Best Practice Guide For MPs Using Twitter
Best Practice Guide For MPs Using Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short
140-character messages called "tweets".i
Twitter is used by more than 15 million people in the UK which is far less people than use Facebook. Twitter
isnt just for young people as the fastest growing age group is 55-64.ii
However, Twitter is very important to politicians as it is a more public medium, is used extensively by
influencers such as journalists, academics and politicians and can also drive the mainstream news agenda. Given
the huge decline in local newspaper circulation it is highly likely that there are more people in a constituency
using Twitter than reading the local evening or weekly newspaper. That fact alone is a compelling reason to be
using Twitter as today it is just a part of everyday life where you need to be just as you need to be in the local
newspaper and delivering leaflets through peoples doors.
The Government Digital Services Social Media Playbookiii sets out the strong case for using social media in the
public sector and exactly the same applies to elected politicians. For politicians Twitter is most successful when
it is used to listen and learn as well as to say what you want to. It is best when used as a personal channel to talk
directly with people, rather than being used as a one way broadcast channel. One of its main advantages is it
enables people to understand the real person and helps to combat the commonly held belief that politicians
arent in touch with normal people and that you only see them at election times.
There is no one way to run your Twitter account as it depends on what you want to achieve with it, but there
are some basic guidelines to help you succeed, which is what this report is intended to do. Some politicians will
focus their Twitter activity on local constituency issues, for others it will be their national political brief perhaps
as a minister or shadow minister. The best will usually be a combination of both as Twitter is meant to be about
you and that reflects the reality of what you do. You dont need to share personal information, such as family or
when you are doing leisure activities, but doing so helps people to understand and relate to you better.
Twitter is a real-time medium and means that we now no longer live in a 24 hour news cycle, but in a 24 second
news cycle which is the length of time it takes to compose a tweet and for it to be retweeted.
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Setting Twitter up
Who should tweet?
You should. Twitter is personal so if you set-up a Twitter account with your name then you should be the person
tweeting. Tweeting should not be delegated to a member of staff. That doesnt mean to say your team cant
support you to help you get the most out of Twitter. If you cant commit to using Twitter properly then dont set
up a Twitter account in your name. If you dont want to tweet yourself then it is better to set up an account for
your office or for your local party which can quite legitimately used by your team. However, you need to
remember the appropriate use of parliamentary resources and ensure you dont inadvertently incorrectly use
them for party political purposes. An office or party account is unlikely to be as effective or successful as a
personal account as organisations dont tweet, people do.iv
Account name
The ideal Twitter account name will be your actual name, however if you dont already have an account it is
unlikely that your name will still be available. Possible alternatives are to include MP, however if you do so then
you will need to temporarily change it when parliament is dissolved. Another option is to add an abbreviation
for your party or constituency. You should aim to make your user name as short as possible as this makes it
easier for people to retweet you and send you @messages as it uses less characters.
Profile
Your profile should make it easy for people to work out who you are so should ideally include your party,
constituency and any official job you hold in your party or government. You have a limited number of
characters, but if you have space you might want list the places that make up your constituency, especially if it
is a rural one where not every part of it relates closely to another part. Alternatively, active or experienced
Twitter users can opt for a more humorous biography such as perhaps quoting a self-depreciating description
from the media.
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Profile photo
The best Twitter profile photos are full face so your tweets can easily be identified from just your photo. A
profile photo is square and is best uploaded as a 500x500px image as it will be scaled down to the correct size
for your profile (77x77px) and actual tweets (48x48px).
Header photo
A header photo appears at the top of your Twitter page and a suitable image would be similar to the type you
would use on your website such as a photo of you standing in front of a landmark in your constituency. It should
be uploaded as a 1500x500px image and will be displayed as 935x280px and can be up to 2MB in size.
Location
Including both your constituency and Westminster is the most accurate description to use, but means that your
Twitter account might not appear when people are researching local Twitter users. Therefore it might be
better just to use the name of the place where your constituency office is located.
URL
The URL field on your Twitter profile can be used to direct people to your parliamentary or political website.
Ideally your website should have a page which describes your approach to using Twitter and social media. You
can use this page to explain to people why you can only take up case work for people in your own constituency.
