Hyderabad: For the Dec. 7 elections, the TRS is following in the footsteps of the BJP which won the 2014 polls through an aggressive social media campaign. At the beginning of the year, the TRS’ Facebook pages and Twitter handles were confined to one-way communication. They have now overtaken the BJP in this campaign.
Be it Youtube ads or FB promoted posts or wooing youngsters with pictures on Instagram or Sharechat, the TRS social media team is not only promoting welfare schemes but effectively countering Opposition parties. Several pages of TRS have become active with similar content being shared.
The TRS officially has 50 members on its social media team who are working to produce content actively. According to Mr Dileep Konatham, who takes care of the TRS social media wing, the party beefed up the size of the team and improvised tremendously over the last six months.
He said, “About 50 per cent of our content is prepared in advance while the other 50 per cent evolves on the same day. So it is a mix of pre-planned content as fresher the content, more the traction. Our team covers meetings and what leaders spoke and creates content. When it comes to pre-planned content, we recently posted a video on the Kaleshwaram project which was a big hit.”
While the Congress and TD have a large user populace, TRS leaders K.T. Rama Rao, K. Kavitha and T. Harish Rao are way ahead of their counterparts in the Opposition. Campaigning on Facebook has become expensive but, Mr Konatham said, it is going to stick to a maximum 5-10 year business. “Once in a while, we promote posts when we think that certain kinds of content have to pushed. Such paid content is not even 1 per cent.”
The TRS is reaching out to the urban audience by bombarding their cellphones with messages. Mr Rama Rao said on Saturday, “Social media has become a huge medium to project our vision to the urban audience who otherwise never show up at meetings. Social media is a new avenue and data is free due to Reliance Jio. All are on Youtube. Everybody is able to see who abused whom and who fought, even in the villages.”
It is not just this public that the party is depending on to get its message home. The party has dedicated opinion leaders and volunteers who have created WhatsApp groups and shared content. The party has about 100 volunteers who forward content on various platforms. The social media team sends the content to about 150-200 opinion leaders who in turn share it with others.
Mr Laggani Srinivas, part of the TRS social media team, said, “We have several entrepreneurs and students who are interested in volunteering for us. Women and housewives from Hitec City are spreading the word about the TRS. Even our leader K.T. Rama Rao is part of 150 groups of different officials to whom he forwards grievances.”
