A new report by leading search and social agency, Climbing Trees, has revealed the most-savvy MPs on social media in Essex.
The report details activity on Twitter and highlights the MPs with the largest following. Topping the charts is the MP for Witham, Priti Patel, who has 51,463 followers! In second place is MP for Braintree, James Cleverly, with a total of 40,634 followers and in third position is MP for Harlow, Robert Halfon, with 28,375 followers. At the bottom of the pack with just 1,231 followers is MP for Southend West, David Amess, although the MP for Basildon and Billericay, Mark Baron, and the MP for Rayleigh and Wickford, Mark Francois, are yet to open a Twitter account.
Climbing Trees also investigated MPs with the largest ‘fake followers’* and the results were interesting. The MP with the most fake followers was Robert Halfon MP with 27.1% of all his followers believed to be fake. In second place was MP for Rochford and Southend East, James Duddridge MP, with 20.4% of fake followers, followed by MP for Saffron Walden, Kemi Badenoch, with 19.6%.
Who’s the biggest tweeter?
The survey revealed the MPs with the most tweets – in first place with 48,267 tweets was Robert Halfon MP, in second place was MP for Colchester, Will Quince, with 30,030 tweets and in third place with 24,344 tweets was James Cleverly MP. The MP with the least tweets was MP for Maldon, John Whittingdale, with just 159 tweets.
The research also looked at how well MPs were engaging with their followers. The highest engagement score went to Will Quince MP (87%), followed by Priti Patel MP (85%) and James Duddridge MP (82%). The least engaging tweets were issued by MP for Castle Point, Rebecca Harris, who only scored 14% for engagement.
Organising the survey was Alex Holliman, Managing Director, Climbing Trees, he believes it’s vital to see how MPs communicate with constituents online. He says: “Social media has become a very democratic and speedy way for citizens to engage with their MP, that’s why we wanted to conduct a survey to see how our local MPs were utilising social media.”
He continued: “The findings have been very interesting. I would encourage all to checkout their local MP online and feel empowered to communicate direct to get their voice heard.”
To view the full research findings, and to see how your local MP faired in the research, visit www.climbingtrees.com.
*Research into fake followers was undertaken by Climbing Trees using the Sparktoro Fake Follower Audit tool.
· Research was recorded between 15-16 January 2019.
· Research undertaken by Climbing Trees using the Sparktoro Fake Follower Audit tool.
Engagement score – this score is a comparison marker on similar sized Twitter accounts (those with a similar number of followers) and analyses likes per tweet and retweets.
Fake Followers
In our research 5-30% of followers (on average) are fake — they’re bots, spam accounts, inactive users, propaganda, or other non-engaged/non-real users. Our research uses a tool that audits a sample of 2,000 random followers for any given account and runs diagnostics found to strongly correlate with these types of fake followers.