootsuite, one of the better known social media marketing and management solutions out today.
According to the research done, Grenada’s population is roughly 108.1 thousand people. Out of that, 69 thousand are internet users, and all of those internet users are social media users. Yes, you read that correctly, there are roughly 69 thousand Grenadians in Grenada on social media. Not counting the many Grenadian in the diaspora.
Mobile users are even more fascinating, the research shows that there are 124 thousand active mobile connections in Grenada. Remember the population is just about 108.1 thousand people. This goes to show that we have individuals with multiple active mobile phones.
That makes sense, just over a month ago, I was trying to get a hold of a friend, and I called her all day, sent her messages on Whatsapp and nothing. When we connected later that day, she said, oh, the phone you were calling I left at home, I have my other phone with me.
The number of active mobile social media users in Grenada according to the research is 62 thousand, imagine that. 62 thousand people access social media via their mobile phone. If that isn’t a tremendous opportunity waiting to be exploited, then I don’t know what is.
The research further went on to analyze the major social media platforms and found that of the 69 thousand Grenadians online, all are monthly active Facebook users with 90% of those users accessing Facebook via their mobile phone. Imagine that, 69 thousand Grenadians are active on Facebook on a monthly basis, oh the possibilities.
Hootsuite also analyzed Instagram and found that there were 27 thousand monthly active Instagram users. The numbers were as of January 2018, and I firmly believe that this number has since increased.
They didn’t look at any other social media platform. However, my own research earlier in 2018 found that Youtube and Whatsapp were also platforms mostly utilized by Grenadian. As a matter of fact, my own study indicated that Facebook was the most utilized platform, followed by Whatsapp then Youtube and Instagram. Whatsapp is not even a social media platform, it’s a messaging app.
Now that we know all this information, the next step is to adapt our business to make it work for us. How do we do that, well, as entrepreneurs, we need to learn how to use social media to connect, engage, create and build relationships online.
But, how do we do this? Well, that answer will be the focus of my upcoming Social Media Master Class in Grenada on February 20th, 2019. More information about this Masterclass can be found here
How are you applying digital technologies in your business??