FB pages of departments have just 2,000 followers

Despite the State’s hard sell, the reach is poor

The verified page of The Department of Public Enterprises has only four followers as on Monday.

After completion of more than four years in office, the TDP government seems to have, of late, begun focussing on reaching out to the public through social media.

Nearly 30 government departments have official Facebook pages with the “blue verification badge”, the most sought-after feature on the social media giant.

Ironically, the reach of these officials pages of all major departments was so poor that 28 pages related to Health, Home, General Administration Department, Youth, Water Resources, Revenue, School and Higher Educations, Consumer Affairs, Agriculture, Energy and other departments altogether have just around 1,924 followers (likes) as on Monday. Of all, 24 pages were created four months ago on July 23, 2018, and a majority of them have less than 100 followers each and yet are verified by Facebook, going by the information provided on the website.

Multiple accounts

Others, including Anna Canteen and Yuvanestham, were created in the later months. Also, contradicting the very purpose of verification, there are two pages each for two departments, that is, IT department has two separate verified pages.

One of them has only 11 followers while the other is having about 18,000 followers. The Department of Youth and Tourism also has two verified pages and both have only 120 followers.

Though Facebook doesn’t specify the need for a huge number of followers to verify a page it is widely believed so. The blue badge also helps page owners build trust among their followers and have improved reach.

Not even one follower

But many department pages do not even have a single follower when they were verified by Facebook.

“We apply the blue verification badge to eligible brands, media organisations and public figures. Eligibility for the blue verification badge is based on a variety of factors, such as account completeness, policy compliance and public interest,” a statement on Facebook’s website says.

While this seems to be an exercise taken up by a private agency on behalf of the government, the IT department is unaware of the creation of verified pages.