While the recent news suggests that this year the marketing material vendors of various political parties are struggling to get the good business even though there is less than one month to go for the 14th Gujarat Legislative Assembly polls, how the top leaders are able to connect with people and do the markting of their parties is a point to notice. There are top MLAs of Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and ministers of Gujarat Government who are using social media as a benchmark for the social connection in politics. This is the sign of the changing era of politics where politicians are sending the message of their work to the first-time-voters of Gujarat by connecting with them in their own liking of media!
Talking about Facebook the noteworthy pages of BJP leaders include;
- Vijay Rupani (Chief Minister Gujarat): 1,598,051 page likes
- Shankar Chaudhary (Health Minister Gujarat): 1,254,066 page likes
- MLA Purnesh Modi (MLA & Parliamentary Secretary): 512,661 page likes
- Ganpatsinh Vasava (Cabinet Minister, Gujarat): 463,982 page likes
- Pradipsinh Jadeja (Home minister, Gujarat): 416,750 page likes
While the fan club of these leaders is huge, the activities they are doing on their page is significant as well. They mostly connect with the people of Gujarat through meaningful content on Facebook. For example, MLA Purnesh Modi reached out to the people on 8th November to support the anti-black money day in his constituency. He participated in anti black-money day movement and the content was well delivered via his Facebook page.
The noticeable thing in MLA Purnesh Modi’s Facebook profile is the blue tick mark which indicates the verified page on Facebook. This minute care about making the social media profile trustworthy is another point to consider for him. The verified page confirms his own identity on Facebook and hence people would connect with the sense of trust with him.
The Facebook profile of MLA Purnesh Modi and other leaders become the important platform for the people of their respective constituency not only to socially connect with them but also to keep updating them about the issues of their constituency. Many leaders are very active on Twitter and they respond to the tweets very quickly as well. The recent BJP MLA Social Media Audit Report suggests how MLAs of BJP are using social media effectively. This also indicates that the party is taking social media activity very seriously. The figures in the report generated is based on Page likes, followers, post frequency, comments, shares and post reactions for Facebook and Twitter. For example, from the data based on October 2017 activities for MLA Purnesh Modi
- The Engagement rank on Facebook of his page is in the top 15 out of more than 100 pages.
- The Page Like Rank of his page is 2.
The figures suggest how seriously leaders are using social media platform. Absolutely this continuous social media activity passes the message to first-time-voters and professionals who are actively using social media. The intellects are also observing these activities. Overall, still we have some time to check how the social media will be used further before 9th December but this is sure that social media will once again prove a trump card after 2014 election!
