All four of the Labour leadership challengers have Twitter accounts. Some of them have been active longer than others. Grant Roberston has the largest following on Twitter of them all.
Followed by Andrew Little:
Nanaia Mahuta:
and finally David Parker:
So there is a huge difference between the number of followers they have. But what I wanted to know was who ran the accounts. Yesterday morning I emailed all of the contenders. I have so far got replies from 3 out of the four.
Andrew Little was the first to reply, his account is run partly by him and partly by staff. Which is a fair balance.
Nanaia Mahuta runs her own account. Which is a little surprising. I would have expected at least some input from staff. Someone who can do things like post photos, or retweet party content.
Grant Robertson was the last to reply, but gave the longest reply. His falls into the setup I expected. He says he does most of the tweeting, particularly replying and the like. But he has a staff member who is able to access the account to tweet factual things, such as about attending meetings and the like.
I still have no reply from David Parker.
In some ways I like the fact that Nanaia runs her own account. But I suspect if she has plans to use it as part of her campaign, that factor is going to limit it. Bringing in someone to help run your account, without it being obvious, is rather hard at short notice. If it is to look seamless they need time to learn the voice of the account. From watching the various accounts, Grant seems to have the balance about right.
