Congratulations to the government for acknowledging Twitter as an engagement tool, minus points for approaching it in typical stiff-collared Whitehall fashion and slightly missing the point of engagement.
It's just released a 20-page document (published below) on social publishing network Scibd outlining the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills' (BIS) Twitter strategy and how it could be rolled out to other departments.
It seems sensible for the 'powers that be' to have a strategy - afterall, the rules of engagement when it comes to social networking is to know why you're doing it in the first place. But by keeping all bases so tightly covered, the whole thing has become too over-perscribed. For example, it suggests that departments post a minimum of two and a maximum of 10 tweets per working pay, with a minimum gap of 30 minutes between tweets to avoid flooding. It also recommends being "varied, "re-tweetable", "timely" and "credible". And "human".
Replies optional.
Surely the whole point of social networking is that you listen and engage with the audience, taking their feedback and delivering accordingly?
At least someone in government is listening. When Dan Martin, editor of BusinessZone and manager of MyCustomer's social networking discussion group, reported on the document and picked up on the point of being reactionary rather than regimented, the author quickly posted the following:
"I absolutely take your point about over-strategising, and indeed blogged a defence from that angle when I published the paper (see: http://bit.ly/qLXpd)
"My intention in writing this document was to plan carefully (for my own benefit, and for senior managers who may not have experienced Twitter themselves) how and why we will use Twitter and justify its value the extra activity (at taxpayers' expense) - not to set limits and rules. I think my wording could have been clearer in the sections you have quoted here. The 2-10 tweets per day guide was intended to communicate the fact that it's not good to broadcast too many corporate messages all day long, better to engage and converse."
It will be interesting to see the outcome.
In the meantime, the site itself has published a Twitter 101 for businesses (http://business.twitter.com/twitter101).
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