Matt Sokoloff

Many have assumed wrongly that I would recommend political campaigns set up two separate Twitter accounts in order to keep tweets from the candidate and tweets from staff or press separate.

The better solution, as Jordan points out, is to just be honest about who is tweeting but to keep everything associated with one brand together.

Ford, Microsoft and oh yeah Twitter are all great examples of brands who actually identify who is posting each tweet. They do it by simply adding a "^" and then the initials of the person tweeting. They then inform users somewhere (usually in the bio field or the background) who those folks are. Yes you loose three characters, but your brand is suddenly human. Something that is very important for social media.

One thing that politicians/campaigns typically do a poor job of when it comes to social media is listening (number three on Jordan's list). All three of the brands mentioned above are using a twitter client call CoTweet to help manage multiple people posting and responding from the same twitter account. They even put the signature in for each users. If your brand or campaign is looking for a way to easily manage their twitter account(s) check out CoTweet and start responding (and following) other people. Twitter is about being social not about pushing press releases.

Newark's Mayor Cory Booker shares President Obama's deep understanding of the power of digital media as a means for community organizing. As of yesterday, Mayor Booker has 833,779 Twitter followers, and 14,768 Facebook supporters.

According to the US Census Bureau the Population of Newark is 281,402 (2006 estimate) which means that Booker has more than 3 times the population of Newark following him on Twitter and the equivalent of 5% of the population of Newark as Facebook supporters.

When he post to his Facebook page, you can see by the volume of "comments" and "likes" that his Facebook supporters are actually engaged in conversation with him. So, what is he doing that fosters engagement?

Authenticity and humor are powerful tools when it comes to getting your audience to engage with you, and Mayor Booker understands this. He, jokingly, used Facebook and Twitter as a platform to challenge Obama. He asked his Facebook supporters and Twitter followers if they thought his jump shot is better than Obama's.

He uses Twitter to warn the citizen's of Newark should they litter, they are in danger of getting pulled over by him.

And he shares words of wisdom that inspire him.

So Mayor Booker--I am not sure if you jump shot is better than Obama's, and I promise you that I won't litter in Newark-or anywhere else for that matter. I thank you for your words of wisdom and I applaud you for your understanding of social media engagement.

I have had a couple of conversations about how politicians should embrace social media. I always say that I think it's key for them to be human. This was the message we had for blogs a couple years ago. This also goes for journalists, businesses or really anyone. No one want's press releases and headlines via twitter...they wan't a conversation.

The response to the mass follow lists of members of Congress and Governors I released last week has truly been overwhelming.  Emails and Twitter replies came pouring in from people who loved the ability to mass follow their elected officials on Twitter.  A rumor even made it's way to me that the House GOP circulated the list around to all Republican members of Congress.

Given the overwhelming response, I decided to take some time this weekend to separate the lists out onto a subdomain of this blog.  After adding some new lists and breaking down each congressional delegation into one-click follow lists by state, I have launched followmygovernment.jordanraynor.com.  Since launching the micro-site less than 24 hours ago, the site has been viewed by 850+ unique visitors and the lists have generated 12,500+ follows.

Please take a moment to check out this new tool and http://bit.ly/psS1X%20%20Please%20RT%21">share it with your own Twitter followers!

Everyone should follow their elected reps...even if most aren't really sure what to do with twitter.

No, we're not making this up. That's just part of a late-night email message from Mayor James D. Kalb of Portsmouth, Ohio to blogger Robert Forrey, a retired English professor whose site, RiverVices seems to have gotten under Kalb's skin.

Read the entire quote at personaldemocracy.com