MPs on Twitter: Jacinda Ardern

Jacinda Ardern is a Labour List MP and previous Labour candidate for Auckland Central. She has been an MP since 2008. She is party spokesperson for Children, Police, Corrections and Arts, Culture and Heritage.

 

Jacinda has 4162 Tweets, follows 4397 accounts and is followed by 15,000 people. Which to put in perspective is the equivalent to 1/4 of the population of an electorate.

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I am going to start this review on a really minor, but still really annoying note. The background image on Jacinda’s Twitter page is a series of  diagonal red and white strips. The issue I have with this is that it is really hard on the eyes, even more so when you are scrolling up and down the time line, particularly in the bit between the boxes on the side of her profile.

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So first bit of advice, replace it.

 

Jacinda makes great use of images. But before I talk about that, let me just say, I am not sold on the use of Instagram since it’s purchase by Facebook and its ability to be embedded in the timeline.

 

That having been said, Jacinda does make good use of images. jacinda 2

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Instagram does offer something different from just standard photos posted to Twitter, but I am still uncertain about the need to click out of Twitter and the impact it might have on engagement. But maybe that is just me.

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It is the fact that she doesn’t post the typical type of images you see most MPs posting. There are nice little insights into her day. Helping to make her a bit more human.

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Jacinda does engage in the use of attack Tweets, but generally keeps the tone of her Tweets pretty positive. There is a place for this, but MPs shouldn’t let this take over their timeline.

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It is nice to see a little bit of a sense of humour in MPs Tweets/reTweets.

Using Twitonomy, Jacinda has done a good job of keeping the number of reTweets down, at around 3% of her timeline. As well, the people that she reTweets are pretty evenly spread, as opposed to reTweeting one or two people a lot.

 

However, I hate to keep going on about it, but MPs, even List MPs, should be using their online presence to support organisations/businesses in their electorate. This is something that all MPs could do better.

 

However I do find the lack of Labour Party info graphics on her timeline interesting. Is this a case of trying to distance herself from the Labour Party brand, or just a dislike of the images being produced? Will we see more Labour Party branding come form her in the next few months?

 

Over all I would say Jacinda does a good job on Twitter.

 

matthew