Bulk spent on collecting email addresses, but party page of Ukip – which spends a fraction of that – is nearly as popular as Conservatives’

“Like David Cameron’s new Facebook page for the latest updates from the prime minister.” That is what Facebook urged many of its British users to do in a so-called suggested post, paid for by the Conservative party. And perhaps surprisingly, a lot of people did – 470,718 and counting.



This promotion, dropped in to the middle of news feeds otherwise full of drunken selfies and baby pics, did not come cheap for the Tories.

That and other adverts pumped out on Facebook, including some allowing users to hand over their email addresses, are costing the party a whopping £100,000 a month, or £1.2m if continued for a whole year. Put another way: one in every £17 the Tories spent on the last general election campaign is going towards drumming up support on Facebook.

Tory Facebook post: ‘Like David Cameron’s new Facebook page for the latest updates from the prime minister.’

The party has been mercilessly mocked this week for appearing to try to “buy” friends for the prime minister. But the Tories’ social media push does have a point. The site is an effective new method of bombarding voters with political messaging, given that there are about 35 million users in the UK – more than the number of people who voted in the last general election. The majority of these people check into the site daily.

Facebook allows electoral strategists to get ordinary users to do the parties’ hard work for them by sharing or endorsing political messages with friends and family – thought to be be a much more effective form of social pressure than a slogan coming directly from a politician.

On top of that, as US data gurus realised in the last presidential campaign, the social network is an unrivalled source of gaining information on voters.

Email addresses are a holy grail, which is why the Tories have several non-party branded websites aimed at sucking in data, like Justnotuptoit.com, registered to Tory HQ. The red website confronts a reader with a map of Labour figures criticising Ed Miliband, then invites users to say what they think of the Labour leader as well as providing their contact details – only mentioning in tiny small print at the bottom that it is promoted by one Alan Mabbutt on behalf of the Conservatives.

Justnotuptoit.com only mentions in small print that it is promoted on behalf of the Conservatives.

Invoices show the vast bulk of Tory Facebook advertising was actually spent on “email collection” like this: enticing users to sign up to a mailing list by asking them if they want more information on what the prime minister is up to or on policies such as Help to Buy.

The size of the Conservative mailing list is unknown, but those who have signed up now get attention-grabbing emails that appear to come directly from George Osborne or Cameron, addressing recipients by their first names and appealing personally for their support.

On top of that, once someone has been identified as a potential supporter, his or her Facebook page is a detailed source of data about age, location, job, habits and preoccupations, prized information for the parties as they seek to to tailor their messages to specific groups. This can even be cross-referenced with existing voter databases, which might be able to work out if the user is in a marginal seat.

Although it is using the same personalised email tactics as the Tories, Labour claims a little wistfully that it cannot afford to spend the big bucks on rounding up Facebook support. Its monthly Facebook bill is understood to be about £10,000.

Party officials claim the cash goes towards adverts aimed at small-scale fundraising and asking people to become members, not trying to boost the popularity of their leader through “likes”. They do, however, acknowledge that the Conservative deluge of online messaging can be effective.

Matthew McGregor, of Blue State Digital, who advised Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign on new media and is now working with the Labour party, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The Conservatives are spending their money in a way that gets their content in front of people.

“The fact they are outspending the Labour party many, many times over because of the support from millionaire donors is going to have an impact. That’s something the Labour party can respond to by out-organising the Conservatives.”

What must be galling for the Tories, though, is that some of the smaller parties are building up a groundswell of social media support seemingly without the need for expensive promotions. Ukip, for example, is able to boast that it has been spending only “in the hundreds of pounds” on Facebook ads, mostly aimed locally at users who might want to attend political town hall meetings.

Yet Farage now has more than 120,000 Facebook fans. This compares with Nick Clegg’s 88,700 fans and Ed Miliband’s 67,400 fans. Ukip’s main party page is now only marginally less popular than that of the Conservatives.

Raheem Kassam, one of Nigel Farage’s closest aides, who has expertise in social media, said: “What you might call cyber-Kippers are a lot more naturally active than those of the other parties” – in a similar way to the online army of SNP activists during the Scottish referendum debate. He puts this down to Ukip’s encouragement of “vocal dissent” and the idea that “the disaffected are more likely to be active online”.

Breakdown of content discussed on Conservative party’s Facebook page, by analytics site We Are Social

“We do encourage people to share and get the message out but there isn’t any structure in place,” said Kassam. “If I had my choice, I would have every single Kipper active on social media in an email list and email them every time we had something to put out but we just don’t have the resources. It is an entirely natural phenomenon. It’s the same with the SNP – I think people are just taking it upon themselves.”

One driver behind Ukip’s strong Facebook presence is that local branches of the party tend to have Facebook pages, allowing members to interact, in contrast to the static, identikit websites of most Conservative associations.



Social community growth from the We Are Social website.

Data from the analytics site We Are Social bears out this trend of minor party supporter engagement on Facebook. Despite the Tories’ large outlay, they tied with the Greens in terms of the growth of their social communities, both gaining 7% in support for the last three months of 2014. Ukip beat them both, with a rise of 8%.

“Their engagement rates are really low considering how much they are spending,” says Kassam. “If I were their party treasurer, I would be looking at that and realising I was spending about £50 per like. We are spending just 13p to 20p.”