How to start a new job with thousands of Twitter followers

(joint blog with @stevenxhardy, Social Media Manager, FCO)

Imagine you are starting a new job where you want to communicate with people using the social media tool Twitter.

Your predecessor, who is about to leave, has thousands of Twitter followers, who would doubtless be interested in what you have to say after you arrive.

How you can reach out to your predecessor’s Twitter followers?

What started as an innovation at the British Embassy in Paris has become an embedded process for securing long-term digital influence for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s ever growing band of Twitterati.

We use a tool called Audiense, to mount what is called a private message campaign or “DM campaign”.  I (Leigh) used this technique, with the help of the FCO Digital Transformation Unit, when I left Istanbul in July 2016, to give followers of my @leighturnerFCO account the chance to follow my successor,  @judithslaterFCO.

How does it work?

By using Audiense, you can send an automated direct message, or DM, to all your followers or a specific group, such as those based in a particular country, or those who meet a certain threshold of followers.  This can include a message urging them to follow your successor.  Audiense cleverly adds the user name of the person to whom each message is addressed at the beginning of the message in order to personalise it.

So, for example, a follower named Deniz would have seen the following message when I (Leigh) left Istanbul:

Hello Deniz. After 4 great years as British Consul General, I left Istanbul on 19 July to move to Vienna, where I will be Ambassador and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Please keep following me but also start following today my lucky successor @JudithSlaterFCO, who will arrive in Istanbul in the second week of September. I know she will love the job as much as I have. With best wishes, Leigh Turner

This technique worked brilliantly in Istanbul: my successor, Judith Slater, got several thousand new followers. The FCO Digital Transformation Unit further piloted the tool elsewhere, gauging the success rate good enough to deploy this as the standard process for handovers from one Twitter user to another when, as happens regularly to diplomats, people change jobs and countries.  It seems like a good way to ensure people can continue to follow accounts in which they are interested and to help cement some Twitter legacy for the FCO.

Lots of followers are great. 

Lots of followers with an interest in your work are even better.

I would be interested in the experiences of others in using techniques like these.  Meanwhile, I would urge all readers to follow me on Twitter @LeighTurnerFCO, as well as following my successor in Istanbul, Judith Slater on @JudithSlaterFCO. Happy following.