Murfreesboro recently had a local election for city offices. One of the candidates for city council was a man named Mark Nobles, and he got me thinking about how local politicians use twitter. Before we get started, take a moment to look at Mark’s Twitter profile here.

First of all, kudos to Mark for using Twitter during his campaign. For better or worse I, like probably most Americans, pay little attention to small races like this one. Other than the occasional TV commercial or a flyer in the mail, it’s not likely I’m going to pay much attention to a politician running for city office. But Twitter is a place I spend a lot of time, and Mark started “following” me. I followed him back. Not because I lined up with him politically (in fact I learned enough about him from his tweets to know that I couldn’t vote for him), but because I thought it would be a good idea to know what a potential city leader thinks about the issues. But even more than that it made me think about what works and what doesn’t work in the world of political tweets.

In practice, Mark used his profile like the Twitter equivalent of a political robo-call. He would tweet the same slogans over and over again. I certainly haven’t been through every tweet he ever made, but I never saw any evidence he ever answered a question over Twitter. I don’t know if anyone else ever sent any his way, but I sure did. The robo-call method is probably somewhat effective. It certainly allowed him to embed his talking points in the minds of his followers, but Twitter users tend to want more. We like to follow people who will engage in conversation with us. If not, there’s no relationship involved. Granted, he may not have liked the kind of questions I asked him, but by not responding he fell into the stereotype of the aloof politician. The last thing you want to do if you’re trying to earn my vote is act like you don’t care what I have to say. After all, with only 58 followers it’s not like you’re going to be overwhelmed with too many questions to answer them all.

Mark failed to win a seat on the Murfreesboro city council. He also seems to have stopped using his twitter account. I think that’s a mistake. The race may be over, but that doesn’t mean Mark can’t still use Twitter to continue to reach out and influence people.

One more good and bad thing about Mark’s Twitter use. I like the fact that he tweeted often, even if it was a lot of repeats. I’ve followed other politicians on Twitter who weren’t that consistent. Frequent tweeting is key to staying in touch with your followers! Now for the bad thing: It really felt like Mark himself wasn’t doing the tweeting, but rather a staffer. I’m sure Mark was busy, but taking a few seconds to send a tweet himself would have gone a long way to making him feel like he was personally reaching out to people.

To wrap up, I do want to thank Mark for using Twitter to reach out to potential voters. If you’re thinking about using Twitter for political purposes, don’t forget that the rules aren’t that different from anyone else using Twitter as a means to an end. Whether you’re running for office, trying to get more viewers for your TV show, or just writing a blog, remember to be conversational with your followers. If you can’t respond to every question, find one or two interesting ones (or ones that several people are asking) and respond publicly to them so everyone can see the question and the answer. Craig Engler, who runs the Twitter account for the Syfy channel does an excellent job of this and should be a model for others.