BHUBANESWAR: If you are browsing through Instagram or Facebook now, chances are that posts from influencers amplifying political messages will appear on top of your feed. As the elections draw near, social media platforms have turned into new campaign grounds for regional political parties - Facebook, Instagram and YouTube in particular.
Be it giving out digital ads or roping in social media influencers, politicians and their parties are piggybacking on these platforms to engage with diverse voter demographics, especially youths who are ever-online. Going by reports, BJD and its associate handles have been the biggest contributors to social media ads in Odisha.
As per the Ad Library spending tracker report of Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), in the period of 90 days from December 27, 2023 to March 25, 2024, ‘Ama Odisha Nabin Odisha’ (having 19.9K followers) spent Rs 1.86 crore for running ads on Facebook (FB) and Instagram followed by the ‘BJP Odisha’ handle (1.4M followers) which ran FB ads worth Rs 4.11 crore within this period.
While two more pages related to BJD - ‘Nabin Odisha’ (51.7K followers) and ‘BJD Odisha - Forever’ - paid Rs 1,96,798 and Rs 50,240 respectively for such ads, Indian National Congress - Odisha (126K followers) gave out ads worth Rs 1,63,272 on both the social media platforms in this period. Among these handles, ‘BJD Odisha - Forever’, which is handled by the ruling party’s social media team, has 754K followers and the ads sponsored by it are mostly about the various schemes of the regional party.
Parties are also roping in social media influencers for propagating political messages and popularising development works and schemes. Currently, the influencers make anywhere between Rs 1,000 and Rs 20,000 per post, depending on their reach. The influencers are chosen and paid on the basis of their followership irrespective of the content they generally post.
“Parties are opting for social media influencers as they have a large user base and help them connect with the voters instantly through different formats - posts, vlogs, stories, reels, etc. In fact, the election season means a good flow of money for the influencers, both old and new. The bigger their reach, the better,” said a city-based influencer requesting anonymity.
Every party has engaged creative agencies which onboard hundreds of influencers and provide them the scripts (approved by the party) for the content. Consider this: hashtag #nuaodisha - a BJD scheme - has over 23,000 posts on Instagram now. “An influencer with 20,000 followers and a brand value is also being paid Rs 50,000 for two videos. Currently, you will find a majority of Odia food and lifestyle bloggers doing political content,” he added.
The BJD is not alone in this strategy. BJP has also drawn booth-level social media strategy to reach out to voters. “Social media is a powerful tool today to engage with voters, especially youths. And we are using it to make people aware about the changes that BJP can bring in for Odisha and the failures of Naveen Patnaik-led government,” said Umakanta Pattanayak, BJP Odisha’s social media in-charge and spokesperson.