Verified accounts
A verified account is one with a blue tick to indicate that Twitter has verified the account really does belong to
the person it says it is. Unfortunately, there is no way of applying for a verified account and it is up to Twitter
who gets one. The criteria it usually applies is if you need one because there is scope for confusion, imitation
or parody. That is why some politicians have verified accounts and others dont. Pure follower numbers isnt the
main criteria. Twitter has a guide to verified accounts.v
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Case work
If you are using Twitter then it is likely that constituents will use it to contact you about case work. If it is a
community issue then Twitter is actually a good place to do it as by doing it publicly more people will see that
you are actively engaged on the issue. However, if it is case work of a more personal nature then it is usually
best to try and move it off Twitter into how you deal with your usual case work. Reply to suggest they phone or
email your office or attend one of your advice surgeries. If the constituent has shared personal data on Twitter
(such as their address, phone number or email) then advise them to delete it (this is one of the rare exceptions
when deleting a tweet is acceptable).
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Party tweets
Beware of using tweets that have been prepared by your party as Twitter works best when it is authentic and
personal and therefore isnt the place to use your lines to take. If you want to share them it is better to
retweet the official party account or even better that of your party spokesperson on the issue.
Twitter chats
Twitter chats are discussions that take place on Twitter on a specific topic or issue, usually at a specific time
using a hashtag. You might find that there is a regular Twitter chat that happens about a place in your
constituency (these often have the hashtag #TownHour) or about issues youre active on.
Promoted tweets
Promoted tweets are relatively new and are one of Twitters advertising products. You can pay to promote
certain tweets to specific audiences (including targeting them geographically). Potentially this could be used for
local election campaigning, but would need to be declared as spend in the same way that other campaign
expenditure is.
Twitter etiquette
Followers and following
You dont need to follow everyone back who follows you. In fact it is probably not a good idea to follow
everyone. One of the main advantages of following someone is that they will know that you have followed them
and most people will take that positively as a compliment. However, it also enables them to send you direct
messages so you can open yourself up to receiving lots of private messages and potentially abuse.
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It is however considered to be rude to not follow anyone back. A sensible approach is to follow people you
know in real life, fellow politicians, journalists and other key influencers. You might also want to consider
following people who youve had positive Twitter conversations with or who regularly favourite your tweets.
A useful tool to help you identify new people to follow is @MagicRecs which sends you an automated direct
message whenever a lot of people you follow start to follow someone new or retweet something.
If youve set a secure password and are careful about what links you click and what permissions to third-party
services and apps you allow then it is highly unlikely that your Twitter account will be hacked.
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Retweets
Politicians need to think carefully before they retweet as simply putting RTs are not an endorsement in your
Twitter profile wont stop people thinking that they are. It is always better to use the option to Quote tweet as
this enables you edit it and add comment or context.
If you do edit the tweet it should only be to shorten it and not change the meaning and you should always
change the RT (for retweet) to MT (for modified tweet). You can add you comment at the end using > to
indicate youve added to the original tweet.
It isnt good practice to constantly retweet tweets that praise you, or even to sarcastically retweet tweets that
criticise you. It is too aggrandising and pompous. A better idea is to favourite them (see below.)
Because it is so easy to retweet you need to be careful that you dont inadvertently retweet offensive material
so always check links by following them before you retweet, even if you know the person. When activists are
editing your opponents campaign adverts to create parodies apply caution to retweet as some of them might
be too offensive or risqu for elected politicians and candidates to be associated with.
#Hashtags
A #hashtag is simply a way for Twitter users to organise information and make it easier to share and find. All it
means is putting a # in front of a word or phrase.
Hashtags should be used sparingly and are best used as part of the text rather than simply added on to the end.
Never use more than two hashtags per tweet and ensure that they are relevant to the tweet content. This
means dont gratuitously add in a hashtag for places in your constituency if the tweet isnt directly relevant to
the place. If you are at an event make sure you use the right hashtag that other people and/or the organisers
are using. Try to make your hashtags as short as possible to keep the total character count as low as possible so
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that followers can add comment when they retweet. Research by Twitterx indicates that tweets with a
hashtag are likely to have 30% more retweets.
Another option is to use short videos. Twitter has a service called Vine which lets you share a six second video
on both the Vine social network (which needs a separate app on your phone) and on Twitter so everyone can
see it. You can also use a 15 second Instagram video, which can also be shared on Twitter, as well as the
Instagram social network. One benefit of Instragram videos is that they are created using the Instagram mobile
app which has far more active users than Vine as it is the same app as people use for sharing photos.
