It seems like the battle for 2012 is officially on in social media. PM Raila has just launched a Facebook page which has all the clues to a very very strong battle for the heart of the youth in the race to State House. Launched mid March, the page is one of the fastest growing with close to 9,800 fans from just 6,000 last week. Raila’s campaign used to manage this page which went dormant and is now full of all kinds of funny postings.
Other leaders who seems to have upped their social media engagements are our Kalonzo Musyoka, Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Mike Sonko among others. Some have been online long enough. Like Martha Karua who has been having a Facebook and Twitter presence for long, they don’t need much lessons on social media engagement.
Martha Karua has the most followers in Twitter and Facebook since she adopted social media early in the regime. We say early in the regime because politicians like Raila, Kalonzo, Kibaki and Uhuru had very good presence in social media in the run up to 2007 elections but they ditched the channels immediately they got into the various comfort zones.
The Kenyan politicians who are embracing social media at this stage seems to want to use those online more for their battle for various seats and not as a means of serious engagement. Martha Karua comes tops as someone who engages directly with the youth and others through social media. Others including the PM lost the chance to engage with the youth at a very early stage in the government. They are coming online when they are desperate for votes into a political office.
What do you think of the late adoption?
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