Twittering for Local Government

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a Twitter channel for the British Prime Minister called Downing Street after the famous residence, number 10 Downing Street. The PMs media people are using it to provide instant updates to the press and anyone else who's interested. This got me thinking about how Twitter could be used in Local Government.

But first, what is Twitter?

That's a difficult question as it has many different applications and means different things to different people. Here’s a brief description that will hopefully mean something to you… Twitter is a kind of mini blog whereby you get 140 characters to write something attention grabbing/informative/profound, or simply answer the question “What are you doing?”. Along with your short statement you might post a link to “further information” on a website, or whatever it is you’re twittering about. The messages are posted in date order, you can’t edit a post but you can delete one should you have second thoughts. You can add your website address and a short explanation of who you are to your profile, and you can upload your photo or logo and even customise the colours of your Twitter channel to your liking or to match with your organisations branding. Once you're setup you can follow other people's twitters and they can follow you back. Twitter is not just about telling people what you are doing, you can connect with friends and colleagues, your piers, or politicians, and they could be from anywhere in the world. As well as individuals you can follow tweets from commercial organisations, events, emergency services, government and news corporations. A crucial part of its adoption is its convenience to fit into your everyday life, you can post and read tweets via SMS on your mobile, Instant Messaging, email, as well as via your browser. More info: Here's a good article which explains more about what it is: Twitter Guide Part #1: What is Twitter? And this is a great online video from Twitter CEO: Jack Dorsey Presents Twitter.

Posting news as it happens via Twitter

An application for Twitter in Local Government is to follow in number 10’s footsteps and use it as a channel for media to provide news updates as they happen. The traditional methods of communicating with the outside world have been via media releases with contact phone numbers for media comment – this still needs to exist but it's a bit one way communicative and not really making use of what online technology has to offer. Twitter offers an alternative method to alert and converse with the media and the community. I noticed that Downing Street were getting some questions posted by their Twitter followers and number 10 were replying via Twitter. This means that if one person asks a question everyone can see the answer, it makes the communication to the outside world more transparent and means that at least with your Twitter followers you don't need to answer the same question twice.

More uses for Twitter

Event updates: You could use Twitter to provide real-time updates and comment at events and conferences. This could be for media and/or conference participants, or informing people of major outcomes for those that can't attend. Its extremely quick to post and reply, and if you are not online you can do it via SMS on your mobile phone (which is handy for your busy events and media staff). People do need an account to reply to posts, but they don't to be able to view updates so you can direct people to your Twitter page or you can stream updates from Twitter to your own website. Blog updates and project progress: You could post blog updates in Twitter (like us) providing your subscribers with another way to keep updated and comment and to direct more traffic to your blog. Or you could post updates from a project if you don't have a blog. If you have an online photo gallery you could post links to that during the event or as photos are made available afterwards, or to show project progress, perhaps on a new building development or arts project. For more ways to use Twitter read: 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners

Try it out, it's free!

There are obviously many possible uses for Twitter, and it could be a good testing platform for gauging how popular this type of tool might be with your community, other governments, and the media - even if you end up building something more customised to your needs in the future. At the end of the day if it doesn't work out its not such a big risk as it's easy to setup and its FREE!

Yes we're on Twitter!

So this is my take on how you might be able to use Twitter, if anyone else has suggestions please post a comment. And of course whilst I was testing all this out I made a twitter channel for this blog: www.twitter.com/lgwebnetwork All the blog posts are directly fed to Twitter, feel free to follow us and even ask us a question.