Sunday

@IndianDiplomacy posts on Twitter

India's Ministry of External Affairs' (MEA) is known to be quite active on Twitter compared to other ministries. The ministry also used Twitter quite productively for the evacuation of Indian nationals from Libya during the NATO led war.

@IndianDiplomacy currently has 26, 774 followers with 1,855 tweets posted till date. Indian diplomats and the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), as well, routinely tweet on foreign policy matters now. As one of the followers, I  receive regular updates from the ministry on my Twitter feed. One can't help but notice that most tweets remain in the form of notifications or announcements and are primarily in the 'broadcast mode'. While this is not bad in itself, in order to leverage Twitter, or for that matter any digital platform, it helps to switch to the 'engagement mode' where an action or a response is sought to a post and more and more two way communications happen. It may be a good idea to personalize it a little bit and not make it look like an information window of the government. While one may find lot of interesting information or updates, most of the times one may get the feeling 'so...why should I care?' This  is the question @IndianDiplomacy should seek to address. What is also required is better usage of hashtags and even some basics such as usage of bit.ly etc.

I personally think former Foreign Secretary and current Ambassador to United States, Ms Nirupama Rao is doing a fabulous job on Twitter. Not only her posts have a personality but the tone and overall nature of tweets are very engaging. Her Twitter handle is @NMenonRao. How do we add personality to a Ministry? That is another interesting challenge altogether.

Some useful resources:
Suggestions/Critiques welcome

-- Madhur