HERTY BORNGREAT IS ABUSING FACEBOOK

It has taken me quite a long time to do this criticism, having severally cleared the thought from my mind; because I felt it was unnecessary to poke my nose into other people's businesses. However, it has blown out of proportion and I can no longer hold the fire. Let me explode!

Even though I am not a fan of the page, I see stories of Herty Borngreat's posts on my Facebook timeline every day, and it bores me to death; the more I see the updates.

The official page of the said artiste has well reached more than half a million likes and counting, in about two years of its creation. Good job, Herty!

Nonetheless, my headache is exacerbated by the unnecessarily unnecessary sentiment-striking photos that are plaguing and populating the brand page. Most of these photos are either a portrait of Jesus Christ or a bedridden person edited with inscriptions such as:

●May God save this child. If you have time, type 'Amen'

●If Jesus can catch you, type, 'Yes'

●Say, 'Yes' if you will walk with Jesus

I can bet it is not directly managed by the artiste, but an active Facebook user who is tasked to drive traffic to the page - a purpose primarily to promote Herty Borngreat. The page manager apparently successfully succeeds at that. Of course, you should expect a thought-provoking photo of a dying child suffering from Ventricular Septal Defect who is surviving on a pacemaker, to be able to claim a massive organic reach.

Conversely, should that be characteristic of the official social media platform of a renowned, award-winning gospel musician? Irony!

She thrives on the emotional character of the page subscribers to gain some traction and engages them to generate buzz. Unfortunately, the artiste does not make a connection between her songs and the page content, hence the miss.

Such a Guerilla marketing strategy will not augur will with her. The prognosis of such an attempt is that she will slowly lose connection with her fans as a singer and eventually appear more of a social media spammer. Need I say such tactics are better left to the Nigerian bloggers to promote their sites?

The last straw that breaks the camel's back is that a hundred percent of the images are copied from a famous Christian page. This is plagiarism, a breach of ethics, which constitutes copyright infringement and further compromises on her originality as an artiste.

Well, all that this piece seeks to say is that the attempt to promote the page and consequently the brand through such a maneuver, in my opinion is not only inappropriate but unprofessional also.

Patrick Fynn,
Accra
[Follow me on Twitter: @PatrickFynn]

2014-05-31 113507