Mumbai: In a bid to step up the online publicity of different schemes launched by the State government and to create positive ‘mindset’ about the government initiatives, the Maharashtra government has appointed a panel of eight advertising agencies for an online campaign.
The government will ask the agencies to conceptualise, develop and maintain social media platforms such as websites, web portals, blogs, micro blogs, microsites and mobile applications. It will also invite influencers from society or social media to be endorsers of State government schemes. They will supervise the conversation on social media regarding government policies and make interventions to ensure the discourse remains positive for the government.
The agencies will employ social and web services to enable monitoring of all media. The State government’s Directorate General of Information and Public Relations will also get inputs from these agencies to formulate and implement a comprehensive social media promotion strategy.
“The agency will develop and upload on various social media platforms, creative content or adapt the what is already available. The content includes, but is not limited to, banners, videos, infographics, graphics, cartoons, animation etc. The uploaded content needs to be monitored by the agency on a daily basis and it should be equipped with a perception/image management team,” said the government resolution.
These agencies will upload posts on chosen social media platforms, post original blogs or articles related the campaign, select and upload images that increase curiosity amongst people, curate topics on relevant hash tags on digital platform, use influencers from society/ social media and invite them to be endorsers, maintain a rapport with digitally influential people having a large follower base, target influencers for building up a positive mindset amongst policy/ decision makers, send bulk SMS and emails to the intended / proposed beneficiaries of the programs.
The government has also asked these agencies to set up an accurate, complete, polite and prompt feedback mechanism to users on social media platforms and ensure that the social media conversation about government policies is positive. The agencies will track conversations, links and blogs about programmes and issues or related topics and keep a record of sentiments-Positive, Neutral or Negative with timely reporting of any discrepancy in sentiments.
The agencies will submit an effectiveness analysis reports to DGIPR on a weekly or monthly basis as required and work on channelising and drafting a plan to work out and neutralise negative sentiments.
