Template Twitter strategy for Government Departments

1 About this document

This document describes why and how we intend to establish and manage a corporate
presence on the microblogging social network Twitter.com.
It covers:

• Objectives and metrics – why we are using Twitter, and how we will assess its value

• Risks and mitigation – how we will contain the risks to our corporate reputation

• Channel proposition and management – how we will populate and use the channel

• Promotional plan – how we will promote our presence on Twitter to maximise value

2 Twitter overview
Twitter is a 'microblogging' platform which allows users to post short text messages (up to
140 characters in length) and converse with other users via their phones or web browsers.
Unlike email or text messaging on mobile phones, these conversations take place in the
open.
The platform is experiencing a phenomenal adoption curve in the UK and being used
increasingly by government departments, Members of Parliament, a number of our
stakeholders as well as millions of businesses, non government organisations and
individuals. It is free to use with a relatively low impact on resources and has the potential
to deliver many benefits in support of our communications objectives.
For more about Twitter and why it's important that we join it, see Appendix A. For a
glossary of terms see Appendix E.

3 Objectives and metrics

Objective Measures

Extend reach of existing corporate messages online (e.g. news, Number of followers;
speeches, web updates, YouTube videos) by building relevance and type of
relationships with relevant audiences including intermediaries, followers; number of web
stakeholders, and key influencers such as journalists and traffic referrals from Twitter
bloggers (see Appendix B) to our website content
Provide an informal, ‘human’ voice of the organisation to Feedback from followers
promote comprehension of and engagement with our corporate (unsolicited and solicited)
messages
Provide thought leadership and credibility, increasing our Feedback from followers
visibility as the experts in our remit within the online space (unsolicited and solicited);
number of re-tweets
(Twitter users repeating
our updates); click-
throughs from our tweets
In line with Government policy (Digital Britain; Cabinet Office Feedback from followers
Digital Engagement policy and Power of Information) (unsolicited and solicited);
demonstrate commitment to and understanding of digital +ve, -ve and neutral
channels with exemplary use of this emerging channel mentions elsewhere on
blogosphere
Provide an additional, low-barrier method for audiences to Volume and quality of
interact with the Department to provide feedback, seek help @reply and DM contact
and suggest ideas from followers; impact of
this feedback on the Dept
Provide ways for our audiences to subscribe to updates (by N/a. Achieved by having a
RSS, email and SMS) presence on Twitter
Monitor mentions on Twitter of ourbrand, our Ministers and Qualitative assessment of
flagship policy initiatives, engaging with our critics and key individual cases of turning
influencers to resolve problems/dissatisfaction and correct negatives to positives and
factual inaccuracies, and with satisfied customers to thank them positives into brand
for and amplify their positive comments advocates
Provide live coverage of events (such as policy launches, Number of events covered
summits or promotions) for those who cannot attend per year; positive
feedback on that coverage

We will gather evaluation data using a range of methods.

• Web analytics for [dept].gov.uk and clickthroughs from URLs in our tweets (using
bit.ly) – to track referrals from Twitter to our web pages
• Twitter surveys – regular ‘straw poll’ surveys on Twitter to ask for feedback
• Twitter data – the follower/following data presented in our Twitter account
• Third party tools – analytics tools including measures based on re-tweeting
(Retweet Radar; Twist); online reputation (Monitter, Twitter Grader); impact and
influence (Twinfluence, Twittersheep); unfollowers (Qwitter)
• Alert services – tweetbeep.com and other methods for tracking mentions of our stuff
• Real time observation - http://twitterfall.com/ and similar tools
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• Analysis of our followers using http://tweepler.com/ and similar tools

We will evaluate using all of the above methods every three months.

