World Leaders Struggle on Facebook
With Facebook’s change of algorithm, favoring posts from friends, family and groups, it has become more difficult for pages of governments and world leaders to reach their audiences on Facebook. While world leaders registered 1.1 billion interactions in 2016, that number has dropped by 32.3 percent in 2018. This and more details are available in the latest World Leaders on Facebook study from BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe) here. It’s part of the ongoing Twiplomacy series on digital diplomacy.
“Facebook is the most difficult channel for us” a digital diplomat at a foreign ministry recently admitted, echoing a sentiment shared by many a social media manager about the platform. Technically world leaders, governments and foreign ministries have their biggest audiences on Facebook compared to the size of their audiences on Twitter or Instagram.
To counter the changes to the algorithm, many leaders are promoting their posts and pages with Facebook ads. In early March 2019, 50 pages had been running ads according to Facebook’s Ads Library, a new transparency feature which is available on each page.
The Facebook page of Donald Trump has posted more than 50,000 ads since inception which can all be viewed in his Facebook ad library. On any given day the Donald Trump page has several ads live on the platform. The U.S. President is clearly gearing up for re-election in 2020 and his Facebook page is one of the cornerstones of his digital re-election campaign.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has paid for 74 ads in December 2018 with the simple message: “I want to get on with Brexit.” The UK government has been running ads in the UK in English and in Polish about the virtues of bonding with your baby during the first year.
In general, governments pay less than USD $100 to promote each post, but some have spent between USD $1,000-$5,000 on their Facebook ad campaigns. In 2018, 10 world leaders have had their advertisements taken down by Facebook for failing to add a disclaimer about the political nature of their ad.
For more on BCW’s World Leaders on Facebook, including the latest study, visit the Twiplomacy page here. A PDF version of the entire study is available here.