Favourites
Your favourites list is public and therefore other people can see what you add to it. You should therefore never
use it as a reminder list of things you are interested in as there have been several examples of high profile
people favouriting tweets that they would rather people didnt know theyd favourited.
One of the best ways to use your favourite list is to favourite every tweet where someone says something nice
or positive about you. This has two benefits. Firstly, they will know you have done this so it is a way of saying
thank you. Secondly, it creates a neat list of positive things about you that is easy to find when people are
researching you.
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Direct messages
You can send direct messages to people that are following you. A direct message is a private message that only
you can see. It is essential that you use this feature carefully as there have been several high profile cases of
politicians accidentally sending what they thought were direct messages, but were actually public.
Lists
It is very easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tweets from people you follow or are interested in.
One of the most effective ways of preventing this is to use lists which enable you to see tweets from accounts
youve added. You dont even need to be following someone to add them to a list. You can also create private
lists which means you can follow someones tweets (perhaps a political opponent or campaign group) without
them knowing that you are following them.
You can also create public lists that you can share with people. Creating and sharing these public lists can be
seen as an act of public service and doing good in your constituency.
It is up to you how you organise your lists, but some categories that work well could be:
Public lists: local party activists; local community activists (residents association members etc), local businesses,
local public sector organisations and services; official government accounts and civil servants
Private lists: favourites (ones that you want to see all of the time and you can also add them to other lists);
journalists; opponents (opposition candidates, activists, councillors etc); friends and colleagues; other MPs (this
is private as youre likely to be selective and not include everyone)
Automation
Twitter is a social platform and therefore any automation should be used carefully as by definition any
automated tool ceases to be personal or social. However, automation can be useful in certain circumstances.
One of the most commonly used types of automation is scheduling tweets, which can be done through many
third-party apps or by dedicated services such as Bufferapp. One way to use scheduling might be to schedule a
tweet for when you arrive at an event as you will want to be talking to people as you arrive, not tweeting.
However, you need to be cautious and remember to remove the scheduled tweet if circumstances change e.g.
you dont attend the event or are delayed arriving.
Bufferapp can be useful if you tend to use Twitter in bursts, such as after breakfast. Using it will mean your
tweets will be spread out through the day rather than a sudden burst of activity and then nothing for hours.
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Third-party apps
There are many third-party Twitter apps available for Android, iOS and Windows Phone mobiles and tablets. It is
usually better to use a third-party app as most offer far more features and functionality than are available on
the Twitter website or the official Twitter apps. These include updating multiple social media accounts (e.g.
Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn), searches, scheduling tweets, syncing read/unread tweets between different
devices, easier access to lists, linking to your URL shortening account and many others.
One of the most popular powerful apps is HootSuite, which is free for one user and up to five social media
accounts and then very low cost for additional users and more accounts. Other similar dashboard apps include
SproutSocial and MarketMeSuite.
Echosecxiv is another useful tool, which doesnt enable you to tweet, but does help you to find local Twitter and
social media users. You can draw a rectangle or circle around a specific geographic area and see tweets within
it. This is a paid service, but there is a free demonstration version. This is potentially one of the most useful
tools for MPs as it enables them to identify social media activity in their own constituency.
There are hundreds of apps and websites that enable you to get more out of Twitter and some of them are
listed on this list of 101 Twitter toolsxv. Some of these tools are free and others a freemium which means
certain features are free, but to access everything you need to pay a small, usually monthly, fee. One downside
of some of these tools is that they are created by small developers so can disappear or change with no or very
little notice.
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Content curation setting up RSS feeds into a reader such as Feedly so you can see relevant stories and news.
They can alert you to content worth sharing on Twitter.
Analytics analysing the data on your dashboard to help identify which tweets worked best so that you can see
patterns such as what topics work best, what are the best times of day etc.
Next steps
The best way for politicians to learn how to use Twitter effectively is to start doing it. This guide has been
written specifically for MPs and members of the House of Lords, but does not cover every tip. There are a
wealth of useful resources available on the internet including the Twitter Guide Book from Mashable.xvi
The Government Digital Service also publishes useful guidance such as its Social Media Guidance for Civil
Servantsxvii and its Social Media Playbookxviii.
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iv
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