Unprecedented Reach of Election Schedule Announcement on Social Media

New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) announced State Assembly Elections in five States on 4^th January, 2017. In order to achieve widest possible outreach of information on the election schedules and other ECI guidelines for citizens, an unprecedented effort was made by Press Information Bureau (PIB) and Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) to use Social Media (SM) Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

 The press conference by the ECI was live-streamed on MIB’s YouTube channel, and on the Facebook Pages ofPIB, MIB and Facebook India. Important highlights of the announcement were also tweeted LIVE by PIB andMIB, and shared on their Facebook Pages as well.

 The actual figures of the reach of the relevant information on the ECI Press Conference the among the Citizens are as follows: (Figures as on 7:00 PM, 4^th January, 2017)

 Among MIB’s social media accounts, a total of 22 tweets, 5 Facebook and 1 YouTube posts were made on Assembly Election Schedule. On Facebook, the 5 posts achieved a Total Reach of over 5.24 Lakh people, 1,219 Likes and 140 Shares. The ECI press conference was also Live–streamed on Ministry’s Facebook page, which received 12,000 views and reached over 4.95 Lakh people.  

 Also, a total of 55,127 Impressions were achieved for the 22 tweets made from MIB handle. These were re-tweeted 1,448 times and 550 favourites were achieved. Further, the Live Stream of the ECI Press Conference on YouTube achieved 1,700 views.

 Among PIB’s social media accounts, a total of 68 tweets and 10 Facebook posts were made on Assembly Election Schedule. The Facebook posts achieved a total reach of more than 29,700 people, 167 Likes and 46 Shares, while PIB’s tweets resulted in 6.5 lakh impressions (views), 4,140 retweets and 951 favourites, as of now. The live–streaming of the event on PIB’s Facebook page has reached 3.04 lakh people and fetched more than 800 views.

 In addition to the above platforms, the ECI press conference was live streamed for the first time on two Facebook pages, namely Facebook India and Government, Politics and Non Profits, which collectively received a massive response with more than 1 Lakh video views and reached over 13 Lakh people on Facebook. The Facebook Live Stream received 6,400 likes and 624 shares. (Figures as on 7:00 PM, 4th January, 2017)

 On Twitter, Top Trending Hashtags throughout the day were #ElectionCommission, #AssemblyElection, Manipur & Goa, 5 States, Phase2, Uttarakhand and Model Code of Conduct. The maximum potential reach was achieved on the hashtags #ElectionCommission and #AssemblyElection of about 21.2 crores and 20.1 crores of people respectively.