Everybody tweets. Chances are your employees tweet from their mobile phones while they’re on the clock. Yes, even government employees. Some are probably very good at Twitter, using it to manage their own personal brands and share their own voices.
In an age where government entities are accused by the public of being insincere when publicizing information, using the voices of the employees of the front lines is a great way to be more authentic. Of course, with any social media platform, as discussed last month with Facebook, you can’t just let all your employees start tweeting official government business. Policies and education have to be key.
Find the Experts
Your Twitter experts are already among your ranks. With the rise of social media has come the rise of the social employee. Mark Burgess, a social media guru and professor for Rutgers Online who teaches courses in social media marketing, defines a social employee as one who is highly-skilled in social media, a change agent within the organization, highly engaged, and able to integrate both the personal and professional.
During a TEDTalk in 2014, Burgess discussed how to seek out these social employees. As he outlined, they are highly skilled in social media and likely using it on their own time if not already within the organization. It is then the job of the municipal organization to leverage these social employees’ personal activity into professional.
Do you label all your employees who actively use social media as social employees? Definitely not. At Burgess points out, social employees are ones who will have something to say about the use of social media within the organization. Facebook is a platform for conversations. Twitter is a platform for blasting information. Listen to the employees who know the difference.
What Next?
Once you’ve identified your Twitter experts, what do you do with them? You have to educate them. Burgess suggests following the acronym of L.E.A.P.: Listen, Educate, Activate, Play. You have already listened to them, though this should be a continuing activity. Now it’s time to educate them.
All organizations, whether public or private, should have a social media policy in place discussing use of platforms like Twitter and Facebook inappropriately. Educating your social employees who will be the voice of your organization means more than just going over employee handbook policy. It means creating a plan for how they will be using Twitter as both their personal and professional platform.
You may have four employees manning a parking counter, yet one has been designated as a social employee who will tweet updates to the public. These updates can be as simple as letting the public know a co-worker is ill for the day or as complicated as live-tweeting the clearing of a road accident.
When he was Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Corey Booker was a great example of how a social employee can use Twitter effectively. He was known for alerting his employers, the people of Newark, to emergency situations, as well as to responding to their tweets alerting him to community issues.
Off-the-cuffs tweets are great when things happen in real-time, like updating the public as to the absence of a customer service expert. However, social employees can and should still plan regular tweets to inform their audience of the activity of the organization.
Facebook can be used by Parks and Recreation for collecting opinions. Twitter can be used by Parks and Rec to share pictures of a new park’s opening, or can integrate with application like Instagram. Twitter can also be integrated with Facebook to populate the latter’s feed with updates.
If you have an employee who will be tweeting often, consider using an app like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule posts. Because governments must consider more than just allowing social employees to activate their new positions as ambassadors for the organization, apps like Buffer and Hootsuite allow an opportunity for planning and a little bit of oversight.
At the same time, just as you should never delete a comment from Facebook, don’t micromanage your employees’ Twitter feeds. If you have done your job in identifying and educating the ones with the most potential, you will have authentic voices for your municipal entity.
n the end, it behooves the government to think a little like a big corporation. Take a cue from IBM and leverage your expert tweeters into great social employees.
