Government social media strategy and how they get it

The last week or so we have seen the UK government launching a set of social media strategies such as Twitter, Flickr and social media taskforces that show the establishment are getting serious (or as serious as the better established players in this game are).

This morning I started seeing some evidence too that

10 Downing Street

's Twitter people are actually engaging with the network too:

"v glad to see @downingstreet starting to engage with the conversation here - yay!"

To date it has been the Tories that have led the way in the social media stakes in my opinion. Here's a post of mine from a couple of years ago on that and on why I know a little about their goings-on.

But I'm starting to think that for the next level of social media interaction that the Labour digital PR people are giving it a really good go.

Comments

[Ben Ayers]

I agree Drew but it will be interesting to see whether it's a two way conversation or just another method of 'pushing'

[Simon Dickson]

You need to draw a distinction between Labour and civil service activity though, Drew. The Twitter service is being run (as I understand it) by the civil servants inside 10 Downing Street - and as such, it can't be considered 'Labour Party' activity.

Before anyone says it... yes, there's a fine line between the two, and it's increasingly difficult to make distinctions between them. But it's a distinction that needs to be made.

[Matt Rhodes]

I was really pleased to see that the 10 Downing Street twitter people are engaging with their network. This feels like a big step forward in use of social media across government - a conversation not a pushing out of information.

Also this week the new FCO website went live - this also has a lot of signs of trying to engage users in a conversation. The blogs seem especially successful in doing this and are the kind of thing many corporates are unwilling to do so honestly.

I wrote about it on our blog a few days ago if anybody is interested:

http://blog.freshnetworks.com/?p=44