Social Media strategies by political parties today

Reading some news items and the reactions on social media especially by the Congress netas, their followers and  especially the tweeple I felt compelled to share these thoughts from a strategic perspective.

If I were a  Congress  leader  what is my objective ? To win enough votes and get voted  back to power again.

Like all political parties in India I do not have any conscience and will divide, kill,  blackmail, stoke hatred, announce freebies,  do development work, show progress, sell family silver, buy media, advertise etc  and do whatever it takes to win. After all in elections in India as they say everything is fair in love and war and elections are war. In my younger days 2 political teams campaigning when they met on the road clashed and fought  but have now  moved to TV stations and Social Media.

There are already a set of supporters and die hard fans of Congress so I would be wasting my time appealing to them. That’s like preaching to the choir. Similarly there are enough non Congress voters and here again I am wasting my time talking to them. 

Nextly what is it that I want to communicate ? I need to (1) Convey my parties programs, policies, vision, actions, results (2) Counter the campaign of my opposition against me  (3) Point out the flaws, falsehoods, failures in my opposition.

So who is my target audience? They are the by and large majority who are undecided, have likes and dislikes but based on recent past look to swing one way or another. Now these people are spread across geographies, castes, classes, urban, rural, tribal, etc  and so as a political party I chose to communicate with them differently. As things stand today social media is still a fringe element as a campaign manager but it is  also important and powerful enough since even a 1% swing in votes can make a huge difference in our first past the post system of elections. Also this is an evolving media that needs to be nurtured, understood and suitably strategised over time with experience so that maybe some decades down the line it can form an impactful aspect of elections.

Secondly even on  Twitter you have a set of “mature” audience who are a minority but who in turn can influence some others on their list but the vast majority are still seeking a direction.  My objective to help them decide in MY favour.  My target is to get these undecided to vote for me.

Most importantly the audience on Twitter or Facebook is generally educated, has access to smartphones, tablets, computers, is generally more urbanised, decently well off. So your  communication strategy must be planned with the target audience in mind.

Now whether it is Facebook or Twitter the two main social media platforms leveraged by political parties there  are many  challenges that need to be understood but the most challenging issue is the “span of attention” and “memory retention”. Let me explain.

A person can tweet whatever he wants but most of the times the response is to  “A tweet” and rarely taken into a larger context or the persons overall persona. A classic example of this is what happened to  Shashi Tharoor  when he tweeted about cattle class on flights. Anyone who has read Tharoor, listened to him over time or even followed him on Twitter over time would never ever misread that statement.  His die hard converted fans will swear that he was done in by the opposition. But even within his own party there were enough who disliked that comment.  But then 4 years ago the same politicians did not understand SM  as they do now. I am willing to bet my all that today the same comment by Tharoor  would have at best attracted some uncomfortable attention from some politicians but the onslaught he faced then would be missing. That is because those who opposed him then are now on  Twitter and have got a taste of the same.

Both the main parties have got themselves a set of fans and converted supporters who are today trying their best to propagate their parties message over Twitter. I call them  Tweeporters.

To come back to my point the reality is that the readers reaction even today is to the 142 characters  sent out  and rarely  analysed  from a more holistic  larger viewpoint.  Whatever the comment, however false or crazy it may sound, there are a section of the people who react to the Tweeporters  statement and make judgements on that.  It is another matter that these very same people will react exactly the opposite way  when they read something different from the same  Tweeporters.   So it is crucial that every message sent out is complete in itself and consistent in approach. This is crucial.

The average reader who gets influenced by these Tweeporters is continually swinging on a pendulum and come voting day will  vote based on which side  he is swinging. Also if he is being constantly swung in a particular fashion the chances are that he will stay there come voting day.

Now with this background  let me analyse what the main parties are doing.

The BJP under NaMo were first off the block and so have a natural first mover advantage. Also the longer experience has helped them manage the medium  better.  Given the natural anti incumbency, the state of the economy, the rising prices, the feeling of despondency gives them a edge in communicating more efficiently than others. Also any party in power always attracts more flak than the opposition.  The main leaders who matter took to the medium much earlier and established their clans online. They may have opposed Tharoor for political reasons but they also learnt from him very very quickly and joined the bandwagon.  Narendra Modi, Shivraj Chauhan, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh, Raman Singh each of whom can stake a claim for being Prime Minister jumped in early enough and understand the medium well enough.  Each of these communicate to the people at crucial times (even if  some say politically motivated – read my opening statement) and that makes for far larger impact than anything else.

The Congress on the other hand was slow and if I may say so actually believed the bullshit that was being thrown around about the social media. This has been their Achilles heal. Even today the number of netas online are few and as a party it is only now that they are putting their act together. They have some excellent material within them from the  younger brigade but barring for the affable and graceful Milind Deora none of the others are on board. I personally would have thought some one like Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia should have been online and communicating especially given their  ministerial responsibilities would have given them a direct access to the target audience. If people like Anand Sharma, Chidambaram had logged in online the impact would have been tremendous. Even leveraging a Tharoor was done very late in the day. But for reasons best known to themselves Congress ignored this media and actually still plays only lip service to it in my opinion.  

Apart from the fact that the prime neta of Congress Rahul Gandhi is not on Twitter and can even be explained away by saying that India lives in the villages (which is true) fact is that he is trying to address a section of the audience with who he is not connected.  Also we don’t hear from him on Television,  Print media  communicating his vision, plans and actions.

Coming back to what I said earlier, that the undecided voter would be swinging and hopefully in one direction and there are objectives in communicating as spelt out earlier.  But how is the Congress handling this, let us see.