4 Risks
Risk Mitigation

Criticism arising from an inability to meet the demands of Reduce by managing

Twitter users to join conversations/answer enquiries, due to expectations with clear,
resource and clearance issues published Twitter policy;
use holding replies where
answer will need research;
(only if swamped) respond
to ‘themes’ not individual
replies.
Criticism arising from perceptions that our use of Twitter is out Reduce by sourcing varied
of keeping with the ethos of the platform (such as too content (see 5.3 and 5.4
formal/corporate, self-promoting or ‘dry’) below). Accept that there
will be some criticism
regardless.
Criticism of jumping on the bandwagon/waste of public Reduce by evaluating
money/lack of return on investment/pointless content against objectives above
and adhering to content
principles below
Inappropriate content being published in error, such as: Establish ‘light’ but
effective procedural
• News releases under embargo controls and guidelines for
Twitter users; require
• Information about Ministerial whereabouts that could risk clearance of all tweets
security through nominated people
in digital media team.
• Protectively marked, commercially or politically sensitive
information
Technical security of the Twitter account and potential for Change Twitter password
hacking and vandalism of content frequently using strong
passwords; only 2
members of digital media
team to have access to
pw; use cotweet.com to
devolve access securely;
avoid using unknown 3rd
party tools that require the

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 account password
Lack of availability due to Twitter being over capacity Accept (affects all Twitter
users, occurs rarely and is
brief). Take backup using
tweetake.com and upload
to Matrix every month
Changes to the Twitter platform (to add or change features, or Review business case for
to charge users for accessing the service) continuing to use the
service when any such
changes are made
Squatters/spoofers on Twitter Reduce by registering
alternative names. Accept
residual risk and monitor
for this occurring. Report
spoof accounts to Twitter
for suspension.

5 Channel proposition and management

5.1Positioning and profile of ourTwitter account

The avatar will be ourlogo. The profile text will read:
“Official Twitter channel of The Department. See our Twitter policy in full here:
www.[dept].gov.uk/twitter”
A draft of the full Twitter policy is at Appendix D.
The background image for the The Department profile page will be a picture of The
Department's HQ building with the following information in the boxed out left menu area:
Logo
Slogan
www.[dept].gov.uk

5.2Tone of voice
Though the account will be anonymous (i.e. no named officials will be running it) it is
helpful to define a hypothetical ‘voice’ so that tweets from multiple sources are presented
in a consistent tone (including consistent use of pronouns).
The Department's Twitter ‘voice’ will be that of the Digital Media Team, positioning the
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channel as an extension of the main The Department website – effectively an ‘outpost’

where new digital content is signposted throughout the day.
This will be implicit, unless directly asked about by our followers.

5.3Resources
The resource impact of running a Twitter account is low relative to other channels. A study
of comparable organisations with existing Twitter accounts confirms this (see Appendix C).
The Digital Media Team will be responsible for sourcing and publishing tweets, co-
ordinating replies to incoming messages and monitoring the account. This activity is
expected to take less than an hour a day. Evaluation will take longer: approximately one
day every 3 months.
The provision of content will require some low level input from communications colleagues
and private office. This will be an add-on to business as usual internal activity – for
example a quick discussion of potential tweets at daily press cuttings meetings, or emails
between digital media and private office/speechwriters/stakeholder relations teams to
identify potential content for tweets.

5.4Content principles
Content for our Twitter channel will be:

• Varied: see below for a list of proposed sources and types of ‘tweet’. The channel
will cover a broad base of content types and sources to retain interest levels.

• Human: Twitter users can be hostile to the over-use of automation (such as

generating Twitter content entirely from RSS feeds) and to re-gurgitation of press
release headlines. While corporate in message, the tone of our Twitter channel
must therefore be informal spoken English, human-edited and – for the most part -
written/paraphrased for the channel. Some use of RSS to Twitter is acceptable so
long as this does not dominate the whole stream.

• Frequent: a minimum 2 and maximum 10 tweets per working day, with a minimum
gap of 30 minutes between tweets to avoid flooding our followers’ Twitter streams.
(Not counting @replies to other Twitter users, or live coverage of a crisis/event).

• Re-tweetable: to make it easy for others to re-tweet our most important

announcements, we will restrict those tweets to 132 characters. (Allowing sufficient
space for “RT @[Dept]” to be included as a prefix).

