CliqAfrica’s Excellent Social Media Report on Ghana and My Reactions

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I have read an excellent social media report: 2015 Ghana Social Media Rankings was launched by CliqAfrica in collaboration with Avance Media, Dream Ambassdors, TV3, 233livenews, Cape 360, Enter Ghana and Gonewsgh. The report summarized social media follows, likes, and interactions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube for many different sectors such as hotels, telcos, public figures and more.

My top insights were:

  1. Top in the Ghanaian personalities  category was Yvonne Nelson, an actress who was behind the #DumsorMustStop vigil. This possibly shows that engaging in political issues is, despite what many say, good for your celebrity brand.
  2. If to judge politics by the social media ranking of “public figures”, Mahama is more popular than Akuffo-Addo.
  3. University of Ghana ranked well in both the “brand” category and “university” category, but as the breakdown was shown, its rival the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology had many more likes both on Facebook and on Twitter (where University of Ghana is not even present). What UG scored on was engagements, but I wonder…was that weighting fair in this case?
  4. Telco Airtel came out on top, although MTN and Vodafone have larger market shares. Similar to above, the ranking came from engagements.
  5.  Radio stations JoyFm and CitiFm came out neck to neck with Joy on top. Similar to the telco situation, Joy is seen as the market leader.

I also liked that runners up for next year were listed (Ashesi!) and that transparent tables of numbers were included for each category.

Reading the social media report, I actually wish I had been involved in it as I thought it to be well-executed and timely. Now brands and organisations in Ghana can see how they rank in social media compared to others in their sector. I believe social media trends can also at times precede on the ground happenings. Brands not present in the report should see this as a wake-up call.

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Suspended after a Tweet? Nana Aba Anamoah, TV3, and the power of Social Media

Over the last week on Ghana Twitter, we have all forgotten about the corruption in the judiciary and focused our attention on a story involving one of Ghana’s foremost TV-personalities, Nana Aba Anamoah.

What happened was:

  1. An acquaintance sent Anamoah photos of attending a high-level football game in the UK.
  2. Anamoah posted the photos on Twitter, indicating that she had been watching the game live.
  3. The owner of the photos openly questioned Anamoah and accused her of theft.
  4. Ghana Twitter went wild.
  5. A letter from TV3 management, suspended Anamoah from work.

My view on this is that this is a historical moment for social media in Ghana. This sector has been seen as not “real”, something that happens outside of work. Hence most media personalities in Ghana have their own personal accounts, powered by their appearance on a legacy media channel, but run solely by themselves without any support, training, equipment, as well as away from attention from their employers.

Anamoah, I believe, is a case in point. Her Twitter account @thenanaaba has of today a whopping 164,400 followers, to be compared with her employer TV3 news @newsontv3, less than half or 62,900 followers. The official account of TV3 @TV3Ghana has only 10,430 followers. Having over 150,000 followers equals power. That makes Anamoah’s Twitter timeline a window for TV3 to a larger extent than maybe she realized. And as my favourite storybook character, Pippi Longstocking, says: “When you are strong, you have to be nice”. It is not particularly nice to post photos that do not belong to you without acknowledgement. It is not ethical to aim to fool your followers.

Not to worry, the media elite of Ghana is all coming to Anamoah’s rescue. The same people who last week were upset about the “lack of morals in our society” are now saying what Anamoah did “was a joke” and that actions against her are ” not proportional”, “unfair”, or maybe even “sexism” as other (male) TV personalities have said worse things on social media without repercussions.

However, not all TV-personalities read the news on the screen,  perhaps the most prestigious role in media. Not all TV-personalities have an equal number of followers as a small town. People with power have to be held to higher standards, wasn’t that what we all agreed last week?

To reconnect with my first statement about this making social media history, a number of important questions must be raised, maybe especially in relation to media houses in Ghana. Will you now create social media policies for your employees, “the guardians of your brand” to borrow from the letter? Will you now recognise that social media is a job? Will you educate your employees on social media ethics?  Will you engage with your programs’ social media involvement instead of leaving it for individual personalities to pursue? Will you act ethically in all your communication?

For the rest of us: do we post photos that is not ours without acknowledgement? Do we discuss issues responsibly? To we only retweet things we have fact checked?

Note: Anamoah has publicly apologised for her actions. 

Update: Marketing professional Nana Yaw Kesse wrote a post on what TV3 should have done and after this morning’s focus on the issue on Ghana’s principal radio shows, I have to give him right. I also learned the statement was read on the TV3 news and filed under “news” on the TV3 website, which seems incredulous as that makes TV3 the first (in news!) to actually make this item news! (When they should be more interested in us all forgetting about it.)

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Frontline 2012 with Hassan Ayariga, PNC

On Friday, the first program in the Frontline 2012 series was broadcast.

The program is a one hour political interview aiming to clarify the issues for the Ghanaian voter in the 2012 elections. Mr Hassan Ayariga of the PNC was my first guest and, save for a technical problem during the first minutes of our transmission, it went well.

I am hoping to be a ble to share a clip with you sometime soon, but for now you have to make do with these pics from the set.

Next show, Fri 28 Sept 2012 at 8.30 PM on TV3.

What questions do you have for this election’s presidential candidates?

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New Career: TV Host for Frontline 2012 on TV3

As I am writing this, I am seated in the busy newsroom of TV3, a news printer is scrieching in the back, assignments are given out “Kweku, take a camera and go to…” and stories about parties, school girls and social media are debated. This week, a new and exciting chapter in my professional life starts as a TV host of TV3’s new political program, Frontline 2012.

It is a one-on-one show with prominent personalities, predominantely politicians, in this year’s Ghanaian election. It airs every Friday at 8.30 pm and lasts for an hour, with breaks for commercials.

I decided to do this as I have been following the election closely through BloggingGhana’s flagship project GhanaDecides and see this as an opportunity to ask the questions Ghanaians care about to the people who can answer them and provide a steady focus on understanding the issues at hand.

Come Friday, I hope you will watch Frontline 2012!

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