Mmusi Maimane became the official leader of South Africa’s main political opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), at its congress held this month. South Africa reacted on Twitter. Habari Media took a look at what happened.
#DACongress and @MmusiMaimane received a combined 26K+ tweet mentions* and over 477M potential impressions*. Hashtag, #DACongress, accrued over 29 000 tweets with 440 million impressions while the account, @MmusiMaimane was mentioned in over 7 000 tweets and 37 million impressions.
“When graphing the number of tweets during the day, it’s clear to see when Maimane was elected,” says Marius Greeff, commercial director at Habari Media. “During the time period of 13h00 and 14h00 on Sunday the 10 May 2015, the tweets trend hugely upwards and spike at 6 691.”
Some of the top retweets include:
@MmusiMaimane – 433 RTs “Now, the real hard work begins. Thank you all for your support!”
@DA_News – 263 RTs #DACongress: FINALLY the New Federal Leader of the DA is @MmusiMaimane”
@ChesterMissing – 195 RTs “Well done .@MmusiMaimane. I hope you have the courage to speak back to your white supporters about their privilege and what apartheid did”
@WilmotJames – 184 RTs “Congratulations to @mmusiMaimane on beingelected as leader of the @DA_News. Let’s unite and serve the best interests of the people”
@Our_DA – 433 RTs “#DACongress: New Federal Leader of theDemocratic Alliance, @MmusiMaimane”
“What’s clear is that South Africans use Twitter to respond, report or react to news and events in real-time and follow these events via their social media platforms,” says Greeff.
It is easy to understand why this platform has become popular. It’s simple to use, there are mobile and desktop applications and people prefer the snippet type of news from people that they want to hear from. Marketers and business use Twitter to share information about their services, gather real-time market intelligence and build relationships with customers, partners and influencers.
“Ad Dynamo makes the official set of Twitter Promoted Products available to advertisers across Africa,” says Remola Chetty, marketing manager at Habari Media. “Habari Media and Ad Dynamo have formed a partnership in order to aid sales and offer a managed service for clients interested in using Twitter as a targeted marketing tool.”
Statistics supplied by Adynamo. Source: Crimson Hexagon / Terms: #DACongress, “Mmusi Maimane” (7 May – 11 May 2015) – South Africa only.
