Facebook, Twitter trend big on election campaigns

GURUGRAM: As the campaigning for the state assembly election is in last phase, both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress are making full use of social media to reach the last mile voter base. The BJP’s focus is on putting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar’s excerpts from public rally speeches on Facebook and Twitter trending list, while the Congress plans to raise the pitch of its party manifesto.

“We are not making our social media campaign candidate-specific when only a few days are left for polling. The thrust is on increasing the outreach of the party manifesto, the promise of the pension scheme, unemployment allowance, scholarship, plots for SCs and household expense, among others,” said Naresh Arora, director, Design-Boxed, a creative agency appointed by the Congress for social media campaigning in the state.

Arora, who handled the social media campaign for the party in the Lok Sabha election this year, and Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan state election in 2018, took over the Haryana charge on September 25. “Though it was a late start for us, we have taken strides in engagement levels through our campaign like Pahele Report, Phir Vote,” said Arora, adding that they are reaching each day at least 10 lakh people through social media.

Rohan Gupta, chairman of Congress’ social media department, believes the engagement level is bound to increase during the last days of the election. “From ideation to monitoring and dissemination of content, the central political team is involved with the hired agency. Generally, a few days before the election, political parties’ engagement level on social media increases. It is difficult to give an exact percentage rate.”

The BJP’s strategy is more focused on branding. “Everything that will be campaigned on social media in the last few days has already been decided by the national campaigning committee. We will promote excerpts from the speeches made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Article 370 and Rafale. These issues will be pushed on the trending list of Facebook and Twitter,” said Arun Yadav, state IT and social media head, BJP.

Following the lead given by the national committee, Yadav and his team built a content strategy that includes infographics, videos, GIFs, photo collage, news, live tweeting, live videos of rallies and third party content. The content material is approved by Yadav himself. To circulate the content among a larger set of volunteers and party workers active in the interiors of the state, a website has been created by Yadav’s team for videos and infographics.

“With the help of this website, our party workers can pull out infographics based on the work done by the government in the last five years. It has been done keeping in mind those workers and volunteers who have no facility to create specific infographics or videos relating to their constituency,” said Yadav. To disseminate the content, the BJP has 22 district-wise and 90 assembly-wise Facebook and Twitter accounts, and 18,000 WhatsApp groups.

Arora, on the other hand, has been concentrating on three social media handles — INC Haryana, Pahele Report Phir Vote, and Kumari Selja. “We are targeting the electorate differently. To promote the manifesto, we are circulating animated videos instead of videos where people are made to act. Also, through ‘Haryana ki Baat Selja Ke Saath’, we are highlighting problems raised by the electorates. Already, its three episodes are on social media that received a good response,” said Arora.

Interestingly, going by the social media analytics provided by the parties, the Congress outreach per day has been more than the BJP. Arora said that per day outreach of the INC Haryana Facebook page is almost 10 lakh, while Yadav said it is almost six lakh for BJP4Haryana.

Also, Arora’s team of 400 people is concentrating on the tollfree Haryana manifesto number. Separate toll-free numbers on agendas related to women, youth and employment, farmers, SC and backward class, education, business, and industry are functional. The data shared by Arora shows that to date, the team has registered 9.33 lakh calls where people can listen to the manifesto promises.

On the other hand, Yadav said they will be beginning with the voice calls from Wednesday onwards. “It will be a targeted campaign which would include all the tools of marketing,” said Yadav.