Tories do things by the Facebook
Facebook is proving to be a true blue hunting ground for the Conservatives according to a report compiled by Diffusion which identifies the centre right political party as having amassed twice as many friends, fans and members than arch rivals Labour or the Liberal Democrats.
Covering the period from January 5 to March 14 the report found that the Tories had accrued a Facebook army of 130,065 connections with Labour and the Lib Dems languishing on 68,000 and 61,000 respectively.
This volume of support has helped see 159 pieces of content uploaded to the Conservatives official profile over the report period, a tally in excess of Labour’s 42 and the Liberal Democrats 117.
It is thought this correlates with a higher number of prospective party candidates however rather than representing a rightward shift in the political opinion of Facebookers.
With regard to individual MP's profiles the Labour party led the way with 87, with the Conservatives drumming up 52 and Lib Dems 31.
Proportionately the Lib Dems are the biggest fans of Facebook with just over half the parties MP's embracing the platform, as opposed to around a third for their larger rivals.
Chris Quigley of creative business incubator Team Rubber warns however that social media isn’t simply a numbers game and that during the election process the medium will largely serve as an ‘amplifier’ to traditional tools: “As social media has to be earned, the wider impact of using social media as a direct political campaigning channel will be limited to existing supporters.”