Facebook is still gold in South Africa

"I would never write off Facebook. Facebook has the reach, the cheap advertising rates, the people. You can do albums, videos, reels, long-form and short-form copy. And the shareability really helps."

It's her recommended base for a new brand, and her reasoning is practical: Facebook lets you grow quicker and do more, Groups still drive real community, and — crucially — it's a low-stakes place to learn what your audience responds to before you expand to other platforms with proof.

Where does the "Facebook is dead" idea come from? Miliswa nails it: "It's hard to find trends analysis that is purely South African." Most of our channel wisdom is imported from the US, where the picture genuinely is different. Build your strategy on your market's behaviour, not someone else's trend report.

Platform risk is the real reason to start there

Her caution about chasing the next new platform is earned. A Google algorithm update once wrecked a year of client SEO overnight. TikTok nearly vanished with clients' best content on it. X turned volatile enough that her team now runs formal evaluations before investing anywhere new — their Bluesky discussion asked, in order: how long will this platform last, can brands exist on it, and is it worth our time? Facebook, by contrast, "if it's going to collapse, it'll take a decade." That stability is a feature.

Choose platforms like a person, not a shotgun

Miliswa's framework: "Know yourself as a brand. If your brand were a person, where would they shop, eat, go? That influences which platforms — and then there has to be a platform-specific strategy." Her KitKat demonstration is a masterclass: the same "have a break" brand shows up as Bali daydreams on Instagram, sustainability thought-leadership on LinkedIn, a meme on Facebook, a two-line joke on X. Same position, four articulations. The tell of a brand that skipped this step: identical copy everywhere, and un-clickable links pasted into Instagram captions.

And every post has to pass two tests she's ruthless about — who cares? and what must they do next? "You've told me you're a red pouch. What must I do now — go and Google red pouches?" No call to action is a wasted post.

Try this week: run your last ten posts through the two tests and count the failures honestly. Then write your brand-as-a-person paragraph and re-derive your platform list from it — starting, for most SA brands, with Facebook as the base.

Sourced from recorded, on-the-record interviews on the South African Digital Marketing Podcast. Every practitioner quoted above is named in the text.