• Timely: in keeping with the ‘zeitgeist’ feel of Twitter, our tweets will be about issues
of relevance today or events/opportunities coming soon. For example it will not be
appropriate to cycle campaign messages without a current ‘hook’.

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 • Credible: while tweets may occasionally be ‘fun’, we should ensure we can defend
their relation back to Our objectives. Where possible there should be an actual link
to related content or a call to action, to make this credibility explicit.

• Inclusive: in keeping with the knowledge-sharing culture of social media, The

Department should pursue opportunities to signpost relevant content elsewhere and
re-tweet messages from stakeholders and other government departments. (See re-
tweeting policy below). Exclusive use of Twitter for self-promotion can lead to
criticism.

• Corporate: as an extension of the Department’s corporate website, the primary

focus should be on policy development and consultation as distinct from business
and citizen-facing guidance and services which are provided by Businesslink.gov.uk
(@businesslinkgov) and Direct.gov.uk (@directgov) respectively.

5.5Types and sources of content

Content for the channel will comprise a mixture of business as usual communications
output re-purposed for Twitter, and content produced exclusively for Twitter.

5.5.1Leveraging existing web content:

• News releases, speeches and statements published on the web - the headlines
of news releases, speeches and statements. Depending on subject matter and
length these may be paraphrased to fit within 140 characters and lighten/humanise
the tone.
All press releases, speeches and statements will be mentioned on Twitter unless
there is a reason not to. A procedure will be established to identify which of these
are not for release on Twitter. If the digital media team paraphrases the headline,
the paraphrased wording will be cleared with the originating press
desk/speechwriter.
• Marketing campaign messages - information about events we are running or
attending, campaign materials we want to disseminate online.
• Videos on Youtube and photos on Flickr – alerting our Twitter followers to new
rich media content on our other digital outposts. Where possible, embedding photos
into our tweets with twitpic.com or via our Flickr channel.
• Blog posts – any blogs run by the Department can be configured to automatically
post an update and short URL on Twitter, announcing the new content.
• Other website updates - new or updated sections on www.[dept].gov.uk, new
publications, or website user surveys and online interactive consultations where we
are inviting participation
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• Other communications teams - invite contributions from embedded comms teams

in the policy line, and in delivery partner organisations (agencies and NDPBs).

5.5.2Adding value with exclusive content:

• Updates on Ministers’ movements – for example business in Parliament (e.g.
Minister X is in the Commons reading the [xxx] Bill / Minister X is on the way to the
House for oral questions); Ministers’ attendance at events or meetings with
Stakeholders (e.g. Minster Z has just started speaking at conference Y in
Manchester – we’ll have the transcript for you soon).
• Insights from Ministers – thoughts and reflections of Ministers, for example
immediately after their events or interesting meetings with stakeholders.
• Announcement and coverage of events – pre-announcement and promotion of
forthcoming events that the Department has organised or trade shows where we
have a stand, and live coverage of launch events where there is significant interest
beyond the attendees. The events team and strategic marketing teams will be
asked to alert digital media to tweetable content.
• Thought leadership (or “link blogging”) - highlighting relevant research, events,
awards etc elsewhere on the web to position the Department as a thought leader
and reliable filter of high quality content.
• Asking and answering questions – occasionally, we may be able to ask
questions of our Twitter followers for immediate customer insight or to conduct a
‘straw poll’ on behalf of a specific policy area. More often, we will answer questions
put to us via Twitter from our followers. These answers will be visible to all our
followers, not just the person who asked them.
• Crisis communications – in the event of a major incident where the Department
needs to provide up to the minute advice and guidance, Twitter would be used as a
primary channel alongside our corporate website.

5.6Clearance
News releases will be cleared by the originating press desk only if paraphrased for Twitter.
All other tweets will be cleared by staff at Information Officer grade and above in the digital
media team, consulting relevant colleagues in comms and private offices as necessary.

