Mid Ulster UKIP election candidate has more tweets than the BBC

The Mid Ulster UKIP candidate standing in the Westminster elections has posted more tweets than the BBC.
Alan DayAlan Day
Alan Day

Alan Day from Coagh has amassed a staggering 356,000 tweets in the six and a half years that he has been using the popular social media network.

That tops the combined total from the BBC NI twitter feed which has 76,000 tweets and 250,000 from the main BBC UK News account.

Mr Day - who posts under the pseudonym of Kilsally is quick to point out that many of the tweets are retweets or links to news stories, covering a huge range of topics from, religion, and politics and sport to international affairs.

“I have several thousand followers on Twitter including the likes of Jim Allister, US special envoy Richard Haass & Gerry Adams. I think it is down to good curation - the account is very active with a lot of posts - most of which are retweets/tweets linking to topical news stories which I find interesting and people seem to like that,” said the UKIP man.

“Although I must state that a tweet or retweet is not necessarily an endorsement - I often tweet links to both sides of an argument.”

Mr Day claimed the advantages of using social media are paying off for UKIP.

“Whilst the Tory and Labour parties have been on social media spending frenzies, UKIP have spent very little yet have a vastly disproportionate level of social media engagement compared to the other parties.

“But there are of course pitfalls to social media which can be a gift to mainstream news outlets.

“A case in point was the Labour politician, Emily Thornberry, who infamously tweeted a picture of `white van man` whilst out campaigning for the Rochester by-election. It ended up in the national media and resulted in her resignation.”

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