combine our knowledge of disease to help combat the most significant ailments suffered in the course of Twittering” Mike Cadogan 2015

I happened to hear an interview recently with a man who had made it his mission to twitter everything he ate. I was astounded that such an activity might garner so much attention that an international radio station felt that they just had to talk to the man! He has been doing this for almost 2 years now.

I happened upon twitter a few years ago, and I am embarrassed to say that I never took to it. I could not at that time understand the logic behind it. But today, while I am still not a very active tweeter, I understand that it can be a very powerful weapon in the right hands, with people who know how to use it.

Lately we have seen the #hashtag in almost everything. And on you facebook page you see it bold up. The purpose of the hashtag is make the key word, the one that follows the tag easily traceable. For instance #workplacesolutions means that if at a different point in time I wish to find out what was happening at Workplace Solutions at that time, it will be easy for me and others to find.

Tweets, as the 140 characters or less are referred to, are brief messages that you distribute to your followers. You would also receive the same messages from the people that you follow.

I went online to find out how many people in Lesotho have active twitter accounts. I found that only 1 account registered in Lesotho had enough followers to make the statistics table. This is a social platform that we are obviously not taking advantage of.  Perhaps there are others out there, but that were initially started in SA or somewhere else and as a result do not register as Lesotho accounts. One of the accounts I follow is that of Trevor Noah. He has 2,2 million followers. As an entertainer, and an observer of life who has a comedic view of everything it does not surprise that everyone wants to hear what he has to say.

For a tweeter account to reap benefits, tweets have to reach the right people, those that must act, and they must be short and concise, but passing on the message. A tweet that has to be broken into 3 tweets because it is long does not encourage others to read.

People within an organisation can possibly follow each other on twitter in order to give each other the heads up on what is happening. People within and industry might choose to follow industry leaders to keep up to date. The fact that the message is short makes it easy to decide on whether or not to follow up on what has been shared. It is a way to be apprised of upcoming meetings and conferences, or even to update others of these. If the person is interested they go to the website, the article, or the fb page that is most likely flagged and learn more.

For instance, we would all like to know what is happening within the LHDA phase 2 project, and would it not be nice if we could follow them on tweeter? Consultants would follow up where necessary, engineers, suppliers, contractors, community members. We would all feel as if we were part of it, not that it was happening on top of us and only those with the right connections would know. Or that suppositions and rumours become facts.

Would it not be nice if we could follow BEDCO and all its projects that are to help small businesses or would be business people…

So Basotho Lets Tweet. 

This article was published in Public Eye - Friday 10th 2015.