EU should choose carefully: Why Facebook loves UKIP, but Twitter can't stand them

SOCIAL media went UKrazy this week when Nigel Farage's party stormed the European elections.

But the gap in sentiment between Twitter and Facebook couldn't be bigger.

Twitter, it seems, can't stand them. Whereas Facebook might as well be rolling out the red carpet. Here are a few tweets I found earlier today:

Hoping this UKIP success isn't a reflection of what's going to happen at the general election.
— India. (@IndiaCaitlin) May 26, 2014

Just hearing about UKIP on the news makes my blood boil
— DOMO (@wxlfdomo) May 26, 2014

This might look like I'm just cherry-picking anti-Ukip posts, but I can assure you I am not. Try it for yourself - the bias is clear.

I even put in different search terms - like "I voted Ukip" and "ukip immigrants" - in the hope of finding some Farage fans. But again, the overwhelming majority of opinion was against him.

You voted UKIP? I voted for you to be shot.
— (@ofmiceandbrad) May 26, 2014

UKIP's popularity kinda proves how little the older generation knows about the economy and how much they blame immigrants for it
— Luke Ambrose (@LukeAmbrose69) May 26, 2014

UKIP complaining about 'foreigners and immigrants' like they dont go out for an indian takeaway every friday night pic.twitter.com/f5W7riW1lN
— ricarda'emilia ✨ (@nothinklikeu) May 26, 2014

There are, of course, exceptions. But the general trend on Twitter is definitely not in favour of Farage or his party. 

So where are all the Ukip fans? 

Well, they're on Facebook, apparently. The following comments are all taken from the pages of mainstream UK news sites.

I should also mention that they have come from both left and right-wing newspaper audiences. I've anonymised them here, but you can go and see for yourself - there are readers of The Independent and The Guardian who are just as anti-EU as readers of The Mail.

This is obviously not a scientific study, but the examples I've shown here - as well as the hundreds of others I've seen while researching for this blog - show a striking difference between the two platforms. 

It can even be seen in the numbers of followers on the official UKIP pages: their Facebook has 173,000 likes, as opposed to just 59,000 followers on Twitter.

There are three main reasons for this.

The first is the age gap - Ukip supporters tend to be old. A YouGov poll last year found that 71% of them are over 50 and just 15% are under 40.

Of course, the average Facebook user doesn't come anywhere near this kind of age range, but they are certainly older than their counterparts on Twitter. 

Another reason for the difference could be privacy. Twitter is an open, public forum where anyone can see anybody else's posts. Facebook tends to be more closed, with a broad range of settings to protect the things a user says. 

This might mean people feel more comfortable expressing views they think the rest of the world will regard as extreme. The posts I've shown above are placed on publicly accessible comment sections, but the generally high level of percieved privacy could still be influencing what people choose to say. 

Users are also see more posts from friends and family on Facebook (as opposed to a broader range of journalists, brands and public figures on Twitter), which again might make them feel easier about expressing more radical opinions. 

A third reason could be that Facebook is more accessible to less tech savvy people. Twitter tends to be populated by more well-off, well educated people - exactly the type that are less likely to vote Ukip.

Facebook has a far broader socio-demographic range of users, which means more people from poorer households are on it. The same YouGov study on Ukip support showed just 23% of Ukip supporters come from households earning over £40,000. This is compared to 38% for the Tories and 28% for Labour.

Either way, the difference is clear - conversation across the two social networks differs hugely. UKouldn't pay most tweeters to get behind Nige, but FarageBook is firing on all cylinders. 

Parking The Bus

THE Champions League is prime time for football banter - and nobody inspires conversation about footy like Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho.

His side defended almost constantly when they drew 0-0 with Atletico Madrid in April, which got the twittersphere talking about his famous quip deriding teams who 'park the bus'.

For anyone who doesn't already know, Jose's comments were aimed as an insult towards opposing teams who employ overly defensive tactics. He said they might as well 'park the team bus' in front of the goal. Now he had done the same thing, he put himself in prime position for a bit of gentle mocking.

