It is becoming more and more common to see on the news feed of the most used social network in Africa, Facebook, pages or commercial groups advertising products, or a company promoting one of his products.
Facebook, initially, was (during its media coverage) a social network allowing young people to find each other, lost friends to reconnect or even separated family members to stay in touch. Social, yes, but today it’s not just this side of Facebook that is capturing attention. Marketing and advertising quickly gain the upper hand with companies looking for prospects, customers and targets for their advertising campaigns. If companies have invested in social networks, it is for the simple reason that the Internet is the seat, even the refuge of workers, officials, young “Android”; all those people who need to seize the opportunity offered by accessibility to the network of networks.
Facebook allows you to create a page, groups, advertise, reach a large, well-defined audience (opening an account), in short, it’s almost a matter of creating an online world. But where artificial intelligence brings possibilities, human intelligence brings creativity and imagination. It is therefore possible to see a fashion-savvy young girl with over 1000 friends become the target of a company that wants to promote one of its items. Where Facebook makes money (advertising) its followers do too. It’s not about starting a business with friends, but about marketing your acquisitions or products through your page or creating a group that can bring together like-minded people and be sure to get a good deal.
In this movement, young Cameroonians have quickly jumped on this opportunity by marketing their products on their Facebook platform. Groups are emerging: good sales corners, good business corners, less expensive and class (…) to name a few. Initiatives developed by traders, or even by young people connected by fashion and art. How did it start? How has Facebook managed to offer jobs to young Cameroonians who since 2000 have complained that they have nothing to do in their country?
Marketing experts will tell you that where there is an audience, a mass, a crowd, there are potential customers. It makes sense for businesses in the service provision, marketing and sale of products to invest in frequenting locations. Things that many Cameroonians have understood and decided to use. From the simple creation of a Facebook group, one sees the organization of forums and fairs, events that have become essential in all areas: fashion, crafts, beauty, well-being and even digital. It will no longer be a question of saying that we have nothing to do, but of spending less time posting pictures of ourselves or of the meal we ate in the morning, but of launching into the sale of articles, to seek profit. Cameroonian groups have thus emerged, and are for the most part more than two (2) years old. We can cite (…) some have even resulted in the creation of associations, the organization of fairs and exhibitions. Some people have even made it their profession.
That said, in a country largely made up of a young population and which offers only the civil service as an exit route for its young graduates, this digital boom has done well to open up opportunities for talented young people.
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