The Congress started a Twitter account for the Prime Minister and I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that some  inefficient stenographer  is given the job to tweet and the PM has no clue about it. This man tweets about his speeches from 2004 onwards,  sends pictures of meeting other netas. The biggest  joke is when there is a press release on a important issue the damn thing is sent out sentence by sentence over Twitter. When something really agitates the people there is zero comment.  This when the opposition is talking, communicating on the present in real time  is a recipe for disaster.

Secondly I rarely see any of the Congress Tweeporters pontificating on the parties vision, action, achievements in a effective manner. You have a person  send 3  tweets where the first says that poverty reduced by 30% under congress, then says that 70% of India is hungry so you need FSB and then refer to Gujarat riots of 2002. Even as a undecided voter I am bewildered. Either I am hungry and poor or not hungry and not poor but  here I am being told that I am both hungry and not poor. How these 2 are connected to 2002 riots beats me. This is rank bad strategy in my opinion. I would sack these folks  if they were my  sales team for votes.

Nextly  the constant message is Modi, Feku, Modi, Feku. Now I sometimes wonder when did Modi join Congress ? Is he a Congress rebel ? Congress talks of Modi, BJP talks of Modi, so what the hell is going on here ?

The BJP takes up campaigns like Pappu etc but they focus on that for a long enough time to leave an impression on the undecided voter and then move away from the subject to come back at a later date. A kind of hit and run tactic. Secondly they focus 100% of the time on what Modi has achieved and include in it whatever accomplishments Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh have achieved and give it a all India flavour, a positive message and a feel good factor to the reader.

But Congress  keeps referring to Modi irrespective of time, space, subject and it is like a truck stuck in mud. Wheels keep turning fast, truck doesn’t move but it sure is throwing mud on all around who not wanting to get dirty will stand and watch but not help.

In this obsession on Modi Congress  Tweeporters  seem to have completely confused  between Gujarat and Gujaratis and Modi. They club all of them together. Their fear is that if you say AMUL dairy the pride of India is in Gujarat it will somehow mean a credit to Modi so they instead complain – “My AMUL milk curdled yesterday, Feku Modi”.   Or if Gujarat has rains and flooding affecting people they say – “Gujaratis stranded in flood waters, Feku Modi”. Stupidity doesn’t get better than this.  A guy in flooded waters cares little who is in power and is angry, and you mock him and then hope to get him to vote for you ? His anger at that point in time can be exploited to your benefit but instead you make him angrier.

When the  Anna movement started and the Delhi rape happened Congress had a golden opportunity to seize it to its advantage and simply walk away with accolades but instead there was either deathly silence or news about rapes in MP, Gujarat etc as  if saying that what happened in Delhi was OK.  If I were a Congress strategist I would have shot the whole lot of my team for being stupid.

A stupid media which believes that its readers are stupid morons puts out a story that Modi walked into the flooded swirling water of Uttarakhand with 4 boeing planes, 20 buses, 60 vans and then managed to identify only Gujaratis and then take them to safety.  If I were a  Congress Tweeporter I would stay away from that story as far as I can. But no like moths to a lantern they actually believed it and you had central ministers pontificating about it. Now it may sound like smart politics but to me the undecided voter I wonder – If such patently stupid people are asking for my votes, should I vote them ?

Finally anything and everything someone says is linked to Modi, 2002 riots but rarely if ever do the Congress Tweeporters answer the question, debate the issue.  For example the questions and answers go like this.

Where is the money for FSB going to come from ? – You are anti poor, what has Modi done for the poor, children are malnourished in Gujarat.

Why is the Prime Minister silent ? – what did you do when 2002 riots happened ? Did you protest ?

Pakistan has killed our soldiers, what is our response ? – Vajpayee lied when Kargil happened, where was Modi then ?

While BJP puts out a picture of Shivraj Chauhan carrying an Indian soldiers coffin Congress will be ranting about what Modi did or did not do. The BJP Tweeporters clearly focus on a subject without diluting it with Rahul or Sonia and talk of achievements and when they need to attack Congress do so separately without mixing it with anything else. So the communication is clear, concise and helps swing the undecided voter.

Another aspect which is more personal is that when I have interacted with both Congress and BJP Tweeporters and netas  and let us say I compliment them specifically on a issue or defend them on a issue the BJP folks have the courtesy to say thank you, the Congress folks ignore you or change the subject which to me smacks of arrogance.

The undecided voter today wants a positive message, a reassurance, a  silently held hand in solidarity.  Even  better than the BJP the Aam Aadmi Party is doing a brilliant job on SM. They are completely focussed, working towards  a clear  target, communicate real time and stay focussed on positives, asking the right inconvenient questions, communicating actions taken and most importantly if they notice a trend in feedback they react to change direction.  The citizen today on SM is young, restless and full of energy and the AAP is harnessing it the best.

The reader is intelligent and not as much a fool as you may want him to be and Congress with such a SM communication strategy is pushing people away from themselves while the opposition BJP gleefully accepts them. If there were to be a voting only on  social media today I think the BJP would get a 2/3^rd majority not because of their own accomplishments but more because of the stupidity of  Congress.

But then like my earlier experiences on here, the die hard Congress supporters will accuse me of being Pro  Modi and anti Congress while the really intelligent Congress man tells me offline that he agrees with the weaknesses which need urgent  attention.

Luckily SM will not decide the 2014 elections but unless the political parties master it, future elections can  well be swung by SM. The folks who ignore this medium do so at their own peril.