Steph Gray

Good corporate tweeting

In Blog

Lots of people have views on the ‘right’ way to use Twitter as an organisation. I’m pretty liberal about it: I think it’s fine to use it to pump out press releases from a corporate account if that’s the expectation you set, or to have a dormant, verified account there ready for a crisis, or to encourage your teams and individual staff members to tweet about their professional work. The latter probably gives the organisation the most benefit longer term, but you need corporate accounts too in the same way that a switchboard is still useful even when everyone has a phone on their desk (or in their pocket).

But I’ve seen some promising signs that central government departments are getting smarter about how, when and what they tweet from their corporate accounts. Take this example, which landed in front of me at 8am this morning, as I chugged slowly through South London on a busy, hot train:

On the face of it, it’s just a tweeted announcement like any other, but it caught my eye for several reasons:

  • it was sent at peak commuting time, when lots of folk like me are likely to receptive to news about better trains coming soon
  • it’s got both a picture (of a cool-looking carriage that bears no resemblance to the one I’m in) and a link to more info
  • it’s shortened using a link tracker that gives some extra analytical info about the engagement it’s had, over time and by location – 250+ clicks in the first half hour isn’t too shabby for a government announcement
  • the further information itself on GOV.UK (nicely responsive on my phone, of course – remember, I’m on a train) starts off like a press release, but actually has some nice material for a wider audience too: it’s really a full-on social media news release with a CGI video (below) that bloggers or media can use, a link to a Flickr gallery of images you could use at hi-res (though a Creative Commons licence would help encourage reuse). There are loads of Top Trumps-style facts, and some neat tables showing changes to journey times thanks to the new trains
  • it looks like the team are preparing for integration with subsequent announcements around the stakeholder-oriented #ieptrains hashtag

I don’t know if the credit for this belongs with DfT’s digital team or their press office, but I suspect it’s a bit of both – well done folks. DfT aren’t alone in starting to do these things better: Defra are doing some really creative, high-impact work with partners online as part of some stunning social media PR campaigns, and there’s some great corporate tweeting going on at DfE, Number 10 and – arguably – the Home Office, who are using Twitter more fiercely than most politicians would dare, and, shall we say, certainly overcoming the ‘meh’ barrier which bedevils many civil service corporate accounts:

Corporate tweeting in Whitehall is getting bolder, smarter and more integrated. And that’s a good thing.

Get notified of new blog posts by email

###

July 18, 2013

Comments

World of WordPress

Still climbing

Come and Meet The Communities