This was the first Indian election in which political parties and leaders actively connected with voters via social media. Branding gurus were hired to turn Modi’s image around, and their weapon is no secret – online and offline engagement. Both, Modi’s and BJP’s communication over online media have been pro-active all throughout, thanks to his social media team.
According to Daily Mail’s report, BJP hired a team of 40 people, mostly professionals from IITs and IIMs. They kept an eye on the latest voting trends, mood of voters on various social platforms, and constantly identified ways to reach people. Their basic job was to disseminate Modi’s message through mobile phones and social networking sites, while volunteers contributed with research, content generation and analysis of every political development in the national capital.
Once the election results were out, Modi didn’t declare his victory over a television, or even before his supporters. He chose to Tweet about it. This message became the most retweeted message in India, reaching almost 70,000 retweets today.
Modi’s achievements on Twitter
Modi was mentioned on Twitter 7,22,91,000 times on his victory day. Twitter has informed us that his followers increased by over a lakh on this single day – he started the day with 39,86,878 followers and ended it with 40,91,739. He now has over 4.2 million followers. He has 5 tweets in the top ten most retweeted election tweets from India, 4 of them in the top 5.
India has won! भारत की विजय। अच्छे दिन आने वाले हैं।
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 16, 2014
Modi’s Twitter followers from May 11 to May 17:
Twitter observed election-related activity between January and May. It claims that there were 58 million election-related tweets during this period, and over 11.85 million of them were about Modi. BJP was mentioned over 30,000 times in a day on an average. The highest number of mentions it got was 88,924, when they rolled out their manifesto. The company has not released sentiment related information so it is not clear what percentage of the tweets were positive or negative.
Counting Day on Twitter
Twitter data and trends as of 11:59pm, May 16, IST (over the past 24 hours)
– Total number of elections-related Tweets over the past 24 hours = 2.003 Million
– Total number of elections-related Tweets Starting Jan 1st = 58 Million
– Total number of Tweets mentioning @NarendraModi on counting day = 0.75 Million
– Total number of Tweets mentioning @NarendraModi since Jan 1st = 11.85 Million
Top 5 elections-related terms on Twitter as of, May 16, IST
1. Narendra Modi = 722.91K
2. AAP = 118,717
3. BJP =322,596
4. Rahul Gandhi = 47,054
5. Varanasi = 21,018
Geotagged Tweets mentioning each candidate, May 16 2014
Meanwhile, on Facebook…
Facebook revealed that 29 million people in India made 227 million election-related interactions in the form of posts, comments, shares, and likes from the day elections were announced to the day polling ended. Of these, 13 million people users made 75 million interactions regarding Modi over the social networking site. His Facebook page now has 14,316,374 followers.
According to Election Tracker on Facebook, BJP has had the highest number of mentions in the past one week, followed by Modi, Rahul Gandi, AAP and Kejriwal. Facebook has also come out with data, on the top five Indian politicians and top three political parties based on the number of followers. No prizes for guess who leads in both.
Increase in fans for politicians since April 7
Narendra Modi
Total fans: 14,316,374
Fans on April 7: 12,464,583
Total increase: 1,851,791 (14.86%)
Arvind Kejriwal
Total fans: 5,434,351
Fans on April 7: 5,024,162
Fan increase: 410189 (8.16%)
Dr. Kumar Vishwas
Total fans: 2,152,542
Fans on April 7: 2,060,566
Fan increase: 91,976 (4.46%)
Vasundhara Raje
Total fans: 2,089,666
Fans on April 7: 1,868,237
Fan increase: 221,429 (11.85%)
Rajnath Singh
Total fans: 1,594,507
Fans on April 7: 1,348,035
Fan increase: 246472 (18.28%)
Increase in fans for political parties since April 7
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
Total fans: 4,531,655
Fans on April 7: 3,698,215
Fan increase: 833,440 (22.53%)
Indian National Congress
Total fans: 3,309,116
Fans on April 7: 2,731,297
Fan increase: 577,819 (21.15%)
Aam Aadmi Party
Total fans: 2,119,373
Fans on April 7: 1,897,709
Fan increase: 221,664 (11.68%)
Social Bakers has recorded the number of interactions each party was involved in and here are the figures as of today:
Update: NDTV’s statistics on election day
NDTV also had new records being set for its digital properties including concurrent users hitting an all-time high of over 500,000 users as per Google Analytics. Their statistics:
– 11.6 million unique visitors across all platforms, the highest ever in a single day.
– 117.7 million Pageviews across platforms, the highest single day ever
– 19.6 video streams with an average viewing time of about 9 minutes
– Over 200000 concurrent users watching video on the website
Also Read: What Indian Digital Media companies are doing for #Election2014
