The tweet smell of success is pervading Atlanta City Hall.
Mayor Kasim Reed — aka @KasimReed — has been named to the "Tweet Elite: 25 Mayors Who Have Mastered Twitter."
Reed landed at No. 6 on the list created by marketing and tourism firm Development Counsellors International (DCI). Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was No. 1; but in a category-by-category breakdown, Reed was tops in audience (number of Twitter followers divided by the city’s population).
Hizzoner responded with a tweet of the cap at his administration’s director of communications.
“Huge thanks to @AnneMTorres for her help here,” Reed wrote on Twitter, where he has 123,000 followers (that’s 45,000 more than Rawlings-Blake, we’re just sayin’).
Indeed, this is no @HollowHonor. DCI says Twitter can be an essential leadership tool for mayors to break news, interact with citizens and listen to “views outside of their inner circle of advisers” (including, it would seem, the occasional “you’re an idiot” view). The study analyzed the Twitter activity over 60 days of 112 mayors from the country’s 250 largest cities. It scored them in five areas, such as engagement and responsiveness, with audience considered the most important at 30 percent of the final score.
This news hardly comes as a surprise in Atlanta, where Reed's reputation as a memorable 140-character character was already well established. He's hardly shy about using Twitter to push back against what he considers inaccurate or inappropriate statements — so much so, in fact, that the AJC compiled its own version of an "elite" list last fall.
The title?
Read more: Reed on leading: Direct engagement and authenticity
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