5.7Hashtags
It is a convention among Twitter users to distinguish content using semantic tags

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(keywords), preceded by a # sign. This enables other users to search and filter based on
those key terms, collaborate and share relevant information, and enables ‘trending’ (as
displayed on the Twitter.com homepage).
The Department will use hashtags when:
• Providing live coverage of events (live-tweeting)

• Providing crisis communications. In this event it is likely that a common hashtag will
already have been established and we would follow suit.

5.8Link shortening
Unless they are already very short (e.g. www.[dept].gov.uk/stuff) URLs in tweets will be
shortened using link compressing sites (like tinyurl.com). To avoid any implied
endorsement of one such service we will vary our choice as much as possible – but
preferring those which provide click tracking statistics. The top five providers are:
• is.gd

• bit.ly

• tinyurl.com

• sinpurl.com

• cli.gs

5.9Re-tweeting

5.9.1Reactive re-tweeting
We may occasionally be asked to re-tweet content from other Twitter users. We will
consider these case by case but generally aim to honour such requests from:
• Other Government Departments

• Our stakeholders

• Third sector and non-profit organisations

In the interests of commercial propriety and competitiveness we will not honour requests
from profit-making organisations, as we would not be able to do so fairly.

5.9.2Proactive re-tweeting
We should actively seek opportunities to re-tweet content that helps position the
Department as a filter of business intelligence, and inclusive/supportive of stakeholders. As
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such we may wish to consider re-tweeting interesting content that shows up in our own
Twitter stream:

• Research findings and statistics

• Relevant industry / business networking events

• Relevant celebrations/commemorations e.g. awards, themed days (e.g. national no

smoking day)

5.10Following and followers

As part of the initial channel launch we will actively follow other relevant organisations
and professionals (see Appendix B for a full list of potential users to follow).
We will not initiate contact by following individual, personal users as this may be
interpreted as interfering / ‘Big Brother’-like behaviour.
We will, however, follow back anyone who follows our account, using an automated
service such as tweetlater.com. This is because:

• It’s good Twitter etiquette to follow people back when they follow you

• Having an imbalance between ‘following’ and ‘follower’ figures can result in poor
Twitter reputation and grading on third party Twitter sites like Twittergrader.com –
and even account suspension by Twitter administrators in extreme cases

• Vetting followers and manually following them back is a time intensive and low
value activity
We will make it clear in our Twitter policy (Appendix D) that following back is automatic and
therefore does not imply any endorsement by [Department].

5.11Campaign-specific accounts
While we should aim to avoid diluting the corporate Twitter channel, it may occasionally be
more appropriate for a particular campaign or policy area to have its own Twitter account.
We should consider separate Twitter accounts when:

• The subject matter is niche or specialist (i.e. of limited interest to the bulk of our
followers; or with a specific target audience such as young
people/women/vulnerable workers)

• They are in support of a specific blog by a Department official, team or Minister

When additional accounts are used we will need to ensure they cross-refer to each other

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and re-tweet any content of relevance to the different sets of followers.

5.12Parliamentary recess / pre-election Purdah

The same approach will be taken to Twitter as other comms channels during recess and
Purdah. We let our followers know the reason for reduced volume of content with a tweet
to announce the start and end date.

5.13Longer term
Longer term, depending on the development of the channel and the volume and quality of
user engagement, it may be desirable to look at involving Ministerial Correspondence and
Enquiry Unit colleagues in monitoring and responding to Twitter enquiries.

6 Promotion
At launch, the channel will be promoted by:
• A link from the our website homepage and news index page

• A link from the Department's other social media outlets (YouTube, Flickr, [others])

• Finding and following relevant Twitter users (see 5.10 above)

• Asking key influencers on Twitter to announce us to their own Twitter stream,

including Follow Friday from other government Twitter users
• Adding the link to the email signatures of the digital media team and press office

Once the channel has become more established, we will further promote it by:
• An intranet story (and possibly an article in the staff magazine), including a request
that all staff add it to their email signatures
• Adding the link to the ‘notes to editors’ section in all press releases

• An email to key stakeholders

• Presentations to teams within Comms

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APPENDIX A

What is Twitter?
Twitter works like this:

• You create an account. Your account comprises your username and password,
avatar image, optional background image to display behind your page

• You find interesting people to follow, and they can choose to follow you back. Other
Twitter users may also initiate contact by following you. This will include your real-
life friends and contacts, but it is also normal Twitter etiquette to follow/be followed
by people who you do not know offline. In this way, unlike many social networks
Twitter is a powerful way of building a network, making new introductions and
accessing interesting and varied content. (Use by institutions is different - see
corporate policy on following, above).