This is what I came up with:

LEAKED: Jose Mourinho's top secret tactics board from last night's match... pic.twitter.com/uaw3iewNvo
— The Sun (@TheSunNewspaper) April 23, 2014

The picture was a little bit tricky to create because the bus actually belongs to Real Madrid, and was facing in the opposite direction in the original photo. That meant I had to use the photoshop clone stamp to remove all the Madrid markings, then reverse the image. 

After that, I got pics of Jose and Chelsea striker Fernando Torres and enlarged their heads for comic effect (I find big heads are almost always funny). Then I just had to source a football pitch background and add the text. 

I also shunned Mr Mourinho's real name in favour of his self-penned moniker 'Special One'. 

You're welcome, Jose. 

301 retweets = #SUCCESS

Stat's life

TWITTER is just a series of little information nuggets, and the best ones are filled with as much gold as possible. 

I have found that a great way to pack posts full of good content is to use images creatively and write lists onto pictures using photoshop. This essentially gives me an unlimited word count and allows our team to share large groups of factoids in a single tweet.

You see this technique used across all sorts of different subjects on twitter, with varying degrees of quality and success. They can range from cropped screen-shots of websites to professionally crafted graphic designs.

The 'record-breaking' season that led to David Moyes losing his job... http://t.co/VNnN6jxPK3 pic.twitter.com/PqLtM9ctnD
— The Sun (@TheSunNewspaper) April 22, 2014

Of course, the opportunity to have a much larger word count than Twitter would usually allow shouldn't be abused. Part of the reason for its success is that the 140 character format encourages users to be concise and clever about what they post. So with that in mind, I'm always keen to make the text in the pictures just as snappy as it would be in a tweet. 

In many ways, twitter encourages everyone to write like a journalist and cut out all the unnecessary words. These rules still apply.

An obvious area where stats and facts can be really effective is football reporting. Football fans famously love a good stat, and huge numbers of them (including myself) are active on Twitter.

The example above is one I created after David Moyes was sacked as Man United manager. It was a huge story, so very obviously a good story to follow up on. 

I made sure the background was Man United red by taking a screenshot of their website and pasting into photoshop, then using the eyedropper tool to get the correct shade. I then cut out a picture of Moyes to paste in and added a drop shadow onto the cutout image. 

After that, it was just a case of assembling the facts from various online sources, checking them, and writing them in around the image. I also made sure to link back to Sun goals digital service, as we are constantly looking to cross-promote social media and paid-for Sun content. 

As you can see, the post was retweeted hundreds of times. It also went on to become our most successful ever post on Google+. 

#SUCCESS

What A Pardnut

Back in March, during a football match between Newcastle United and Hull City, Toon manager Alan Pardew headbutted Hull midfielder David Meyler. For the following 24 hours there was obviously very little posted on Twitter that wasn't in some way related to this incredible pitch-side assault. 

I've never been one to avoid jumping on a decent-looking bandwagon, so I thought I'd get in on the action. This is what I came up with:

Leaked: Alan Pardew's tactics sheet for yesterday's game against Hull... pic.twitter.com/095Po9zqg9
— The Sun (@TheSunNewspaper) March 2, 2014

It may be simple, but I thought the basic pen & paper play on the Magpies boss's temper tantrum worked quite well. My views were reflected by the readers' reaction, which was predominantly positive. 

The key to the post's success was that the text made it appear as if some interesting breaking news about Pardew was soon to be revealed. The humour then comes from the surprise at the message on the paper, which implies Pardew is a head-case. Maybe the silly face helps a bit too.

The raging coach was, of course, fair game, as his antics had already outed him as a bit of a nut-job. Not right in the head, perhaps. Maybe even a few slices short of a loaf. Regardless, it was always going to be easy to make him the butt of the joke. 

The post eventually got retweeted 89 times, which I thought proved I was heading in the right direction.

#SUCCESS

The Horse Has Bolted

The Cheltenham Festival horse racing event is a big driver of newspaper sales, so in March our team was asked to generate as much interest in it as possible. 

The Sun was running full racing coverage throughout the event both online and in print, which meant there was plenty of content to push out through all of our channels. However, as many non-horse racing fans will know, horse racing can be pretty boring if you don't like, er, horse racing.

