Vibrant Guj buzzes on social networking sites

The Gujarat government is leaving no stones unturned in promoting Vibrant Gujarat Summit. Besides the traditional means of propaganda, the government is also effectively using social networking sites to spread awareness about the mega investment event, which is now less than two weeks away.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Flickr are some of the social networking sites being used to propagate Vibrant Gujarat Summit.

The sites carry links to Vibrant Gujarat website (www.vibrantgujarat.com) and related website (www.ourvibrantgujarat.com), which provide complete details about the event. They also provide information about various sectors and industries.

The dedicated Vibrant Gujarat page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/vibrantgujarat), for example, carries quotes of prominent industry leaders who have invested in Gujarat. It also carries speeches and quotes of chief minister Narendra Modi and photographs from the earlier Vibrant Gujarat Summits.

“With their wide reach and increasing popularity, social networking sites are the ideal means for disseminating information and creating awareness. Vibrant Gujarat on social networking sites is part of an overall campaign to create a positive space of engagement online, for people to connect with Gujarat, and the values and models the state stands for,” said a senior government official, requesting anonymity.

The Vibrant Gujarat pages on the social networking sites are updated on a daily basis. The pages were being handled by a professional IT company earlier, but with the event now nearing, the work is now being taken care of directly by the chief minister’s office (CMO), said officials.

The government is also tapping the world wide web in general to connect with NRIs and NRGs, and to create the hype around Vibrant Gujarat Summit. “Leading search engines such as Google and Yahoo are indexing a lot of content from the official website of Vibrant Gujarat (www.vibrantgujarat.com) on account of Search Engine Optimisation.   

A lot of information and news about the event also figure prominently on the MSN homepage," said officials.
According to officials in CMO, the strategy to tap the social networking sites and the internet seem to have paid off as the website www.vibrantgujarat.com has been attracting a lot of visitors.

"The website has received more than one lakh hits since February. With the mega event nearing the number is going up. What we have observed is that more than 20% of the hits are from US and UK. There are also a good number of hits from South Africa, Germany, UAE, among others," said an official.