• You post updates of up to 140 characters in length. You can do this using a variety
of applications over the web on your computer or mobile phone. Everyone who is
following you can read your updates. People can also subscribe to your updates
using the RSS feed (this means they can receive your updates via their preferred
feed reader software or browser start page, without using Twitter), or see them in
the Twitter public timeline.

• Twitter updates are usually in the form of an answer to the imaginary question:
“What are you doing now” or “What holds your attention now”? This will often
include links to other websites (using link shortening services such as tinyurl.com).
Two useful terms often used to describe this activity are “microblogging” – blogging
in miniature by posting short updates throughout the day about thoughts and
findings of interest – and “hyper-connectedness” – the idea of being in constant
contact with your network and aware of what holds their attention right now.

• Your Twitter stream (the information you see when you use Twitter) is made up of
your own updates and those of all the Twitter users you are following. Other users
will see their own streams, which display the updates of the users they are
following. Therefore what you see is not the same as what other users will see.

• Users interact with each other in the following ways:

o @Reply. You can reply to an update posted by another user in your Twitter
stream by clicking the reply button or typing @ and then their username at
the start of the message. Anyone following you will see this reply, irrespective
of whether they are already following the recipient. (This is one of the ways in
which users find new people to follow, as you are effectively introducing that
person to your followers by showing his/her username and engaging them in
conversation).

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 o DM. You can send Direct Messages to individual users, provided you are
‘friends’ (i.e., you are both following each other). These are private and can
only be seen by the sender and recipient.
o Re-tweeting. Because people have different networks of followers, it is
common to repeat interesting tweets from your own stream for the benefit of
all of your followers, preceding it with “Re-tweet:” or just “RT” for short. You
do not need permission to do this – it is considered a compliment to the
originator to repeat their content.
o Hashtags. You can include keywords in your updates in order to associate
those updates with a particular event, movement, current trend or issue by
adding a hash sign (#) in front of a word. For example at events Twitter users
will often agree a common tag to identify themselves to each other and form
a Twitter ‘back channel’ for that event. Tagging tweets enables users to
collaboratively document a cultural happening, and aggregate all tweets
containing that tag on another medium – for example on a blog, projected on
screen at the event, or displayed on a map as a visual representation of what
is being said in different places about the same issue.

• The Twitter website itself is not the only (or even the main) way that users access or
post updates to their Twitter accounts. The majority of Twitter access is via mobile
devices (such as Twitter applications on the iPhone), third party desktop
applications (such as TweetDeck or Thwirl), web browser plugins (such as
Twitterfox) or widgets on personalised homepages (such as iGoogle, Pageflakes or
Netvibes).

• It is also possible (and popular) to include photos and videos in your messages
using third party add-ons, such as TwitPic.

