Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has achieved another first in Social Media – used a very innovative app called Facebook Mentions (launched in Sept by Facebook) to livestream a Q&A with Chairman PTI Imran Khan from his house in Banigala Islamabad – hosted by Faisal Javed Khan and coordinated by the PTI Social Media Team.
The idea was conceived by the entire team and initially tested with Asad Umar a few days earlier after the completing his efforts in the successful Local Body elections in Islamabad.
Imran Khan came live on Facebook on 8th December and started answering questions as fed to him by Faisal Javed Khan, which were being collected live from the social media using the hashtag #IKLiveWithSMT
The urge to deliver newer and better ideas on social media has been primarily the push by the chairman himself. On many occasions Chairman Imran Khan has applauded the PTI Social Media team for setting examples in social media, but has urged us all to strive for more and better ideas, oft he has said, to stay relevant and ahead you need to stay ahead of the curve and test new ideas and new concepts, failure will only lead to success in the future
Amongst many firsts in Social Media for example PTI Social Media team in September 2012 orchestrated Pakistan’s first ever Google Hangout with any political leader, which was viewed by thousands online and about 20 participants rotated through various cities across the world to personally ask Imran Khan a question or two, to which he responded unfortunately the Google Hangout idea fizzled away since youtube has been blocked now for many years.
Posted by Imran Khan (official) on Tuesday, December 8, 2015
The stream touched at one time a concurrent 28,000 live viewers but stats show the views over 300,000 during the hour long stream, it gathered 82,000 comments and was shared over 7,000 times while the numbers continue to grow – the backend numbers are breathtaking and mind boggling
I’m excited that we have opened the doors to another stream of ideas for PTI (and other parties) and I’m quite sure many other leaders would be invited to host similar sessions. We’ve learnt a few issues during the session which shall be sorted out in the future of which the biggest concern was a more direct way for social media users to ask questions and have them answered directly. Inshallah we will iron out the kinks we would love to see a more regular Q&A Session with Chairman Imran Khan interacting with the public on the social media.
It’s fun to be amongst a passionate team of volunteers unified to a cause, I truly am proud of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Social Media team which has yet again delivered another first.