Hoping to cash in on the large outreach of social media and little costs associated with it, in contrast to the print media, where a single page advertisement cost in a single newspaper goes Rs60 lakh upwards, several Central Ministries are now outsourcing social media activity to external Public Relations (PR) agencies.
Several Central Ministries like the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Woman and Child Development (WCD), Tourism, Department of Industrial Promotion and Policy (DIPP), Health and Skill Development have roped in PR agencies to handle their twitter, Facebook and flicker accounts.
“We were among the first Ministries to rope in a private consultant TSD to handle our social media activity. Although they prepare the content, which includes text and infographics but everything which is uploaded is first vetted by MEA officials,” said an MEA official.
“Moreover we are short-staffed and a very small population is trained to handle social media activity. It is a full time job,” said the official. He went on to say, “Even on a lean day we have at least 15-20 tweets updating the activities in our Ministry. On a heavy traffic day, volumes of people visiting our sites go up three fold,” he said. MEA has two separate Facebook accounts and two twitter handles, where they have over 3.5 million followers.
Following MEA’s footsteps, the WCD Ministry recently roped in another PR agency Perfect Relations at a cost of Rs1.23 crore for a period of two years. “Cost benefit apart, the outreach and impact is much higher in case of social media. The availability of budget smart-phones and growing internet penetration in India has made it much easier for the common man to access social media platforms,” said the WCD official.
“With more and more people getting hooked to social media it is easy for us to get our messages across through twitter, Facebook, flicker and other platforms,” he said. WCD Ministry has more than 67,000 followers on Facebook alone. last month, WCD Minister Maneka Gandhi took to Facebook to interact with public through a day-long Question and Answer session.
Similarly, Ministry of Health has outsourced a lot of its PR work to Genesis Burson-Marsteller. “Every Ministry has its own requirements and expectations. We choose our PR agency according to one’s need and agenda,” said an official from the Ministry of Health.
“The work of Health Ministry and WCD is advocacy and spreading awareness about our schemes for common man. The DIPP is entrusted with promoting the Make in India campaign and ensuring that the message translates into getting us investments; Tourism requires promotion of our tourist places, which will lead to increased footfalls, and revenue generation; and MEA is tasked with social media diplomacy,” said officials.
“Each PR agency builds a progamme to fit the requirements of the Ministry. The best match is selected. There are no rules from the Press Information Bureau governing the selection of the PR agency and the Ministry foots the bill from its individual kitty,” they said. Ministries also cite lack of skilled workforce and knowhow of the social media platforms as other reasons for outsourcing PR work.