• Your Twitter updates can also be integrated with your other social media profiles –
for example you can use Twitter to edit your Facebook status updates and show
your Twitter updates on your blog, if you have one.
Why is Twitter important?
• It’s a place where news often breaks - e.g. Hudson river plane crash, Mexico
earthquakes, Michael Jackson's death,
• It’s establishing itself as the main source of live update information – e.g. safety and
travel info during the Mumbai terror attacks in Nov 2008; school closures during the
heavy UK snow in Feb 2009; spread and prevention of Swine Flu in the UK.
• Trending: As everything being discussed on Twitter is by its nature happening now,
it is increasingly being used as a way of monitoring and reporting on trends. Top
trends are shown on the right hand side of every Twitter user’s stream, and tracked
by other tools (examples include Retweetist, Twitturly and Twitvision). For example,
during the government's Digital Britain Summit on 17 April 2009, #digitalbritain
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appeared at position 5 in the top 10 trending list on Twitter itself – further raising the
profile and discussion around the event.
• Search Engine Optimisation – because it is updated frequently, Twitter content
ranks highly on Google, and is therefore an increasingly important way to generate
traffic and disseminate messages online.
Stats on Twitter usage
Nielsen stats from Feb 2009 at http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/the-rapid-growth-
of-twitter-with-the-stats-to-prove-it/ include the following:
• 1,382% year-over-year growth. Total unique visitors grew from 475,000 in Feb 2008
to seven million in Feb 2009.
• Twitter is not just for kids: In February 2009, adults ages 35-49 had the largest
representation on Twitter - almost 3 million unique visitors from this age group
(almost 42% of the entire audience).
• 62% of the audience access Twitter from work only, while only 35% access it only
from home. This could suggest a trend towards professional use.
Hitwise stats from http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2009/01/twitter_traffic_up_10-
fold.html include the following:

• Twitter receives the largest amount of its traffic from the USA, but its penetration is
greater in the UK market

• Twitter is becoming an important source of Internet traffic for many sites, and the
amount of traffic it sends to other websites has increased 30-fold over the last 12
months. Almost 10% of Twitter’s downstream traffic goes to News and Media
websites,17.6% to entertainment websites, 14.6% goes to social networks, 6.6% to
blogs and 4.5% to online retailers.

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Appendix B - Who else is using it?
Below is a list of relevant users the Department may wish to interact with or be aware of. A
more thorough trawl will need to take place when the account is launched.
Central government
BIS www.twitter.com/bisgovuk
www.twitter.com/bis_science
www.twitter.com/bis_unis
www.twitter.com/bis_skills
www.twitter.com/sciencesowhat
www.twitter.com/digitalbritain
DFID www.twitter.com/dfid_uk
CLG www.twitter.com/communitiesUK
No 10 www.twitter.com/downingstreet
FCO www.twitter.com/foreignoffice
DCSF http://twitter.com/dcsfgovuk
HMT http://twitter.com/hmtreasury
MoJ http://twitter.com/justiceuk
http://twitter.com/mojwebteam
DFT http://twitter.com/transportgovuk
UKTI http://twitter.com/UKTI
Directgov http://twitter.com/directgov
Businesslink http://twitter.com/BusinessLinkGov
NHS Choices http://twitter.com/nhschoices
COI http://twitter.com/coigovuk
http://twitter.com/digigov
EHRC http://twitter.com/ehrc
CRC http://twitter.com/crc_uk
Ofcom http://twitter.com/ofcom
Cabinet Office http://twitter.com/cabinetoffice
Cabinet Office – Director of Digital Engagement http://twitter.com/DirDigEng
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Unofficial aggregators of government content

All Gov Departments’ NDS news feeds See http://davecole.org/blog/2009/04/22/the-
government-on-twitter/
Gov consultations http://twitter.com/govconsultation

HM Gov news http://twitter.com/hmgov

Government News http://twitter.com/governmentnews

Parliament, politicians and ministers

Houses of Parliament http://twitter.com/ukparliament
51 MPs (and counting!) See http://tweetminster.co.uk/ and
www.twitter.com/tweetminster
For all other MPs, there is an unofficial ‘holding’ See http://mptweets.tyoc.co.uk/
account with information fed from TheyWorkForYou

Tweety Hall (tweeting councillors) http://www.tweetyhall.com/

http://twitter.com/TweetyHall

Political parties
Labour http://twitter.com/UKLabour
Conservatives http://twitter.com/Conservatives
Lib Dems http://twitter.com/libdems

Local government
86 local authorities (and counting!) See http://is.gd/tCQ1

Mayor of London www.twitter.com/mayoroflondon

LGA http://twitter.com/firsteditor

Our stakeholders/intermediaries

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Do your research and enter them here! Find them by:

− looking at your list of stakeholders and

reviewing their websites for Twitter links.
Sometimes it's under the RSS / subscribe
pages; sometimes it's with the news/press
releases

− trying to guess their Twitter usernames and

seeing if they exist

− browsing through the Twitter followers of your

stakeholders and peers – it’s likely they'll likely
be following each other already.

