HH Sheikh Mohammad wants to interact with you more

HH Sheikh Mohammad wants to interact with you more

Following global trend of influential people taking to social media to reach the masses, Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed hopes for more public interaction through his Youtube channel.

February 15, 2012 3:46 by kippreport

Yesterday, Kipp was peeking through the blog posts of THE Roberto Cavalli. The Italian fashion designer and legend has decided to change his corporate blog from just purely featuring celebrities wearing his collections into a genuine platform in which he will communicate with the online community about his life, his loves and his thoughts on and beyond the Cavalli brand. (He even often writes and shares photos of his German Shepard, Lupo and sometimes alludes to about his Swedish ‘lady friend’.)

Cavalli’s blog is also automatically linked to his personal twitter account, @rcavalli.

It is certainly not new to see famous people dabble in social media. But it is often with a team of PR people running the show behind the scenes. Even Guy Kawasaki does it.

But what’s refreshing here is the man behind the brand taking the reins on his social media identity. Isn’t that the whole point of the accessibility of social media is so we can be in touch with the actual person and not their publicist?

While he is certainly some considerable time away from what Roberto Cavalli is doing, it’s interesting to see that UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum hopes for more public interaction through his new Youtube Channel, called ‘HHMohammedBinRashid’.

Click the image to go to the channel now:

At the time of writing, the channel has 693 subscribers and a total of 14,533 video views since it went live two weeks ago.

Of course, Sheikh Mohammed is no stranger to social media. His communications have included a Twitter account, @HHShkMohd, which has 682,369 followers, and a Facebook page, HHSheikhMohammed, which opened in 2009 and has 552,437 likes at time of writing.

The communications across these platforms are mostly written in first person and are written in both English and Arabic. Though the official tone still suggests it’s a team behind the tweets and posts. Regardless, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Kipp certainly doesn’t expect Sheikh Mohammed to maintain the Facebook and Youtube pages himself. But it would be great to have at least one avenue—we’d say Twitter would be the best platform—where the world can get in touch with His Highness on the kind of one-to-one basis that social media brings. For now, we’re looking at this as a half-glass full.

The photo is of Sheikh Mohammed using the metro, taken from the Facebook Page, 365 Things To Do In Dubai.