Founder of BDB Luxury Lifestyle fashion brand, Nwaubani Ebube Clinton, who is popularly known as Billion$baby, has spoken of how he has been using social media to improve the financial fortunes of his business.

About 20 years ago, manufacturers and marketers in Nigeria would rely on the traditional media consisting of radio and television to reach the people who they have in mind as consumers of their product. At that time, those channels were the available vehicles to reach the targeted audience for business people.

READ ALSO:Parallex Bank comes on stream, promises limitless possibilities

However, the advent of the internet and the slow but steady effort by the government to ensure that broadband becomes ubiquitous and affordable to all Nigerians, internet penetration in the country has aided businesses, improved entrepreneurship and facilitated trading.

Without gainsaying, businesses are moving online and those ones who have decided to continue to do things the same old way have either died or gasped for air.

Although the traditional media still retains a measure of advertisement, with millions of Nigerians, potentially youths, now online almost every second, the attention of business owners has shifted to a large degree in reaching the end consumers on various social media platforms.

The social media created by huge tech companies has provided huge opportunities to Small and Medium enterprises (SMEs), though not leaving out the established businesses who are also fighting for a chunk of attention online.

Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have integrated business models into their operations to help business owners reach potential customers and more people on the channels.

More so, Twitter, a microblogging site, has emerged as a more veritable tool for businesses, content marketing, and networking.

Social media has become the most viable tool of mobilization and influence among youths who constitute the largest portion of Nigeria’s demography.

This fact was well demonstrated during the 2020 #EndSARS protest, a youth movement against police brutality in the country. Young men and women were mobilized via Twitter to popular spots, especially in Lagos.

Following the 2021 Twitter ban in the country, it was estimated that local businesses lost about N247.61 billion in 100 days.

With the pervasive nature of social media and how young people use the platforms, millions of products and services are now dumped online, with consumers often confused about brand identification and always needing more information on the messages.

Fondly called Billion$baby by his admirers, the CEO of BDB Luxury lifestyle fashion, who is an erudite businessman and serial entrepreneur, emphasized the need for social media influencers to be incorporated into the business plan of entrepreneurs.

According to Billion$baby, “Today in Nigeria, a social media influencer has more followers than all government institutions and they can pull millions of their followers towards a course as we saw during the EndSARS protests”.

Billion$baby added that social media influencers can help product makers explain the usefulness of their goods in a way their followers will understand and adequately communicate brand identification among the several other ones online.

Billion$baby, who was a prominent voice during the EndSARS protests and also an advocate of crypto, explained that since the world is going digital and all businesses are migrating online, it is to be expected that marketing of products and brands will become more intense on social media.

“This is where social media influencers come in. With the online cluttered with millions of brands, reaching potential customers can be problematic for some producers and markers, hence it makes sense to employ someone who has influence over his or her large followers and could easily convince them to give your product a try”, he enlightened.
Billion$baby, who attended Noble’s Montessori School and Noble’s Academy, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, is still an undergraduate but has made his mark as a businessman.

“It is ignorance that makes people question the value of influencers in the marketing of brands”, Billion$baby added.

Billion$baby, a trailblazer and shining light to business-minded young Nigerian entrepreneurs, is also seeing ahead through creativity and creating solutions.

According to him, he is already looking ahead to the next 10 years when he will be “breaking new frontiers in the economic space and achieving a lot like the ranks of young business tech tycoons like Nigeria’s Hanu and Steve Jobs.

“We have seen in this generation that it is not possible for the government to provide employment for everybody. We could do a lot more for ourselves if we, individually, explore our potential as an entrepreneur,” Billion$baby advised.