'Queen Elizabeth won’t even be AWARE of Meghan Markle’s Instagram' claims Jennie Bond

Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk about the Royal Family’s use of social media, Jennie, ex-BBC Royal Correspondent, said: “I very much doubt the Queen is aware of what is going on in Meghan Markle’s social life.

“She keeps herself away from the private lives of her children and indeed, grandchildren. Just look at how long it was before she intervened with Charles and Diana, only really when the marriage was in trouble.”

Despite the Queen herself having a prolific social media profile – her Majesty has a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube channel – the monarch has only tweeted twice herself to her 2.8million followers on the @royalfamily account.

Yet recent job advertisements from both Buckingham Palace and Clarence House have called for further digital communications experts to join the team behind running the various accounts.

Because of this expansion Jennie is positive that social media will be one of the first places where we will hear Royal news, including the death of a member of the Royal Family.

She says, “Both the Queen and the Duke are very elderly, death is going to occur and I have no doubt that the first place I will see a rumour will be on my Twitter account or on Facebook.

“Social media is a different ball game and the communications team at Buckingham Palace and Clarence House are very aware that any kind of news is more or less impossible to keep under wraps.

“I remember when the Queen Mother was ill, she was smuggled in the back entrance of the hospital and I didn’t know anything about it until I got a telephone call in the middle of the night. Whereas for the birth of Princess Charlotte, news was coming direct to a Royal Correspondent’s mobile phone, so they could break the news more quickly than they have done in the past.”

It seems that since the death of Princess Diana, the Royal Family have taken steps to ensure that they have become more transparent with their audience.

With the Queen herself declaring that lessons must be learnt from both Diana’s life and death, Jennie thinks that a wide social media presence is a step towards this.

She noted: “The Queen has always believed in evolution rather than revolution and since Diana’s death the Royal Family has made a conscious effort to become more modern, transparent and accountable.

“But social media is a strategy for them. There is no point having an invisible monarchy when it comes to their charity and ambassador roles, they need to maximise the publicity it brings and the best way to do this is through social media.”

It seems as though Prince Charles was somewhat of a pioneer of social media for the Royal Family, setting up his @ClarenceHouse Twitter account in 2010.

His 608k followers were boosted recently when he appeared to photobomb popular rock band Kasabian as they tucked in to lunch at the Prince of Wales pub in Somerset, gaining the Duke an unlikely, younger fan base as a result.

Jennie thinks that this transparent approach is the right way to publicise the good that the Royal Family do, but there will be an orchestrated element behind these candid snaps.

She said: “Of course the young Royals are best at this but I have no doubt that ‘fun’ elements such as Prince Harry’s mic drop to President Barack Obama when advertising the Invictus Games is part of a very controlled, albeit successful, campaign.”

It is not just the Royal Family who are using social media to make big announcements – Co-op Funeralcare has today revealed in its new report ‘A life well streamed’, that more than one in ten of UK adults are posting notices on the deaths of their loved ones online.

The study found a 13 per cent of UK adults have personally posted online to notify others about the death of a loved one.

Reacting to the research, Jennie said: “I welcome this report today and I am totally in favour of it as long as sensitive guidelines are used, such as telling the nearest and dearest first. This should serve as an important message that we should try and break down the taboo of talking about death.

“It should be a conversation we have before we die so that loved ones do not have to guess how you want to depart in this life. We really should stop being so embarrassed and consider all options when it comes to talking about the only absolute certainty in life.”