It seems that Nigerian companies have started going crazy for social media platforms especially Twitter. I’m not surprised since Twitter has enjoyed a lot of global press coverage and positive reviews, even though they’ve been having issues.
Twitter usage is growing exponentially in Nigeria. In fact, Twitter is amongst the top 100 sites visited in Nigeria (currently ranked 30th), according to Alexa.
Before now, I thought that Nigerian companies would start adopting these online communication tools in the 22nd Century as they’ve almost always approached new technologies very sluggishly. But today, I’m glad that social media is actually making sense in Nigeria.
Now, with MTN Nigeria, Arik Air, Zenith Bank, UBA Group, and others now on Twitter, we can now analyze how these companies are using social media. While it’s still early to say whether or not their social media efforts are successful, we can at least give them a “clap” for turning to social media.
But my question is: Is Twitter the right social media channel to reach their existing and potential customers?
It would be interesting to analyze this in a future post.
Tags: arik air, mtn nigeria, nigeria, Social Media, Twitter, uba group, zenith bank
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Interesting trend. good spot.
It would be even more interesting to see where this goes, especially interms of customer-experience in general
Really need to see how they are using the service to answer customer queries, feedback, etc
Twitter is actually a great opportunity, if used right, for these Nigerian companies to
(1) get the pulse of people on their brand and services.
(2) Serve as a mechanism to respond to actual service requests and complaints.
If all they use it for is to pump out marketing at people, they will very shortly be ignored in the constant stream of tweets. I recently took MTN to task in my blog (http://tinyurl.com/m8uxya). A company properly plugged into the internet would have tools that keep an eye out for buzz, positive or negative about their companies and move rapidly to engage the community's concerns.
"If all they use it for is to pump out marketing at people, they will very shortly be ignored in the constant stream of tweets."
Rest assured I'll be watching how they use Twitter;-)
Looks like MTN have killed their Twitter account.
Yeah, Twitter says it doesn't exist anymore. Hmm…
Thanks for sharing this, it will really improve my use of twitter.
The availability of Twitter and other social networking sites, as well as the popularity of text messaging, have made short-form communication an everyday reality. But expressing yourself declaratively in short messages containing 140-character max involves effective writing skill.