Etisalat Lanka connects with Sri Lanka’s social media network for third consecutive year

Tuesday, 15 July 2014 00:43 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Colombo event ranked among the top 8 Social Media Day events in the world Sri Lanka’s leading mobile telecom innovator, Etisalat Lanka celebrated World Social Media Day by hosting ‘Mashable Social Media Day 2014’ for the third consecutive year for the local social media community. The Colombo event was listed among the top 8 social media day events in the world by Mashable and was attended by over 400 participants – making it one of the most popular social media events to be hosted in Sri Lanka. Etisalat Lanka together with Neo@Ogilvy has spearheaded the Social Media Day in Sri Lanka for three consecutive years. This year’s event highlights were a panel discussion on the ‘Safe and Responsible use of Social Media’ by industry experts from the Ministry of Mass Media and Information, SLCERT and UNICEF, a knowledge sharing discussion by entrepreneurs from the Good Market, IAMSRILANKA and CIOCONAT Lounge on ‘Driving Businesses through Social Media’, an awards presentation to recognise key influential contributors on selected Social Media platforms and further featured the first-ever crowd-sourced song titled: ‘#apesinduwa’. To create the song, Etisalat requested Sri Lankas’ Facebook and Twitter communities to contribute lyrics, which were then selected and compiled to create the lyrical backbone of the song. Over 500 lyric contributions were received and the song was officially launched at Social Media Day 2014.

Positive contributions The most anticipated activity of the day was the recognising of those who contributed positively to the social media community in Sri Lanka. The winners of the five award categories respectively were, ‘We Love Sri Lankan Cricket’ Facebook page for ‘Most Popular Facebook Community Page’, to Ayesha Hettiarachchi for the ‘Most Popular Tweep’, Halik Azeez, for the ‘Most Popular Instagrammer’ to Kurulu Tiskalanka for the ‘Most Popular Blogger’ and the B.H. Edirisooriya Community Service for ‘Social Media for Social Good’. Speaking on the event, Acting Chief Executive Officer of Etisalat Lanka, Wail Salman said: “We at Etisalat are overwhelmed by the response from the local social media community and are honoured to host this significant social media global-calendar event, for a third year. Social media is a dynamic platform which complements Etisalat’s global view of a boundless world of connectivity. The brand’s active involvement in events such as this has helped us build and maintain stronger relationships with the social media influencers in the country.” Commenting further, Salman said: “Etisalat has always been in the forefront of introducing products and services that help enhance a social media users’ experience with specialised social media packages, faster mobile broadband speeds such as our Dual Carrier HSPA+ technology and best rates for mobile data in the country. We have expanded our existing platform of social media services via SMS to update both Facebook and Twitter and have now introduced a specialised ‘Facebook Package’ for all Etisalat prepaid customers, at a very affordable rate ranging from Rs. 3 to Rs. 75, for a daily or monthly use. We are committed to innovate social media connectivity further to enhance customer experience.” ‘Driving Businesses with Social Media’ The first discussion of 2014 Social Media Day was initiated by a panel of entrepreneurs who shared their experiences on ‘Driving Businesses with Social Media’. The panel consisted of Good Market Dr. Organiser Amanda Kiessel, IAMSRILANKA Founder Shiraz Ismail and CIOCONAT Lounge Head of Operations Rikaz Rumy. Many perspectives were shared on the use of social media to promote businesses through the use of Facebook ads, communicating key business guidelines, information sharing, regular engagement with customers and identifying new emerging market segments. Speaking at the event were Information Security Engineer at the Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Readiness Team (SLCERT), Mithila Somaweera, the Secretary to the Ministry of Mass Media and Information, Dr. Charitha Herath and Knowledge Management Officer of UNICEF Sri Lanka, Bhagya Ratnayake who each shared valuable information on the services available by each organisation for online response services, consultancy services, ethical use of social networking, challenges of social networking and an overview of the legal framework for social media in Sri Lanka. Statistics show that 20% of the Sri Lanka’s population have access to the internet. Of this number, 2.4 million Sri Lankans are actively engaged on Facebook and approximately 40,000 on Twitter. All these are indications of a Sri Lanka that is moving swiftly towards an empowered, vibrant and able social media culture.