Communicating via social media by the Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari has not been effectively employed.
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Communicating via social media by the Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari has not been effectively employed.
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Regardless of how anyone feels about the American President, Donald Trump, President Buhari should really take a cue from Trump’s communication strategy on social media.
Social media – especially Twitter and Facebook – is now the primary way the Nigerian president and his media aides communicate with the people.
This move has also been employed by many ministries, departments, and agencies of the Nigerian government.
However, this way of communication by the Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari has not been effectively employed.
With 2,895 tweets and 1.45 million followers on Twitter; 721,000 followers and 716,000 likes on Facebook, President Buhari is not using this means of communicating effectively.
Regardless of how anyone feels about the American President, Donald Trump, President Buhari should really take a cue from Trump’s communication strategy on social media and be open enough to learn.
Below, we’ll look at some of the smart things President Buhari fails to do on social media – especially his Twitter.
His social media style is inauthentic
From President Buhari’s messages on social media, one can easily decipher that he only works according to scripts. And this can be deduced from his staffs’ inability to imitate him when they try to create a feeling of authenticity around his tweets or posts. It clearly tells that President Buhari is really not authentically behind the tweets unlike his American counterpart, Donald Trump.
His social media branding is subpar
In a report by Inc., President Trump has branded himself so much that you can tell official tweets from him and those from parody accounts. The American president has a way of personalising each of his tweets so much that he would never write “The New York Times.” but ‘The Failing New York Times’ or “Crooked Hillary Clinton,” and never “Hillary Clinton.” None of this has been in any of the tweets or posts by President Buhari, not even when he passed a message on deadly Boko Haram or even herdsmen. Buhari has little or no understanding of the value of branding. While the licensing of the Trump brand has been responsible for a big chunk of his fortune, same can not be said of the Nigerian president.
His messages aren’t properly scheduled
Majority of President Buhari’s tweets or go up when the staff feels it’s cool or after it must have passed through rigorous screenings and not in the early morning when many are curious of what is trending or being discussed. President Buhari, who claims to be abreast of happenings in Nigeria through the media has not for once reacted spontaneously to the breaking news – most especially security scares. The lack of scheduling President Buhari’s tweets or posts means the citizenry has little or no knowledge of when exactly to check social medium platforms – Twitter and Facebook – to see what the President has to say. Unknown to the President and his staff, early morning tweets can drive the entire day’s worth of news coverage out of Abuja and Nigeria as a whole.
His tweets lack immediacy
Most of the tweets or posts by President Buhari have to go through thought process and scrutiny before it goes public. This has created a lack of immediacy and intimacy from the Nigerian president to the public. During the President’s health scare, a proper – even if terse – from his official handles would have doused the tension created by the opposition and palpable fear amongst his supporters.
His tweets lack peculiarity and style
From tweets and posts, people define who they are and how they want to be addressed and treated. By now, there should be a particular style peculiar to the tweets or posts from President Buhari since he joined social media through Twitter in December 2014. Compared to his American counterpart, President Buhari has no style of communication that can be noticed in every posts or tweet. And this further shows how detached the president is from the most effective communication tool in current days.
-Pulse Ng
