At the Conservative Party conference yesterday it was announced by David Cameron that he would be joining Twitter. As you can see from his first tweet below, he claims he’ll be providing insight into his life as Prime Minister.
I'm starting Conference with this new Twitter feed about my role as Conservative Leader. I promise there won't be "too many tweets…"
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) October 6, 2012
Am I the only one that thinks “who cares”? Maybe not, as after all he has accumulated just under 100,000 followers since that first tweet, so presumably there are a few people out there that want to listen to what is said via the account.
The thing is, does anyone really expect that he’ll be doing any of the writing himself? Will he be engaging with any of those 100,000 followers if they were to message ‘him’?
I strongly suspect that the answer to both of those will be a firm no. The account will be written by a member of his PR team, and it will be largely used as a broadcast medium, because you can control what you say much better if you’re not engaging in the fuzzy medium of actual conversation.
Of course Cameron is far from alone in this because celebrities (and indeed businesses) galore have been tempted by the lure of social media as a means of reaching lots of people very easily and very cheaply. Suffice to say however that many of them forget that social media, by its very nature, should be social.
So I’m afraid you’ll have to forgive me if I find the news that DC’s PR team are now on Twitter rather underwhelming.
I can't think of anything worse to be honest. Why would you want to follow the PR person of a PR person?
Quite Nick. It's not a good sign that all of the people the account is itself following are in fact politicians as well. Doesn't indicate that he'll be doing much listening to what the public think or want.
Good post – I think the main interest will be if the Twitter account, whoever's writing or informing it, says something dramatically at odds with Government policy or unintentionally hilarious?
I suspect that's why many are following the account really. It's one thing for an Ashley Cole to slip up, quite another for someone like David Cameron. As such you can only imagine it being incredibly anodyne and dull.
Some tips for Cameron here
http://smartblogs.com/social-media/2012/10/12/4-t…
I strongly suspect that the answer to both of those will be a firm no. The account will be written by a member of his PR team, and it will be largely used as a broadcast medium, because you can control what you say much better if you’re not engaging in the fuzzy medium of actual conversation.
Yes, I agree Lucifer. Doesn't that kind of defeat the point of 'social' media though?
David Cameron on Twitter is not really a big issue as long as he does not make an opinion that may get controversial. Nowadays political leader’s opinions are getting controversial via twitter comments. And the news agencies and reporters are exaggerating the comments true meaning.
Personally I don’t mind. Politicians becoming more accessible is probably good thing actually.