Ten Tweeting Tips from the Feds

Posted by: Amy Hooker, Director of New Media Apr 22, 2009 0 Comments

Network World recently put together a great collection of Twitter tips from federal agencies that are leading the Gov 2.0 social media charge. Calling on new media professionals from the National Academy of Public Administration, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the General Services Administration, and NASA, the article passes along a comprehensive set of Twitter guidelines that make sense for other government agencies—and for that matter, non-government businesses and organizations—to follow.

The whole list is good, and the insights from these new media pros are definitely worth a read. For the record, here are a few of my favorites:

1. Identify a business problem you’re trying to solve. Don’t deploy social media tools just to appear cool. Amen to this. You’ll have a much easier time selling the value of social media to superiors if you show them how it will solve a problem that the agency has been facing.
2.Start small and grow your social media efforts gradually. Social media doesn’t have to be an “all-or-nothing” approach. Choose the area of social media that has the fewest barriers to approval. Show the value of that area; then add additional social tools.
3. Establish metrics to measure whether your new media approaches are working. People—especially bosses—like quantitative data. But it’s important to know which data is meaningful and which isn’t. For example, many people use “number of followers” as the most important Twitter metric. But, as NASA’s Robert Jacob is paraphrased in the article, “the best measure of Twitter’s effectiveness isn’t the number of followers you have, but the degree to which information is re-tweeted and shared across the micro-blogging site.”

I would add that monitoring the larger blogosphere for mentions and chatter post-tweet can also identify additional buzz that the tweet created.

Are there other tips that you’d suggest adding to the top ten? We’d love to hear them. Hit the comment link at the top of this post, and tell us what you think!

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Amy Hooker

Director of New Media

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