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Interactive marketing via social media

Ester Kamati



Embracing her love for language, interaction and diversity, Zavia Johr is a Delta Secondary School alumnus. Her fondness for linguistics has influenced her choice of schools and career and thus far, has leant German and some Portuguese, which she took an interest in when she started working at a national airline in 2012.

Johr enjoyed interacting with people from varying backgrounds, cultures and languages, which inspired her to pursue a communication skills course at the then Polytechnic of Namibia.

It was a struggle staying afloat however, juggling a demanding career in aviation and raising her son on top of focusing on her studies. She then made the tough decision to discontinue her studies.

In 2017, Johr left the aviation industry and landed between law and real estate. Currently, she is in charge of marketing the Southern Business School of Namibia, a role she undertook in 2019, practising the skills she acquired as a student at the same university.

Johr has stepped up to the plate in her position, constantly growing and diversifying her roles from student sourcing to taking over some of the jobs done by the managing director as well as arranging budgets for advertising. Social media has become an essential part of advertising, even being compared to word of mouth.

Johr encourages social media mangers to beware of the risk of negative publicity which may be caused by individuals who may not have knowledge of the institution but make negative remarks.

“Continuous monitoring of the social media pages is of crucial importance because these days, anything can go viral and sometimes negative remarks go further than positive remarks.”

Interaction is essential as well, according to Johr, who encourages adding questions to captions on social media posts.

“Social media allows a bigger interaction platform that normal marketing tools can't offer.”

She added that facts and real stories make a big difference, as “we live in a community where people want to see people succeed, legitimately.” Encountering stories about people that they can relate to motivates people.

With many people flooding the internet every second, it may seem difficult to stand out and engage clients, however Johr manages this through ensuring that posts are creative and daring as well as interactive.

“Asking questions is the one way I get to reach a bigger audience. One question leads to many other questions, shares, and tags.”

Marketing is not a one-way street, as emphasised by Johr. She embraces various platforms for marketing, which allows her to reach different audiences.

She shared that working men and women make up majority of the students at Southern Business School, who often read newspapers and listen to radio on their way to work.

Traditional media and social media work hand-in-hand for SBS, as Johr mentioned that radio advertising often contains the social media handles of SBS.

“This allows the working adult and the school leaving students to take out a phone and quickly browse our website or post a comment on a relevant post of their interest.”