If you are a politician or government organization, you may already be plugged into the convenient social media tool of Twitter. Still, often times Twitter requires more than just tweeting regularly, so here are the best tips available to truly enhance and expand your use of Twitter as a politician.

  • Cross promote your blogs and articles. If you are writing press releases, articles, or blogs about your government organization or political campaign, you can post links from all articles and blogs directly to Twitter to keep your followers informed.
  • Use your Flickr account with Twitter. You can post any pictures from Flickr directly to Twitter, which is helpful if you are trying to spread the word about a government organization or political campaign that your followers may be interested in.
  • Add events from your Google Calendar to Twitter. Events are something that your followers need to be aware of as a government organization or politician if you hope to gain a loyal following. You can use the helpful application Twittercal to add events from your Google Calendar to be sent by direct messages to your Twitter followers.
  • Report any Twitter copycats right away. As you gain more notoriety as a politician or government organization, you may have Twitter imposters posing as you on their profile. If that is the case, you can send a message to the spam watch team on Twitter so that they can investigate the user in question.
  • Use Twitter internationally. If you have followers interested in your political party in another country, you can translate messages into English by sending the direct message text to the twanslate user on Twitter. This will let you quickly translate any messages in a different language to answer questions about your cause or political party!
  • Conduct surveys from your constituents! So much of politics is in measuring the interest of your demographic and finding out information about your supporters. You can take this to the next level by conducting a poll on StrawPoll through your Twitter account, which will give you a general idea of statistics in a survey of those interested in your political cause.
  • Search for keywords on Twitter. This is so important as a government organization or politician because you can use a number of Twitter applications to search directly for keywords. This means that you can find out what people are talking about in real time related to your political cause, political party, or even your name as a politician. This also provides the opportunity for you to do damage control if there is any negative press or mudslinging about you or your government organization.

Twitter is an easy and convenient tool for any government organization or politician, especially in organizing the masses and gaining even more support. When you take Twitter beyond its regular uses and enhance your profile, you have the opportunity to truly use Twitter for all that it is worth. This is the key to your success as a politician or government organization!