Best Practices Guide For Twitter

When it became a publicly traded company late last year, Twitter — the attention-deficit-disorder-driven communications tool first reserved for teens and twenty-somethings — officially became mainstream. Nowadays, even tea tweets (see twitter.com/TeasofTexas for what it’s saying), so it makes sense that politicians and government departments are chirping.

The social media giant recently updated its best practices guide for government website page. The guide now highlights valuable information about their Twitter Alerts program for government entities, which helps institutions more effectively push crisis, disaster and emergency communications out to constituents, both on the social network and via text messages. There’s also information on how and

Hashtags as a list.

You’ve probably heard about hashtags. Simply put, they are a way to search tweets on a common topic. Users include them in their tweets to become part of a larger conversation. For example, a search for #txlege (not case-sensitive), would return a list of tweets by people talking about the Texas Legislature.

The hashtag acts as an ad-hoc list of people currently talking about a topic. Twitter does not currently allow users to create a list based on a hashtag, but most third-party applications will let users set a hashtag just like a list. Setting up hashtag streams on third-party applications allows you to follow conversations important to you, your department and your county. Using hashtags in your own tweets will also help you reach a wider audience than just your own followers. And because other users are viewing that hashtag stream, you’re reaching people who are actually interested in that particular topic.

The b ottom line.

Twitter allows for flexible, real-time communications, but it is still just one vehicle in a suite of tools — including meetings, public talks, email and Facebook — that help officials communicate to the public, answer questions and listen to constituent