Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with over 43.5 million likes on his personal Page and 13.7 million likes on his official Page on Facebook, is the most popular world leader on the social network as more world leaders are now paying to promote their posts.US President Donald Trump is at the second place with more than 23 million likes on his personal Facebook Page and Jordan’s Queen Rania is third with 16.9 million likes, said the “2019 World Leaders on Facebook” report prepared by the leading global communications agency BCW.
To counter the recent changes in Facebook algorithms, several world leaders are now promoting their posts and Pages with Facebook ads. In early March 2019, 50 pages had been running ads according to Facebook’s Ads Library. Their latest ‘Twiplomacy’ study confirms that even among political figures who easily attract the attention of the public in social media, a paid strategy is still essential to secure reach and make a serious impact.
As of March 1, the Facebook Pages have a combined total of 345 million likes and published 449,739 posts in the past 12 months which have garnered a total of 767 million interactions. Followers of world leaders’ Facebook pages grew by 10 percent (year on year) but the interactions on their Pages have dropped significantly. While world leaders registered 1.1 billion interactions in 2016, that number has decreased by 32.3 percent compared to their interactions in 2018.
