Politicians: Learn How To Tweet
Politicians and political wannabes: are you jumping into Twitter to do some social media outreach? Want to get in on this cheap and exciting trend with little or no knowledge of how to do it?
Photos, Photos, Photos
The first thing to understand is that Twitter is a dirt-cheap outlet for publishing your press releases and photo-ops. Your followers are just dying to see pictures of you making that stump speech in that grange hall. In fact, that’s probably why they joined Twitter and started following you! Who wouldn’t want to gaze at candid candidate photos? Make sure you fill your twitter feed with endless links to yourself on TwitPic or Flickr – voters eat this stuff up!
It’s not Really You
Next, you’ll also want to make sure your followers know that it’s not really you answering the tweets. Deep down inside, they all know this already. End the facade, and ensure you keep your aloof appearance, by always tweeting in the third person. You’ve got more important things to do, so make it absolutely clear that some staffer is posting your status updates by copy-and-pasting a press release headline. As a bonus, referring to yourself in the third person gives your tweets a “16th century royalty” quality of indifference, which is exactly what every politician should strive for:
Never, Ever Engage
Whatever you do, make sure you never engage with your followers. People who really care about the issues will take a time to write you a nice letter (or better yet, a check!). The internet is a scary place, and you don’t want your staffers making permanent statements to anonymous netizens who probably won’t even vote for you! Twitter is best used as a one-way medium for communicating your agenda. You may even want to rip the @ key right off your keyboard to make sure you never accidentally interact with these people. See Sen. Susan Collins or Sen. John Kerry for some fine examples of staying above the fray by totally ignoring followers. Remember, it’s important to keep a wall between you and your constituents.
February 13th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
@mdesjardins, you are exactly correct.
Candidates who use social media as a broadcast tool, rather than an interactive communication venue, insult the intelligence of voters and as such risk very quickly alienating them.
Candidates and public officials should tweet themselves, and
There should be a balance between giving and receiving information that is value-added as maximally as possible for the voter.