Walsall Council have just wrapped up a round the clock Twitter marathon, during which time they tweeted about their services and the various things happening in the area.
@walsallcouncil posted over 1400 updates throughout a 24 hour period using the hashtag #walsall24, and tweets ranged from updates from the early morning CCTV team, the work of street cleaners, information about road closures and much more.
The Guardian reported on the event – with some interesting reflections at the half way point based on comments they had recieved through their site. Reactions were mixed, with some people questioning the value of the experiment and the use of Twitter.
However, no one could fault the attention that the experiment got (the BBC also picked up the story), and there is no doubt that awareness of what the council does would have been boosted as a result – as David Higgerson writes about when referring to the “no one understands what we do” dilemma.
The debate about the value of such an approach, or the media used, will no doubt rage on, but this is a fascinating case study of how social media can be used to open up an organisation and help it to better engage with its customers – to reinforce lines of communication and be seen as a transparent, proactive agency.
For a nice final visual, Dan Slee has set up an interesting Wordle which highlights some of the more common words that were used during the session.