I saw that the US Department of Education, @usedgov, was hosting a Twitter chat tonight so being the curious person I am I decided to go check out their Twitter page. I noticed that they followed 151 accounts so I wandered in to see who they deemed worthy of following. Can you imagine my surprise when I saw the account followed only a handful of educators, and they are ambassadors for the department. Other than that, I found they follow no educators.
While I know there is plenty of opportunity for negative tweets to be sent to the account and this might explain why there is not much community creation by this and other accounts that have high followers but few followees, I still think they are missing out on the point. There is a real opportunity for the Department of Education to have good conversations with educators and barring that there is still a real opportunity for it to read tweets from a few select educator accounts that are talking about important things.
Should the Department of Education follow more educators? I would love for your insights.
While I know there is plenty of opportunity for negative tweets to be sent to the account and this might explain why there is not much community creation by this and other accounts that have high followers but few followees, I still think they are missing out on the point. There is a real opportunity for the Department of Education to have good conversations with educators and barring that there is still a real opportunity for it to read tweets from a few select educator accounts that are talking about important things.
Should the Department of Education follow more educators? I would love for your insights.
I wonder if they have a social media manager or someone who oversees the account. Yes, they could certainly benefit from connecting with teachers and parents, but that doesn't appear to be the purpose for the account. Although I find it strange they would be hosting chats and starting conversations, if they aren't intentionally building a community. Weird.
ReplyDeleteThere isn't much doubt someone is managing the account. I am afraid it is just another outlet to share information. The chat was for the ambassadors, which is kind of a weird thing in itself.
DeleteOf course they should follow people in the profession they “lead”. Seems to me that it’s just a task on a checklist and not an activity in which the department is actually interested.
ReplyDeleteThey run it more like a product brand than an agency invested in education.
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