With just 7 days until Britain takes to the polls, we took a quick look at how the Leave and Remain campaigns have been using social media.
We were inspired to do this having realised that we’d not seen a single promoted tweet or sponsored post from either side… which made us curious.
We applied our usual survey approach, focusing on how social media is being used, as opposed to a deep analysis of what the content is actually saying.
And much like some predict, we found it was a close call – in fact overall a dead heat (and that’s not us trying to sit on the fence!).
* Our survey of who had seen paid ads from either side was based on 50 responses across Twitter and Facebook.
The paid media point is fascinating to me personally… is some very efficient targeting being used? Do they know I have a foot very strongly in one camp, and so there’s no need to advertise to me? However, I would expect some of the people who said they had seen ads to have an equally strong view as me. Intriguing.
Here’s a bit more detail on what we observed…
Remain Campaign
Website
- Links to their social accounts and social sharing were set up, as you’d hope. Plus there was the option to sign-up to the campaign via Facebook, right there on the home page.
- We found a good mix of post formats (links, video, image etc) and some nice examples of curating what the real world is saying about the campaign (obviously pro-Remain).
- Videos all had subtitles, which is great to see, and content is being published at a steady rate – about 3 per day. We also observed some clear calls to action, notably to share content with friends.
- Determining the level of paid media use is tricky – we would usually assume yes, give the level of interaction-to-fans ratio, but, this is an emotive subject that people do seem to be engaging with.
- However, the look of the content didn’t really standout for me, plus we couldn’t see any real interaction with audience comments.
- The main thing that struck us was the enormous volume of tweets, probably near 100 tweets just on 15th June; I think I’d be sick of it had I followed the account.
- That volume does include lots of retweets and quite a wide range of content.
- However, we noticed a lack of hashtags and @mentions, a rather low quality cover image and very few replies from the StrongerIn team. We’re a bit stuck on broadcast here.
YouTube
- We were impressed with the well organised playlists and clear thumbnail images to be found on each video. In-video annotations were used, although we noticed comments turned off.
- The hero video had clocked up over 1 million views, so clearly some investment has been made there.
- Certainly the weakest platform, with no clear plan and a small volume of posts each week (about 2).
- It could also benefit from using more hashtags in the descriptions.
- No posts.
Leave Campaign
Website
- Social sharing is prominent on site, plus links to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & YouTube (albeit a little hidden).
- Lots of content gets posted, we counted 13 posts just on 15th June.
- Videos are all subtitled and there’s a mix of post types. Calls to action are clear, if a little acute in their tone.
- As with the Remain campaign, we can only assume some level of paid media is being used.
- However, also like their rivals, the content didn’t really standout for us.
- There was no notable interaction with the audience.
- There was a mix of content and clear calls to action to share content.
- We saw some reasonably good use of hashtags and @mentions to help drive engagement.
- However, as with Remain we saw an enormous volume of tweets – again perhaps over 100 on 15th June alone.
YouTube
- Disappointingly just one playlist and no thumbnail images.
- It was interesting to note that the hero video had just 6k views, although comments are enabled on videos.
- No clear approach to the type of content posted, but a steady volume (2 or 3 each day) and good use of hashtags.
- Just two posts made.