In the past month, there has been controversy around the use of Twitter and other social media to represent regions and municipalities. In our opinion, there are two issues that led to the demise of the Hamilton campaign.

1. The people managing the social media campaign did not follow basic rules of engagement for the medium
2. The people responsible for the Hamilton social media accounts, did not have an accurate knowledge of the city they were representing

For those of you who have not heard, here’s the story of the Our Hamilton social media campaign.

WHAT HAPPENED
The city of Hamilton hired a firm near Ottawa to collect information about city services from the community, and invested over $350 000.00 to develop the campaign which included a website, Twitter and Pinterest page.

STARTED GOOD
When the campaign launched, residents of Hamilton were excited about the fact that there was going to be a social media forum where they could be heard. People tweeted such comments as “@ourhamilton very exciting project! Great opportunity for #hamont citizens!” and “Hey #HamOnt check out our City (finaly!) using social media to engage residents on municipal issues: @ourhamilton”.

Eric Gillis’s tweet, which served as the catalyst to mass amount of criticism, tweeted @OurHamilton with a valid and sincere remark about the community and what mattered to her:

“Noticed the project hasn’t officially launched yet– but still: The continuation of voluntary pay for disabled on the HSR.”

The campaign was engaging and exciting residents even before it was officially launched.

WENT BAD
However, very quickly this excitement turned to discord. The day of the launch, January 8, 2013, a tweet sent from the @ourhamilton Twitter account in response to Eric Gillis tweet enraged the Twitter community, who claimed it showed the company was out of touch with the community with which it was being paid to engage. The tweet involved the @ourhamilton account asking what HSR stood for. HSR, is an acronym for Hamilton’s transit system… and one of the services they were responsible for reviewing. Obviously, they should have been well aware of what it was.

After the initial reaction to that tweet, others began to criticize other areas of the campaign. The community was upset that a local firm had not been trusted with the campaign. Others complained that the Pinterest page had images from other Hamiltons, rather than the Hamilton in Ontario that they were representing . A main image on the website was of a bike trail in Ottawa. People were concerned over the layout of the Twitter page and the tone that was being used to engage upset Twitter users.

WHAT THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE
We believe that the new version of the term “Think before you speak” should be “Google before you Tweet.” The initial catalyst to this situation, the HRS situation described above, happened because the employee handling the Twitter account was not properly educated before he engaged with the community his firm was supposed to be representing.

It would have only taken a minute or two to research the term “HRS”, but instead chose to publicly admit that they did not know what it meant…and mass criticism ensued fueled by this initial tweet. Furthermore, had the employee managing the Twitter account been from the area, there is no doubt that he would know exactly what the HSR was. A local firm would also have been familiar with the city and its landmarks.