Online strategy master
ITALY’S DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: HIS WEB MEDIA SAVVY SHAMES TRUMP
Doubling support for his far-right party in seven months, he has a broader agenda.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has doubled support for his far-right party in seven months by cultivating a savvy social media presence that any politician would envy, including his inspiration, Donald Trump.
Salvini, who modelled his “Italians first” campaign after Trump’s US presidential bid, has built an effective communications machine that doesn’t only bolster his League party’s popularity, but aims to help anti-immigrant, populist forces win control of the European parliament in May.
Salvini is especially successful on Facebook, with 34 million users per month out of an eligible voting population of 46.6 million.
Although Trump’s page has more “likes” at 23.5 million versus Salvini’s 3.2 million, the Italian’s followers are more “engaged”, according to Pietro Raffa, a digital strategist for a Milan communications consultancy. In the first week of July, for example, 2.6 million people liked, commented, shared or watched videos on Salvini’s 82 Facebook posts, versus 1.5 million engagements on 32 posts for Trump, Raffa said.
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon said US politicians could learn from Salvini’s methods. “I was blown away by how sophisticated he was and how he managed to do it on a shoestring.”
Much of the credit goes to Luca Morisi, Salvini’s social media strategist and the man behind the machine, 45, whose team of 10 works 24 hours a day if necessary, averaging 10 Facebook posts a day and spreading content across YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, and through WhatsApp and Telegram chat groups.
Using a specially designed matrix of software, collectively dubbed “the Beast”, they create graphics, pump out adverts for events, publish on multiple social media platforms and monitor news, Morisi said in a presentation titled, The Legend of the Captain, Salvini’s nickname.
The machine started up in January 2014, less than a month after Salvini took the reins of a party polling 3%. Morisi made Salvini – a folksy, plain-speaking 45-yearold – the brand. Now the League polls 34%. In September, Salvini’s Facebook page had 28 million views and recently reached 30 million.
Salvini doesn’t avoid controversy. “The more they call us racists, the closer we get to 51%,” he said.
He invites people into his world, posting pictures of the TV show he’s watching or the chestnuts he’s roasted. “These posts create a direct relationship with people,” Morisi said.
With France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban and others, Salvini aims to overthrow the European Union’s liberal establishment and restore power to nation states. –