Congress to widen social media outreach

Hyderabad: In order to reach level with its political opponents in this election year, the Congress is attempting to increase its presence on social media by appointing coordinators from the mandal to state levels to take on its biggest political adversaries, the BRS and BJP, from the bottom up.

In this endeavour, the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) has initiated the process of appointing mandal-level coordinators, who will be the key in content sharing and will serve as a bridge between the booth-level and the Assembly or Parliamentary constituency level.

Nearly 600 mandal-level coordinators will work directly with booth-level party workers to identify and amplify critical concerns at the local level. These coordinators are also being taught how to use Twitter, as well as other social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, among others.

Their objective will be on managing the content and ensuring that it is shared with as many netizens as possible. “We distributed 100 tabs to Assembly-level coordinators on Saturday, and mandal-level coordinators will receive them shortly for content sharing. Each mandal-level coordinator will be responsible for dealing with 50 booth enrollers on an average,” said PCC vice-president Chamala Kiran Kumar Reddy.

Telangana PCC president A. Revanth Reddy, AICC incharge Manikrao Thakre as well as key leaders, on Saturday met leaders who are social media-savvy. They deliberated on how to successfully connect with voters. All mandal level coordinators will be appointed by the next meeting.

Important training material will be shared with the coordinators, and online interactive sessions are being planned in which national leaders such as Parliamentarian Jairam Ramesh, who is the general secretary in-charge of communications, will connect with coordinators via apps such as Zoom.

Manne Satish, chairman of social media, Kota Neelima, PCC general secretary, and other social media savvy leaders in the party will coordinate the online interactive sessions.