could twitter be a weekly voice for local government?
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Darren Caveney in @sweden, Geoff Coleman, birmingham city council, comms, communications, local government, local government, social media, social media, twitter, twitter
Could a Twitter account passed between local government people help tell the story of their sector? One switched-on comms person thinks it could.

by Geoff Coleman

 

In December 2011, Sweden launched what it called 'the world's most democratic Twitter experiment' when the Twitter account @Sweden was born.

If you're not already a follower I can highly recommend that you check it out.

Basically, a new Swede takes over the country's official Twitter account @sweden every week, sharing their daily experiences and opinions and generally celebrating their nation.

This morning a tweet from @danslee alerted me to a similar account: @FarmersOfTheUK 

Basically, a new farmer takes over the account every week and... you get the idea.

Anyway it got me thinking (not an easy thing to do before my first coffee of the day)

Would there be any appetite for a local government version? I know of plenty of people across the UK who celebrate, debate and generally live local government on a daily basis, so surely there would be no shortage of potential folk to run the account.

We could ask everyone from people working across a range of services to chief officers and even elected members to take their turn. 

Who knows, it might offer interesting insights into the day-to-day working of the endlessly varied world of local government.

Geoff Coleman is press officer at Birmingham City Council.

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