- Public, Monday 27 July 2009 16.10 BST
An official at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has published a strategy that could be used throughout Whitehall for Twitter feeds.
Neil Williams, head of corporate digital channels for the department, says in the document that departmental 'tweets' should include exclusive material, including insights from ministers and updates on their speeches and activities.
Williams has published a generic version of the department's strategy through the Cabinet Office's digital engagement blog.
Twitter is becoming increasingly popular as a medium for organisations as well as individuals, despite its limitation of individual messages, known as tweets, to 140 characters. The length means they can be sent or received as SMS text messages.
Williams warns that Twitter users can be hostile to too much automation, such as tweets which recycle RSS feeds and press release headlines. "The tone of our Twitter channel must therefore be in informal spoken English, human edited and – for the most part – written/paraphrased for the channel," he writes.
According to the paper, Twitter can have value in building relationships with influencers including journalists and bloggers. It can help engage individuals through providing "an informal, 'human' voice of the organisation".
Further details on the Kable website
