Infographic: How MPs are failing to engage voters on social media
As the general election draws closer, social media and the web give political parties and MPs greater opportunities for increased engagement with voters. But according to a new study by MHP, while the majority of political parties are starting to use social media effectively, most MPs are not using Twitter or Facebook to engage with voters or campaign groups.
Party-wise, in 2010, the Conservatives had 100,000 'likes' on Facebook. The Liberal Democrats were not far behind, with 90,000 and Labour trailed with fewer than 50,000. All of those numbers have grown significantly over the past five years. The Conservatives have had a healthy 247 per cent increase (359,354) and Labour’s 'likes' have gone up by 330 per cent (219,677).
But the Liberal Democrats’ time in coalition doesn’t appear to have won them many fans. They’ve had a paltry 22 per cent increase (110,510) in their followers on Facebook.
Despite the rise in 'likes', it doesn't necessarily indicate a healthy dialogue between MPs and the public.
At the start of March, only 6.5 per cent (23,236) of those who 'liked' the Conservatives on Facebook were talking about the party in some way. The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, saw just 3.9 per cent (4,322) of their follower base talking about them.
Labour fared better with nearly one in five (31,556) followers engaged, possibly attributed to the party bringing in Matthew McGregor, the former head of Barack Obama’s ‘rapid response’ digital team.
Ukip has also built up a huge following, and aren’t far off being the biggest party on Facebook, with 340,620 followers. And of those, 33,852 (nearly one in 10) are talking about them.
Twitter remains most politicians’ digital platform of choice. Before the last election, just over 100 MPs were on Twitter. At last count, over four times as many were using the platform.
The prime minister, David Cameron, has the largest number of followers by a long way (937,000). After him comes Labour leader, Ed Miliband (389,000) and the leader of the House of Commons, William Hague (265,000).
Still, when it comes to tweeting the party leaders and most of the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet are failing to deliver responses to followers.
One in 50 of David Cameron’s tweets and one in 12 of Nick Clegg’s were responses. It was little better on the Labour side: just one in 10 of Ed Miliband’s tweets were responses.
The above statistics on Twitter were gathered using Twitonomy. The engagement rate data was calculated by taking a random sample of up to 3,600 tweets (for those who have tweeted more than 3,600 times) and testing them on Twitonomy to see the volume of replies sent and volume of retweets received.