Guest Feature : Social Media - Twitter Trends Employing Jobless Ghanaian Youth

Social Media Marketing is gradually catching up with many corporate organizations and institutions in Ghana.

As each day passes, social media fanatics are bombed with information or promotions being spearheaded by social media marketing groups (Hype Groups).

Currently on the Ghanaian Twitter space, many names have emerged as hype groups. Their aim is to help organizations and celebrities gain attention/popularity on Twitter on daily bases.

Some of these groups include; Twitta University, 9900 FAM, IIIState, NiiDahyper, Wildoutcrew, HotnXGh, Pessure Bois just to mention but a few.

The prime mandate of these hype groups is to feature products and initiatives of organizations or institutions among the daily trends in the country. They usually prefix the tittle of the trend with a hashtag (#).

But how are trends determined? Trends are determined by a process and by default, are tailored for you based on who you follow and your location.

This process identifies topics that are popular at a particular point in time to help you discover the hottest emerging topics of discussion on Twitter that matter most to you.

The job of these groups is to tweet about products and initiatives of an organization or institution until they appear in the trends. 

For these bodies that contracts the hype groups, it means the millions of Ghanaians who will be on Twitter at a particular time the trend is up are likely to click and know more about it.

Online marketing, in this case on Twitter, has seen exponential growth. It is an important element for business growth.

These dynamics spelt above, features similarly on other social media groups like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest among others but this piece focuses more on Twitter.

   

Many of the people who are members of these groups are the youth and they engage in it for fun purposes. But the trend is changing as some are making a living out of it.

Approximately they make GHC100 every week for their activities on twitter. The President of Twitta University, Ali Yahaya told me.

The leader of the IIISTATE hype group, Stephen Asirifi  , said sometimes members of the group are given data bundles and air time after a job has been executed. This sometimes is because of meager payments they receive from organizations or individuals who contract their services. But a very productive week can fetch each member of the group about GHC1000.

According to statsmonkey.com, about 1,071,900 Ghanaians are on Twitter. Most of these are the youth.

Twitter’s latest quarter one user report revealed that its active users had risen 18 percent to 302 million. The company further revealed that 80 percent of users access Twitter via their mobile devices. Quarter one for 2014 recoded 255 million users; the same period 2013 was 204 million; 2012 recorded 138 million.

This data reveals a progressive increase in the Twitter users year in year out. 

It is therefore not surprising that in recent times many businesses are becoming more aware of these avenues and are channeling their business promotions through it. They take advantage of the youthful presence to ensure the success of campaigns.

One website that provides statistics on how trends perform includes keyhole.com and Tweepmaps.com.

These statistics tell the fact that these Ghanaian youth on twitter are helping corporate and institutional brand visibility.

  

I can foresee in the near future that many institutions would want to cut down on main stream media budgeting for social media advertising. Obviously it's the way to go. 

Writer: Osei Owusu Amankwaah

Email: owusuamankwaah@gmail.com

Call: +233202891069

Twitter: @Starrosei