What a year for the now Commander in Chief of Egypt Mohammed Morsi! He got the keys to Heliopolis palace and was just now integral in establishing the truce and cease fire between Israel and Palestine.
And it is often through online media darling Twitter that he disseminates key messages to his 'people'. Truces, sackings, and all manner of presidential news - as well as personal life updates - they all feature in his Twitter feed.
“They like me! They really like me!”
For whatever reason though, his blockbuster year has not translated into social media gold. Take Twitter for example-- any reporter thanks God for this application because it keeps the world abreast on real time quotes and actions by those in charge. But how many Twitter followers does ol’ Morsi the Mediator have after his recent role in the Gaza truce? He’s a little over half a mil.
That may sound like a lot, but it really is not. My president Obama is in the top 5 in the world for Twitter followers. President Morsi does not even crack the top 10 … in Cairo! In fact, number 2 in the whole country is Mohammed El Baradei.
The head of the most populous nation in the Arab empire, democratically chosen, can't muster enough 'fans'. Even if only a small portion of the rabble had access to the illustrious Facebook or Twitter, he ought by rights to have the lion's share of 'likes'.
Why don't more see Morsi? For crying our loud, there are triple the amount of people getting important updates from Pee Wee Herman and Tity Boi than the first democratically elected President post Arab Spring! Who cares what they have to say-- we need to see more Morsi!
Perhaps President Morsi's groupies are more of a Facebook crowd? I was surprised when I found he had over 818k likes on his fan page. Now we’re talking!
That was until I realized I was looking at the page for ‘Morrisey’ the singer. In reality, the President of a country of over 80 million people only has 8k likes on his page.
8000 likes.
i.e. 1 out of every 10k Egyptians likes their president.
To put this in perspective; a baked potato has twice the amount of friends. Even his opponent Ahmed Shafiq from the past election has more likes than Morsi. The guy who lost is winning the friend count.
We need to see more Morsi
The world is watching to see what President Morsi can do. His track record so far is not bad but how is he going to make the new constitution favorable to all? What will he do to help the country heal from the school bus tragedy?
Whatever the answers to these challenges, they better be tweeted, posted, chatted and doggone blasted all over the cyber walls of the world.
And whoever is in charge of Morsi’s social media needs to set up a meeting with Tity Boi and Morrisey. Scratch that—have him call me! I got three quick fixes for Morsi’s lack of likes
- Not just Arabic: Start an English feed for both the fan pages and Twitter.
- Market Morsi: T-shirts, bumper stickers, Google chats, or even hang out in Costa Coffee with the others.
- Embrace social media, don’t just bear with it: From the looks of your Tweets and Facebook posts, it seems like more of an obligation than an amazing resource to you.
This is still your year President Morsi but your present dent in the social media realm is not too impressive. We await some change. Seriously, Brett, Pee Wee and Tity will all be on stand-by if there are any questions.
By Brett Weer
