The government is urging government departments to use Twitter as it releases a document on Twitter strategy. The 20 page document, a very detailed 5,382 words long, outlines how to use Twitter in an effort to get government departments to Tweet on upcoming events and relevant issues. The document is said to have been published to prevent government departments from tweeting pointless and irrelevant content.
The document is quite extensive dealing with various tips on etiquette which is quite important to understand if you do not already. Naturally due to it being the government the document deals with issues to do with risk, one of which is criticism of “jumping on the bandwagon” and “being a waste of public money” (the government wasting our money? Never!).
I have been thinking for a while that it was about time that the government entered into Twittersphere. Twitters ability to spread information quickly is something that will certainly benefit government departments. Twitter is also a great way of getting in amongst the people and effectively provide information to them as well as seek information for themselves.
I do feel that this is going to draw some inevitable criticism from people who cannot see Twitter as anything more than somewhere to gossip and post meaningless thoughts (ironically the document has been published to avoid this very issue). However as we have seen over the months Twitter has been extremely effective with some major issues such as the Iran election and many businesses have seen great benefit from using Twitter. Hopefully we can see some good stuff from some of these government departments and with the swine flu pandemic very much taking its strangle hold and with worse (allegedly) to come perhaps Twitter will act as a very useful tool in helping people through this…