− using Mr Tweet, Twellow and other Twitter

directory services

Journalists and news outlets

BBC news & comment http://twitter.com/bbcbusiness
http://twitter.com/BBCClick
http://twitter.com/bbccouk
BBC journalists Tom van Aardt - http://twitter.com/tomVS
Richard Sambrook - http://twitter.com/sambrook
Tania Teixeira - http://twitter.com/taniateix
Jon Fildes - http://twitter.com/jonfildes
Declan Curry - http://twitter.com/declancurry
Daren - http://twitter.com/darenBBC
Dave Lee - http://twitter.com/davelee
Rory Cellan-Jones - http://twitter.com/ruskin147
Darren Waters - http://twitter.com/djwaters1

FT news and comment http://twitter.com/TheLexColumn

http://twitter.com/financialtimes
http://twitter.com/ftmedianews
http://twitter.com/FTfinancenews
http://twitter.com/ftbuseducation
http://twitter.com/FTtechnews
FT journalists Tim Bradshaw - http://twitter.com/tim
Chris Nuttall - http://twitter.com/ftchris
Peter Whitehead - http://twitter.com/peterwhitehead
Richard Waters - http://twitter.com/richardwaters
Kevin Allison - http://twitter.com/kevinallisonft
Kate Mackenzie - http://twitter.com/kmac
Stacy Marie Ishmael - http://twitter.com/s_m_i
 [ Your logo here ]

Gideon Rachman - http://twitter.com/gideonrachman

Times news & comment http://twitter.com/timesonline

http://twitter.com/theredbox
http://twitter.com/timestech
http://twitter.com/timesmoney
http://twitter.com/timesbusiness
http://twitter.com/timescomment
http://twitter.com/timeseconomics
Times journalists Mike Harvey
Joanna Geary
Jeremy Griffin
Nico Hines
Lucia Adams
Drew Broomhall
Rose Wild
Jennifer Howze
Tom Whitwell
Kaya Burgess
Julian Burgess
Mariana Bettio
Graham Hutson
Usman Patel
Guardian news & comment http://twitter.com/guardiannews
http://twitter.com/guardiantech

Guardian journalists Neil McIntosh - http://twitter.com/nmcintosh

Charles Arthur - http://twitter.com/charlesarthur
Dave Hill - http://twitter.com/DaveHill
Stephen Brook - http://twitter.com/SDBrook
Cath Elliott - http://twitter.com/CathElliott
Bobbie Johnson - http://twitter.com/bobbiejohnson
Kevin Anderson - http://twitter.com/kevglobal
Jemima Kiss - http://twitter.com/jemimakiss
Kate Bevan - http://twitter.com/katebevan
James Anthony - http://twitter.com/jimboeth

Telegraph http://twitter.com/TelegraphMG
Telegraph journalists Marcus Warren - http://twitter.com/MarcusWa
Ian Douglas - http://twitter.com/IanDouglas
Shane Richmond - http://twitter.com/shanerichmond
Justin Williams - http://twitter.com/justin_williams
Catherine Gee - http://twitter.com/catherinegee
Claudia Beaumont - http://twitter.com/claudineb

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 Milo Yiannopoulos - http://twitter.com/yiannopoulos

ePolitix http://twitter.com/ePolitix
Freelance, online and regional See http://www.prblogger.com/2008/11/uk-journalists-on-
journalists twitter/ for a substantial list.

Sky http://twitter.com/SkyNews

Appendix C – How OGDs resource their Twitter accounts

10 Downing Street 20 minutes a day (2-3 tweets a day plus a few
http://twitter.com/downingstreet replies, 5-6 tweets a day in total. 30 seconds on
top of business as usual press releases, stories,
events etc.)

