HOW NOT TO TWEET : Lessons from Obama's Twitter

I’m one of 4,5 million followers of Obama’s tweets on Twitter if there’s any truth in the number of his followers. According to Newsweek Obama is inflating the number of his followers on Twitter.
The report lists other politicians and celebrities who are guilty of the same crime.
Whether these reports are true or not it’s irrelevant, what matters to me is that they provide us with lessons & insights on how not to use social media channels such as twitter and facebook.


1st Lesson: Do It Yourself
In the beginning of this year President Obama was searching for a Twitterer to manage his account, hence his tweets are so impersonal and probably less followers than reflected on his twitter account.










The best approach is to manage your own social media accounts, this will lead to more people following you and you will not need to inflate the numbers of your followers.


2nd Lesson: Be True to yourself
Social Media is supposed to provide users with intelligent insights and draw attention of those who matter to you. Inflating the number of your followers will only deceive you and lead to inaccurate intelligence.
REMEMBER : there’s a difference between followers and quality followers, on social media one should strive for quality followers.
Adding more friends to your Facebook account does not necessarily lead to quality friendship instead it invites trouble in your life.
Social media if used properly by leaders can provide intelligent insights and keep them in touch with the people and supporters.

MBEKI SILENCED!

The recent reports by the Sunday Times on the ban of the Former President of South Africa Thabo Mbeki on SABC makes me wonder whether SABC understands that it is not the only communication channel and that we live in a different era.
There was a period in time when world leaders were only able to communicate with the citizens and the world community through the national broadcasters television and radio stations. I would like to call that period Communication 1.0 era.
Now we are living in a period where leaders do not necessarily need to communicate with the citizens through the national broadcaster. We live in the Communication 2.0 era, where tools such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube makes it possible for leaders to communicate with the citizens and the community without being censored by state institutions or any organisation.
Obama has shown other leaders that they can communicate without the National Broadcaster, during his election he used platforms such as Facebook and YouTube to spread his message. He continues to use it in the White House to communicate with the citizens and the world.
It's about time that SABC wakes up to the reality that we live in the digital era and that television and radio as we know it is no longer the only platform for communication.