Category Archives: Social media

Crunching the StopHs2 social media stats: November 2018

02 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by in Social media, StopHs2

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It’s time to crunch the monthly Stop Hs2 social media statistics and see how their ‘campaign’ is faring – and the answer is not very well at all! Their ‘relaunch’ was a bit of a fiasco and the blizzard of tweets and facebook posts has reduced to little more than a flurry. Meanwhile, the ‘action’ on their website barely registers a pulse!

First off is Facebook. In October they managed 48 posts, this has now slumped to 22. As us usual is all reactive, not proactive. There’s no campaign news because there’s nothing going on. All that gets a mention is that their grandly titled ‘Chair’ (what’s she chairing in Bournemouth? Ed) Penny Gaines has been dragged to the phone to give another interview to the media. There’s no news from any ‘action’ groups as there’s not real action going on. All you get is posts of anything in the media that’s critical of Hs2, such as someone writing a letter to their local rag. Here’s the numbers crunched, with last month’s as a comparison.

FB 4

Despite them having nearly 200 more followers to almost hit the 9000 mark, the numbers are actually pretty pathetic. Remember, there’s 6.5 million people living in constituencies that Hs2 passes through, so, even if all the folk who follow them on Facebook actually lived on the route, they’d still only have reached 0.13%! That’s pathetic. Mind you, when you read some of the comments that get posted, you can see that this isn’t exactly the intellectual end, some of it’s plain barking!

FB 1

fb2

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Now let’s have a look at Twitter.

stophs2 twitter

Not exactly setting Twitter alight, are they? A 61% decrease in tweets. The show’s over folks – the ‘relaunch’ has sunk without trace and numbers are returning to normal, despite a 3% increase in followers too! Mind you, 3% of sod all was never going to make much of an impact anyway! An average of 21 retweets from 6363 followers is pretty unspectacular when it come to getting any message out! Oh, and don’t forget the usual caveat, many of these Facebook and Twitter followers won’t be supporters. They’re just there to keep an eye on what they’re up to, so the numbers are worse than they look.

 

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Here’s why the anti Hs2 mobs Twitter campaign’s a joke.

22 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2aa, Social media, StopHs2, Twitter (and how not to use it)

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Having utterly failed to make any impact in the real world the anti Hs2 campaign’s increasingly become a cyber campaign that’s almost totally reliant on social media to try and get its message out.

Their problem is – they’re mostly shouting at each other.

I’ve long said that their daft & desperate campaign will be an object lesson in how not to do it and here’s another of their masterclasses.

Having failed to gain much of a following on Facebook (see here) Hs2 antis have increasingly fallen back on Twitter. There’s a certain logic to this. In theory, it’s easy to pretend there’s a lot of support for your aims. Setting up a series of accounts that feed off each other to all retweet the same rubbish seems like an attractive idea. The difficulty is there’s obvious pitfalls that the ignorant or unwary can fall into – and the anti Hs2 mob do that every time!

Take today’s example. Let’s welcome the anti Hs2 mobs latest sock puppet account: @CotyHS2

This anonymous account was created today. Straight away it started to follow folk and amassed 15 within a few minutes – all of which are other anti Hs2 accounts. Here they are:

Hs2 coty

Some other anti’s started to follow back almost straight away.

coty 2

One of the first was the IEA transport ‘economist’ Richard Wellings who’s a bit of a tart. He’ll follow anyone to try to make himself look more important and influential. If you don’t believe me, take a look at his Twitter bio.

It’s so obvious that this account is nothing but an anti Hs2 mob propaganda tool and not a real person it’s positively painful.

How will any of this Stop Hs2? It won’t. Not in the slightest. Instead you have a campaign that spends most of its time ranting (pointlessly) at each other – whilst convinced they’re actually achieving something. It’s the political and campaigning version of this;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfBG0d5Oj3c”

This is why campaigners should never fool themselves into thinking a fiddled social media strategy is going to influence anyone. It’s nothing better than mutual masturbation. It might give them a warm glow but the people they think they’re influencing aren’t stupid. They have the ability to analyse metrics that show the anti Hs2 campaigns reach is tiny – and mostly ranting at itself rather than influencing outsiders.

After five years the anti Hs2 mob still haven’t learned the lesson but campaigns that follow them will ignore it at their peril.

Of course, if you want another example of a social media disaster, look no further than the StopHs2 Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/STOP.HS2?fref=ts

It has less than 7000 followers. Many of their comments are priceless. Does this look like an energetic & focussed campaign with a clear strategy & political will? They wish! Instead it’s a wonderful insight into the soul of their campaign, which consists of a few bewildered folk who have absolutely no understanding of the issues & simply can’t understand why no-one is taking them seriously. They remind me of the Duke of Wellington’s famous quote “I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me”.

Their problem is, the ‘enemy’ aren’t frightened by them in the slightest…