The Royal Family have always been a discussion point, even before Youtube, Twitter and Facebook existed, but with the assistance of social media it seems the family have really become popular on the platforms.
A Royal, Social Attendance
The Royal Family have their own social accounts, often tweeting on occasions like the Queen’s birthday, where the official @RoyalFamily shared a throwback to her Majesty at her Christening. As you can guess the official account gives us information about past royalty, the monarchy and any engagements the Royal Family have attended. Social posts are relayed to an impressive audience of 3.76 million on Twitter and an incredible 4.7 million on Facebook. The Royal Family’s Facebook page is similar to their Twitter, but with more detailed posts about the events. The most recent post is about The Prince of Wales’ 70th Birthday Patronage Celebration, with photos to accompany the content. The post received over 53,000 reactions and 2,150 shares. People are interested by the world of the royals.
The Royal Family members do not have official, individual accounts but collaborative Twitter profiles. For example, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall have @ClarenceHouse , which too showcases events that family have attended or hosted. Also, the younger members of the monarchy have @KensingtonRoyal, which is a bit more of a modern take on life as a royal, with videos of Prince William speaking about events and retweets from other prestigious accounts. All three Twitter accounts are rather similar though as they all share the same articles and photos, but what do you expect? Who has time to tweet personally, when you’ve got engagements to attend and inspired speeches to make?
Tweets the Queen Would Approve Of
However, they have to keep up a social presence – one Buckingham Palace approves of. The accounts all use high quality images and detailed, but succinct language. All accounts have a social media team behind them, which must be a considerable amount of pressure on the individuals as they must get every word right. With millions of followers and the world watching, there is no room for grammatical errors or the wrong image being uploaded by mistake. One slip up on social media could damage the reputation of the person the account is associated with and whatever is posted on the Internet is out there for everyone to see. The British Monarchy even had a vacancy for ‘Head of Digital Engagement’, which gave the successful candidate a good salary, fantastic benefits and the opportunity to control the Royal Family’s social media accounts, meaning their work would be seen by millions.
Although most of the Royal Family members do not post from their own personal profiles, there are members of royalty around the world you can still follow on Instagram.
Tweeting for the Good
Social media has always been a tool to boost popularity, or decrease it, and with the Royal Family’s private life, having social accounts can really make the members of the monarchy seem more human and relatable. It’s really our only insight into their lives and to spread the good, charitable work they do. For instance, Prince Harry was live on Facebook taking a HIV test, which really helped raise awareness of the disease.
Royal Engagements
The Royal Wedding of Harry and Meghan – the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – had over 5.3 million mentions on social media in the space of 24 hours, with 2.2 million coming from the US. People all over the world are interested by their lives and the only way to hear about their stories is through social media.
It was inevitable that the family would have to catch up with the times, especially as tabloid newspapers moved to Facebook news articles. I mean the Queen already had an iPod, so the Monarchy’s technological and digital world can only grow from here.
