On social media, can PM Narendra Modi displace his good friend, US President Barack Obama?

By Aman Sharma, ET Bureau | Aug 06, 2016, 06.04 AM IST

When Narendra Modi expressed concern for Sonia's Gandhi's health after she cut short a road trip to his constituency of Varanasi last week, the Prime Minister took to Twitter. Last December, he surprised everyone with a tweet about an unscheduled stopover in Lahore to meet Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. His post on winning the 2014 elections: 'India has won...' is still the most-forwarded from India, with over 84,000 re-tweets.

This is Modi's social media universe - where he is the second-most followed political leader on Facebook and Twitter - after Barack Obama. Modi also has his own mobile application, which has been downloaded 2 million times, the most for any leader or head of state.

The levels of Modi's social media interaction - shared with ET by Modi's aides - are staggering: about 40 million engagements a month in the form of likes, shares and comments on Facebook, close to 17 million impressions a month on Twitter - an indicator of how many people see his tweets - and almost 200,000 unique people active on the Narendra Modi Mobile App in July alone, which led to nearly 1 lakh visits daily. There are two major aims in the prime minister's digital outreach strategy - a direct connect with the people and an eye on the 2019 elections when social media footprint could be a major influencing factor, his aides said on condition of anonymity.

"Modi was the first leader outside the US to understand the potential of social media and leverage it. 2014 was India's first election that was fought on social media. Modi had a big first-mover advantage and his reach dwarfed others by a mile," one of his aides told ET. He said the 2019 polls could go a step further: it could be the first app-driven election.

The road to 2019 also has an ambitious milestone: Can Modi topple Obama and become world's most-followed political leader on social media? Modi has 35 million Facebook likes and 21 million followers on Twitter, trailing Obama, who has 76 million Twitter followers and 49 million likes on Facebook.

But with Obama set to step down in January after two terms, will he bow out to good friend Modi on social media too? "With the rate of increase in Modi's followers, Obama going out of office and none of the presidential contenders close, Modi may soon become world's most-followed politician," an aide of the PM claimed to ET.

In a blog by the Twiplomacy team, along with a global study released this June by global public relations and communications firm Burson-Marsteller, there is a similar claim. "No one can ignore the meteoric rise of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his superb use of the platform, which has given him an enormous social media footprint.

Our prediction is that he will be the most-followed world leader by 2017," it said. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have 8 million and 10 million followers on Twitter, respectively, and 5 million and 10 million likes on Facebook, numbers that will gallop for whoever wins the US presidential election in November.

Modi's social media strategy is closely monitored by a small and trusted team. Among the social media accounts of Heads of State, PMO India has the maximum followers on Twitter and Facebook, with 12.3 million and 11.1 million, respectively, more than the White House and the POTUS handles.

The Twiplomacy study said the official @POTUS account, which is different from Obama's personal account, however, is the most effective Twitter account of any world leader with an average of 12,350 retweets for each tweet, against Modi's 1,602. A senior government official said what matters to Modi more than the number of followers is the engagement.

He quotes Portland Communication's 'Soft Power Index Report' of 2016, which says Modi's Facebook posts attract more engagement than any other world leader, whether he is discussing domestic or foreign policy. "In 2015, there was no leader more successful on Facebook than Modi.

While he hasn't yet surpassed President Obama's likes, Modi is the undisputed champion in terms of interactions, garnering more than 215 million in 2015 alone, five times as many as Obama's page," the study says. The study added that Modi is responsible for Facebook's "second most popular post - a candid embrace with President Obama that received 2.4 million likes and 81,000 shares."

There were 80 lakh views generated on the two-year anniversary song, 'Desh Badal Raha Hai', when posted on Facebook. The e-mailers sent to public through the e-sampark platform get 10 lakh clicks on average, say the PM's aides. "An average person spends at least 15 minutes on the NaMo App daily.

Obama led the Facebook generation, but Modi is leading the app generation," the aide said. He claims even Hillary Clinton's newly launched mobile app borrows some ideas from the NaMo app.

Modi himself keeps track of the trends and gets a 150-page report on print/TV/social media daily. The official app of the PMO will be launched on August 6.

One criticism of the PM on social media, however, is about the number of rightwing, abusive social media accounts that he follows. Many ask if Modi endorses them, given that he hasn't unfollowed them.

An aide of the PM offered an explanation: "If someone is abusing, he cannot control them. It is not that by following someone on social media you have become the person's disciple. And for the record, the PM even follows Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is perhaps the most abusive to him and the BJP."