By Staff Writer | for Moakanyi Magazine

As Botswana, and many other countries decide to issue an effective state of emergency, changing future consumer behaviour, many business owners are worried about continuity, and rightly so; this creating a need to look start entering the technology sphere to reach markets and maintain brand presence.

Digital Marketing is no longer an option, but the only avenue to create a post-pandemic marketing strategy, and Moakanyi Africa has created a course. The Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing is a business course for African professional and business owners training them in relevant Afro-centric social media marketing and internet commerce skills to run their businesses, brands and relate profitably with customers. The course includes Internet and Social Media Fundamentals, Content Marketing, Social Media Advertising, Email Marketing, Digital Public Relations, Social Media Security, Consumer Behaviour and Analytics, and Digital Anti-Terrorism; all built to equipment the learner with modern knowledge and skills for a 4IR African economy.

These modules are thought over twenty hours, with the assessment model including assignments, and a portfolio of evidence of learnership, and a final exam before awarding with a certificate of completion.

Module 01: To know Digital Marketing, you must start with knowledge of the Internet. Understanding the history of the internet starting from 1994, the date too which is accredited it going commercial as Netscape Navigator listed on the Stock Exchange, and the rest is history. Social Media history is very important and internet history because it helps to know the user of the internet, back from when Dial-Up was being used, to the age of 5G that we are about to enter.

Module 02: Content is King, that is the short of the story, and as we advance the course, Content Marketing is the essence of digital marketing, and in here we learn the process of creating content, the types of content, and the purpose of such content, and then we create the content.

Module 03: Social media advertising is a term used to describe online advertising (paid efforts) that focus on social networking sites. One of the major benefits of advertising on a social networking site (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) is that advertisers can take advantage of the users demographic information and target their ads appropriately.

Module 04: Email Marketing is based on a Mailing List. A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as “the mailing list”, or simply “the list”.

Module 05: Email Marketing is based on a Mailing List. A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as “the mailing list”, or simply “the list”.

Module 06: Social Media security is very important as a business creates a strategy for their social media marketing. There are two main important things, being the security itself and how to manage the risk behind being on Social Media.

Module 07: Social Media for a business is for profit and growth of reputation. This happens when consumers behave favourable toward the brand and business, and such behaviour is what we are studying in this module, to know how people behave on the internet.

Module 08: Every Brand and Business is under attack on the Internet because all brands are owned by human beings and operate to and amongst human beings that are at some point capable of expressing hate. Most African businesses and brands are afraid of Social Media because of Disinformation, Misinformation, Hate Speech, and Scandalising. Whilst there are modules that deal with social media Public Relations, this module deals with the war aspect of Social Media that are used for the protection of the business and brand, and for growth; these are all encapsulated in an ancient book on War Strategy called The Art of War. In this module, the student understands social media as would a general of army understand a battle stage (theatre) and war.

The course has been used to training professionals and business owners in South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe since 2015.