As a political consultant who specializes in social networks I’ve watched campaigns make every mistake you can imagine. Somebody tells an intern to set up a Twitter account and then it all goes to hell. These are the 5 most common and easily avoidable mistakes I see on political Twitter accounts:

1. Looking Desperate For Followers

You’ve probably seen those accounts. They follow hundreds of people and only have a handful of people following them back. Yup, that’s the kind of desperation I’m talking about. I usually recommend never following more than 20 percent over the number that are following you back. Obviously not a hard and fast rule, but you’ll have better results if you’re patient and build your account slowly.

2. The One Tweet Wonder

If you don’t tweet and your account looks inactive, don’t be surprised when you don’t get followers. Your neglected account sends the message that you’ve given up on Twitter. Why the hell would people want to follow you if they think you’ve given up?

3. Tweet Overkill

Slow down there, Happy Thumbs. Nobody wants to read every minor detail of your day and that goes double for boring campaign minutia. This mistake is the signature move of a larger campaign where the candidate’s bodyperson or Press Secretary is frantically updating via Blackberry.

4. Antisocial Networking

This isn’t Facebook, so don’t just give a status update. Had some coffee, in a meeting, ate a sandwich. Boring. Sure you can use Twitter to deliver a monologue, but like everything in politics your goal is to engage people and start a dialogue. Connect with people, ask some questions and if you get an ‘@reply’, try to respond promptly.

5. Wallpaper Wasteland

The valuable real estate around your twitter stream shouldn’t be wasted. That’s a lot of empty screen space. Fill it with info like your campaign website URL, phone number, email address, other social network URLs, a picture of your candidate, your campaign logo and a little biographical info. Take a look at my Twitter wallpaper and you’ll see what I mean.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 5:36 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.