Since publishing The 7 Deadly Sins of Tweeting Politicians (which has now been shared with tens of thousands of individuals), I have received numerous questions about how best to avoid Sin #6: Lying (or hiding) who is actually tweeting for you. Here's how I describe this sin in the earlier blog post:
In an ideal scenario (mostly for the potentially disastrous entertainment value) all politicians would personally tweet, but it is widely understood that the majority do not. A bigger mistake than not personally tweeting though is lying about it. If your staff tweets for you, make that clear. You don't want to be giving an interview on CNN and have a staff member send out a tweet, supposedly from you, at the very same moment. It is not difficult to know who is genuine and who is not on Twitter and other social platforms.
Many have assumed wrongly that I would recommend political campaigns set up two separate Twitter accounts in order to keep tweets from the candidate and tweets from staff or press separate. Political consultant @aprylmarie pointed out this evening:
In addition to Florida Republican gubernatorial hopeful @BillMcCollum whose campaign launched a separate Twitter channel for staff tweets this week (@Team_McCollum), U.S. Senate GOP hopeful @MarcoRubio also launched a separate Twitter account for his press shop - @RubioPress.
Personally, I am not a fan of the multiple Twitter channel model of separating staff tweets from candidate or elected official tweets. The simpler you make things on the internet, the more success you have. Having multiple Twitter accounts that people have to follow will become a nuisance to your Twitter followers and ultimately, I believe, your campaign will not be as effective.
Virginia's Governor-elect, @BobMcDonnell offers a better model. For tweets supposedly from Bob McDonnell himself, the tweet reads as if Bob himself was typing the message:
Tweets from staff were very clearly indicated as such within the tweet:
This appeared to be a very effective model for the McDonnell campaign. With one single Twitter account posting updates from the candidate, staff and press team, the McDonnell campaign made it easy for supporters to follow every aspect of the campaign in one Twitter channel which amassed 7,152 followers before Election Day.
