Do budding politicians need a winning social media strategy in Kenya as we draw near to elections 2013? I would answer this question in the affirmative.

Social Media is impacting and changing the way communities around the world are relating with each other daily. A social media like platform Facebook has a community of 2 billion users. This is a much more than the population of all African countries put together.

Majority of the  Kenyans  who are internet savvy have a profile in Facebook, not to mention Twitter and LinkedIn too. A good number of them log in daily to catch up with their friends and family. This forms a decent portion of the electorate, especially the youth that politicians are looking to woo for votes in the forthcoming election in 2013 and without a social media strategy in Kenya, this will be a missed opportunity.

Given these facts you would assume that aspiring politicians would be falling over themselves engaging these tech savvy Kenyans on social media. Mind you this includes the Kenyans in the diaspora. This is however not the reality on the ground. The more seasoned politicians are the ones who are making more use of social media channels than the newbies, yet the latter are the ones who need to be more visible because of obvious reasons.

Election 2013: Formulating a Winning Social Media Strategy in Kenya

Everyone of us wants to win in which every race we sign up for, this does not always happen and it does not hurt to be strategic in order to get there. The upcoming elections are no different, those who will be contesting for various positions will be looking for the best formula to get the electorate to vote for them.

A social media strategy in Kenya for election 2013 should be in the to do list of contender’s. As I have mentioned above, the Kenyan electorate has become more tech savvy and more so the youth who no aspiring politician can afford to ignore.

As an aspiring contender, you want hang out where the youth are hanging out, speak the same language they are so that you can woo them. This means you have to create a profile on the social media platforms and in Kenya this means on Facebook and Twitter.

Creating your profile does not mean you are now home free, but there will be a lot more work for you to do to create a following. This means running an online campaign as you establish a social media strategy in Kenya to form a community around your profile with the aim of constantly engaging with your community to keep them interested and  get feedback from them.

Social Media Strategy in Kenya: Start blogging

In addition to creating profiles on the social media platforms, a good addition to your social media strategy in Kenya will be to start blogging.

A blog is a type of a website which is set up using a CMS – a content management system. In a blog you will be able to write and publish content wich you think the electorate is looking for. The blog is the home of your online campaign. Remember, as much as Facebook and Twitter are good platforms to engage in, you do not own the space on which your profile page is build on. If Mack Zuckerberg decides he has had enough of Facebook and pulls the plug on it, the community you employed so much effort to build dies with it.

A blog on the other hand, in this case a self hosted blog with your own domain name is your property online just like your plot of land. This means unless you infringe on ICANN, you are the legal owner of your blog.

So let your social media strategy in Kenya be centered around your blog, build your community around it. Use the social media platforms to drive the traffic to the blog and encourage members of your community to leave comments on your posts and ask questions too for real engagement.

 

 

 

 

Written by: 

Pauline is the CEO at Allen Cole, also consults for iWork and Elite Writers Hub. She works with small and medium size organizations to increase their visibility online through corporate blogging, content creation, website development and social media engagement.