So to keep the rest of our followers interested, we decided to try to create some content that would raise a smile from those who aren't especially keen on racing, while still keeping the conversation focused on the festival.

The post we came up with is below.

As #CheltenhamFestival gets underway, suspicions are raised after a flood of bets are placed on an unknown horse... pic.twitter.com/wA76PlBwPl

— The Sun (@TheSunNewspaper) March 12, 2014

If you've read my previous blog post about Simon Cowell, you might now be starting to think that all we ever do at Social HQ is photoshop people's faces onto the heads of other people (or animals). I promise you that is not the case, regardless of how plainly hilarious I believe this technique to be. However, on this occasion I must admit to being convinced that this bladder-burstingly funny gag was destined to be our most successful ever.

Sadly, this wasn't to be the case. A large number of people who responded accused us of racism.  

When we conceived the idea, neither myself nor the social editor had even the tiniest inkling it might be construed as racist. To me, the concept was simple: Usain Bolt is the fastest man on the planet and a famously cheeky, larger-than-life character. If we put his face on a horse, and imply that he has inexplicably turned up at the Cheltenham Festival, it will be funny because:

- The picture is clearly hilarious (or is it just me??!)
- The picture will take the reader by surprise after the ostensibly serious text about cheating at the festival

Some readers did like it - it got 36 retweets - but many responded with messages accusing us of slavery-related racism. Their reasoning was that horses are essentially enslaved by their owners and are often associated with being forced into work.

We should perhaps have anticipated such a reaction, but I still to this day can't fully accept their point. Why would we try to use the Cheltenham Festival as a way of making complicated metaphors about slavery? Isn't the much more simple explanation (Fast man + fast animal + unexpected situation = funny) also the more obvious one? I even suspect the outrage might just have sprung out of an unconscious reaction to the striking similarity between the horse's coat and Mr Bolt's complexion. I suppose I'll never know.

So to sum up: I'm sad to say there really isn't any way that I'm able convince myself this post was a success (despite the positive responses we did receive), so I'm duty bound to record here this blog's very first #FAIL.

Doesn't Simon Cowell look young?

Hello and welcome to my new blog - a place where I'll be writing about the things I've been up to in my job as a social media manager at The Sun.

I work on a nearly new team of five, and plan on going through the creative ideas we come up with, the thought processes involved, and the reasons why I think we ultimately succeeded - or failed - in what we were trying to achieve. The recognition of failure here is crucial though. One thing I've learnt so far is that it can be very difficult to tell how popular any given post will be, regardless of how well you think you know your audience.

Right then, since I've got literally nothing else to say by way of an introduction, I might as well get started.

The first thing I want to go through is a post we created back in February. Telly talent-spotter Simon Cowell had just become a proud father (so he's definitely not gay, OK?) and had released pictures of the child that proved to be incredibly shareable.

We had already shared the story, but thought it had become so popular it was worth trying to come up with some fun Cowell-related content of our own.

The X Factor boss is in the light entertainment business, which immediately gave me the feeling we could introduce humour into whatever we were trying to do. He's also well known for being very vain. I'd seen a few jokes on twitter regarding this famed vanity, so I thought it could be something to play on.

I eventually decided to superimpose Cowell's face onto one of the baby pics and write a post to go with it that said: "Simon Cowell releases a new photo of the baby he says is the most handsome EVER..."

The implied joke here is obviously that Simon Cowell is SO vain he'd rather post a picture of himself than of his own newborn child.

The design team did a great job on Simon's face - particularly with the shadowing. And his big smile really helps give the post a jovial feel. The birth of a baby is always a very happy occasion, so I think the lighthearted tone of the post worked really well. And given the ubiquity of the story at the time, it was very shareable.

On Twitter the picture eventually got about 100 retweets, so I would call it a success. I think it perhaps suffered from the fact that the account wasn't especially well known for doing 'meme' style posts at the time. The social team had only just been set up, and The Sun really didn't make any effort with that type of purely social content previously. But it did well regardless and the reaction from our audience was overwhelmingly positive.

OK that's all for now, thanks for reading. I'll be back again soon.