FCO Less than 45 minutes a day.

http://twitter.com/foreignoffice

CLG 45 minutes to 1 hour a day.

http://twitter.com/communitiesuk

COI Digital Policy 5 to 10 minutes a day.

http://twitter.com/digigov

DFID Not yet established pattern of normal use. Direct

http://twitter.com/dfid_uk questions take a small amount of time to
answer, big announcements take time to draft
for impact in 140 characters

UKTI Anything from 5 mins to 2 hours per day across

http://twitter.com/ukti both Twitter and Linkedin – including actively
finding and joining relevant conversations.
 [ Your logo here ]

Appendix D: Twitter policy

The following text will be published as a new page on www.[dept].gov.uk, and a link to this
page will be provided in our profile on Twitter.
Content
The [Department] Twitter account is managed by the digital media team, on behalf of
colleagues across the Department.
We may occasionally use some automation (such as tools which generate tweets from
RSS feeds) but intend that this will not dominate the messages posted.
If you follow us, you can expect between 2-10 tweets a day covering some or all of the
following:

• Alerts about new content on our other digital channels (news, publications, videos
on YouTube, Ministerial speeches, publicity campaigns etc)

• Invitations to provide feedback on specific issues on which we are consulting

• Information from our Ministerial team about what they’re doing

• Occasional live coverage of events

Following
If you follow us on Twitter we will follow you back. This is automated. Being followed by us
does not imply endorsement of any kind.
[Alternative, suggested by @scrumph (Sebastian Crump at COI)] If you follow @COIgovuk
we will not automatically follow you back. This is to discourage the use of direct
messaging, avoid resource wasting spam handling and so that you can easily identify
other key Twitter users that we think are relevant to our industry and government in who
we follow. However, being followed by COI does not imply endorsement of any kind.
Availability
We will update and monitor our Twitter account during office hours, Monday to Friday.
Twitter may occasionally be unavailable and we accept no responsibility for lack of service
due to Twitter downtime.
@Replies and Direct Messages
We welcome feedback and ideas from all our followers, and endeavour to join the
conversation where possible. However, we are not able to reply individually to all the
messages we receive via Twitter.
The digital media team reads all @replies and Direct Messages and ensures that any

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emerging themes or helpful suggestions are passed to the relevant people in the
Department.
We cannot engage on issues of party politics or answer questions which break the rules of
our general comments policy. [link]
The usual ways of contacting us for official correspondence are detailed in the contact us
section of our website. [link]

APPENDIX E – Glossary
Twitterverse or Twittersphere or Statusphere - the universe/world sphere of Twitter (cf.
blogosphere)
Tweet – an update on Twitter, comprising a message of up to 140 characters, sometimes
containing a link, sometimes containing a picture or video. Also a verb: to tweet, tweeting.
Reply or @Reply – a message from one user to another, visible to anyone following the
user who is giving the reply. Also visible to the entire world (and search engines) in your
Twitter profile page.
Direct message or DM – a message from one user to another in private (not visible to
other users, the internet or search engines).
Re-tweet or RT – repeating a message from another user for the benefit of your followers
and in recognition of its value (the Twitter equivalent of forwarding an email)
Twitter client or application – software on your mobile phone or computer that you use to
access Twitter. Popular clients are the Twitter website itself, Tweetdeck desktop software
and a number of iPhone applications.
Micro-blogging – the term given to the practice of posting short status updates via sites
like Twitter (there are others, but none as big)
Follower – someone who has subscribed to read your tweets. Displayed on Twitter as:
“Following” The people that you follow on Twitter
“Follower” Someone who follows you on Twitter
“Friend” Someone who you follow that also follows you.

Twitter API – Twitter is an ‘open platform’ meaning other people can develop tools
(software and websites) which use the Twitter functionality and the published content (all
the stuff that’s displayed publicly on twitter.com, but not users’ private messages or
personal information). The API (application programming interface) is the publicly available
information used by coders to do this. It enables sites like Tweetminster, Twittergrader and
Hootsuite and applications like Tweetdeck to be created.