Congress has now entered the social media waters to give equal fight to BJP. After weeks of scrutiny, the party has finally closed the deal with Hitesh Chawla, 36, of the Gurgaon-based data-powered advertising company SilverPush; and Naresh Arora, 38, of the Surat-based digital campaign firm DesignBoxed.

Two other media communications company Percept and Niksun have also been included in the digital campaigning team.

It may be noted that an IITian and a NIFT graduate are among the leaders of the social media team for campaigning for the Lok Sabha Elections.

Sam Pitroda and Pawan Khera along with few others have formed a coordination committee to monitor these external agencies. The party has informed that the big leap will start from April 02.

While the 2019 elections will be SilverPush's first foray into the political arena, Arora's DesignBoxed entered the space in 2015, when it designed digital strategies for MPs in Punjab.

The team had come up with the "Jawab Denge Himachal" campaign against the BJP's "Hisaab Mange Himachal" and designed the "Rajasthan ka report card" for the Congress.

Saying that the team plans to get all hands on the deck for the political campaigning, with a focus on building followings on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, Arora says he realises his YouTube videos have to catch the viewer in the first five seconds.

"Our attention spans are decreasing… Who is going to read long posts on Facebook? We don't even read all the content on top of graphics anymore. It has to be fast and swift to catch attention," he said.

(Featured Image: exchange4media)