Social media marketing is one of the opportunities presented by the growth of social networks. Organizations or individuals have seen the need over time to use them and have employed various strategies to engage the most people in these networks.
There are several social media marketing strategies that are used currently which include the likes of promoted posts or using highly influential people to spread the word. However, we have also seen the use of bots on platforms like Twitter, which are Twitter accounts that post automated posts.
The problem with these Twitter bots is that they are used for spamming purposes and it is actually not difficult for people to single them out. Well today Kenyans on Twitter decided to out a series of bots that were being used to trend the hashtags #MombasaRising and #ThisIs Mombasa.
The rise of #JohoBots pic.twitter.com/1cNeVuLmkp
— Feisal (@FeisalAlbakry) December 2, 2016
They were quickly given the #JohoBots moniker (named after the Mombasa County governor) and you can see clearly they are just several random accounts tweeting the same exact thing. Judging from the tweets, you can see that they are being used to trend the hashtag to paint a positive limelight for Mombasa but Kenyans on Twitter were not fooled by this.
“This is beyond ridiculous”
https://twitter.com/ShikoNguru/status/804650242859745280
“they underestimated our intelligence”
The boys on the ground under estimated our intelligence.They think we are like their master.Mombasa know their problems #JohoBots pic.twitter.com/Zx2lv1L7UF
— Abdul Kibinda (@kibinda_abdul) December 2, 2016
Some called out the use of hire bots to give an impression as ‘sad’
It is sad for a county to "hire" bots to give an impression on social media instead of creating reliable working systems #johobots pic.twitter.com/ILfZEvU5vL
— Wuod Baba (@29nyash) December 2, 2016
“They are being used to drown out the real issues”
https://twitter.com/njooro/status/804596010894827522
One pointed out the real irony here
#JohoBots only know Moi Avenue pic.twitter.com/bDim2jWZA1
— Fatma Albeity (@AlbaityAA) December 2, 2016
As you can see, people are not buying the use of Twitter bots as a campaign strategy and it will be interesting to see what politicians will use in the coming election year.
