e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics

Congress on Twitter: By the Numbers

March 26th, 2012

The folks over at Edelman Digital have done us a solid: they’ve looked at months of data on the Twitter habits of U.S. House members and Senators and drawn conclusions about what works:

In the analysis, the team defined success metrics for Congressional tweeters, looked at demographic differences in Congressional Twitter performance, identified key behavioral differences that impact Twitter success and highlighted ten Twitter Best Practices for U.S. Members of Congress.

Some of their observations won’t come as much of a surprise (Republican House members love them Teh Twitter!), nor will many of their conclusions (Tweet regularly! Tweet links to useful content!). Others may: for instance, successful Hill tweeters tend to send lots of messages earlier in the morning and later in the week, which I suspect are also times when overall Twitter volume may be lower, meaning that their messages may stand out more.

Definitely read the full report (embedded here), but you can skim their top-level findings in a handy slideshow (below) and a big infographic (after the break).

– cpd