Comparison of Youtube and Google+ Strategies of Political Parties

INTRODUCTION• This Lok Sabha season, politicians and their parties seem to be trending on twitter

and fetching likes on their Facebook pages.

• Marketers say, YouTube is the best platform if you want to make any video viral and get audience engagement you need to define the target and the purpose of your campaigns.

• Are politicians who are singing praises of their presence on various social media platforms taking into consideration any of these suggestions? Are these parties analysing the content that is updated on their YouTube channel and Google+ pages? Are they successful in engaging users?

• Let’s take a look at the strategies of major parties like Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), Indian National Congress (INC) and Aam Admi Party (AAP).

INTRODUCTION

• BJP has been leading in YouTube engagement followed by AAP and INC.

• Although INC has been managing quality and engaging content on its Google+ page, it has not been able to lure much followers.

• AAP has received highest attention on Google+ due to its regular Hangouts with party leaders.

• In spite of managing a phenomenal strategy on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, BJP lags behind in engaging users on Google+.

• BJP’s YouTube engagement rates are much higher than its counterpart.

KEY FINDINGS IN THIS REPORT

THE AAM AADMI PARTY (AAP)

• The newest entrant in the Indian Political scenario, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has left noticeable impressions on the Indian fabric with its remarkable political debut under the leadership of Arvind Kejriwal.

• The Aam Aadmi Party has a very robust and active social media presence. In this report, we will analyze their Social Media presence.

• AAP has been on the platform for 3 years.

• The party has uploaded umpteen videos of Arvind Kejriwal’s political speeches, election rallies, media interviews, official party statements, survey findings and more. The newest entrant has received more than 41.5 lakh video views by now.

• AAP’s strong YouTube presence will definitely help them to make their mark in the online space.

AAM AADMI PARTY ON YOUTUBE

AAM AADMI PARTY ON YOUTUBE

YouTube Subscribers 40146

YouTube Engagement 18758

Video views 4,157,332

AAM AADMI PARTY ON YOUTUBE

• Bharatiya Janata Party, one of the most prominent political parties in India, has always pioneered the use of internet and technology in communicating and engaging with the masses especially the youth in India.

• Right from having an interactive website to a dedicated volunteer dashboard, mobile apps, extracting the most out of Google Hangouts, Facebook Page, Twitter handle, YouTube Page, Whatsapp they have not missed a single trick from the book to make sure that they connect with the masses at multiple touch points with a unified tone of messaging and engagement.

• BJP has a very strong and active presence on major social media networks i.e. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

THE BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY (BJP)

• The BJP has done a better job on YouTube than other political parties. The YouTube channel for the party, started in 2010 houses a collection of 5000+ videos.

• BJP has also launched YUVA, an internet TV channel for the Indian youth.

• BJP tries to engage the Indian youth on various political, health, economic, current affairs and cultural issues. Apart from these topics, the party has live webcasts of its rallies and other events on Yuva TV.

BJP ON YOUTUBE

BJP ON YOUTUBE

YouTube Subscribers 44808

YouTube Engagement 71644

Video Views 6,223,223

BJP has also used YouTube features such as annotations, featured playlists, tags, descriptions, titles and captions in an effective manner. Great content and an optimized channel are helping them drive a lot of traffic to their YouTube channel.

BJP ON YOUTUBE

The INC YouTube channel which has subsequently much less subscribers in comparison to other two competitors has managed to get a viewership of 17 million plus through mere 926 videos.

The homepage of INC YouTube channel has well-managed content in various subjects such as ‘A billion and one Voices’, ‘Let’s take it forward’ and ‘Fast check’ all appealing to the masses to vote for congress and bring to power once again.

The channel also consists of popular speeches from Dr. Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

INC ON YOUTUBE

INC ON YOUTUBE

YouTube Subscribers 7632

YouTube Engagement 1586

Video Views 17,836,890

Congress has also been seen taking a dig at the opposition parties through their YouTube channel.

INC ON YOUTUBE

COMPARISON – AAP VS BJP VS INC ON YOUTUBE

• Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) is leading the subscriber count by more than 11k with Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) at 53, 239 subscribers. INC manages to lure just 7632 subscribers.

• However, engagement of fans on AAP’s channel is much more in comparison to BJP’s channel.

• The graph above, demonstrates the number of followers and engagement percentage of followers plotted against each party.

ENGAGEMENT

THUMBS UP COMPARISON

• If we compare the total number of thumbs up for all the parties, AAP scores highest thumbs up per video as it’s clear from the graph shown below.

• The graph has been plotted according to the number of likes and dislikes received on the videos.

• BJP has managed positive score whereas INC and AAP have an average dislike count of 1 and 3 respectively per video.

YOUTUBE COMPARISON

If we look at the total engagement versus subscriber count on the channel, BJP fairs higher with a count of 79k followers succeeded by AAP and INC with 19k and 1.5k respectively.

GOOGLE PLUS COMPARISON

This graph represents the number of users who have added the pages of political parties to their circles.

According to the graph, AAP leads in the count by almost 200 times. The content consists of donation requests by celebs like Gul Panag, Shekhar Dadlani and Party leaders like Kumar Vishwas and Arvind Kejriwal.

CONTENT WISE COMPARISON

• BJP boasts of its eloquent leader’s speeches, vision and mission to make India, a strong economy and leader in all the verticals by de-rooting all pitfalls. While, AAP’s YouTube channel entails Hangouts with its eminent leaders and party leader Arvind Kejriwal’s speeches in Varanasi.

• The video base of BJP has managed to fetch a viewership of 12 million+ with 58k subscribers comprising of a database of 6,071 videos in the repository.

• BJP’s homepage consists of exclusive interviews with eminent leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley of the party, videos of the executive meeting held at Panaji in 2013 and Google Hangouts with Narendra Modi.

• Narendra Modi’s Hangout campaign of Chai pe Charcha was a massive hit and drove people’s attention towards his and party’s social media strategies.

CONTD..

INC’s YouTube channel has subsequently much less subscribers in comparison to other two competitors yet it has managed to get a viewership of 17 million+ through mere 926 videos.

The homepage of INC’s YouTube channel has well-managed content in various verticals.

The verticals include specific campaigns like ‘A billion and one Voices’, ‘Let’s take it forward’ and ‘Fast check’ all appealing masses to vote for congress to bring it in power once again.

The channel also consists of popular speeches from Dr. Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

CONCLUSION

Although the elections are about to end and there are only a few days left for India to find out which party will rule the democratic bastion, it is very difficult to decide the winning party through their engagement on YouTube and Google+.

All the parties have managed to execute an efficient strategy albeit INC has fallen short on consistency.

AAM seems to win the battle of video sharing and engagement with two channels dedicated to separate causes. Their collective strength of subscribers surpasses the other two parties with over 80,000 collective subscriptions. They have made ample use of the Hangouts feature, fitting for a party claiming to be low on funds

BJP is going strong on not just YouTube but Google+ as well. The party has left no stone unturned in going all out social media platforms of all varieties, reach and popularity.

REPORT BY – SOCIAL SAMOSA