About Face

Dear Congressman Denny Rehberg,

I’m a fan.  A constituent.  I voted for you.  And now, I even “follow you”.  But why aren’t you following me?

When we met during your re-election campaign, I was impressed by how hard you work for the best interests of the State of Montana.  Lately, some of the media pundits have been lauding you for tweeting, and I do to.  You even post your speeches on YouTube addressing the Montana congress.  A brilliant use of social media for a non-partisan message on a non-partisan medium. Even if they only get 40 views, I admire the effort. Would love to see an @johntester or @maxbaucus Twitter accounts.  Maybe someday as all three of you provide unique value to Montana.

But with all this support, I have criticisms too.  I’ll put it as delicately as I can… you’re totally missing the point of Twitter.   Forgive me for saying, but I think you’re following all the wrong people.  Only 63 other members of your party?   Don’t you know their opinions and rhetoric by heart?  Of the 63 people you follow, 63 are republicans and I don’t think any are from Montana.  There are hundreds of us from both parties blogging and tweeting about the economy, small business, healthcare, environmental issues, local news, not to mention the random joke or or two.

Follow us instead, and we guarantee that you can make Twitter (and all of us) work more effectively to help you in your job. Tweeting politicians are no longer worthy of attention, but a politican using these tools to serve their constituents is.  Here are several ideas to help you and your staff really use these tools more effectively.  I know from meeting you that time is the one thing you don’t have much of, but change your Twitter strategy from a tweet-out to a listen-in model and you’ll gain time with immediate access to the people who put you in office to represent them.

1) Follow the residents of Montana regardless of party, we all have something valuable to contribute.  You can find herds of us at places like BozemanTweeple or use hashtags like #boztwit and #montana to find us. Montana media are coming online and the Bozeman Chronicle, New West, TV and Radio are bringing news directly to your Twitter Feed, so hopefully that will make life a bit easier.

2) Engage us. We like to hear what’s going on in your committee meetings and what’s up for vote.  But there’s so much more you can do with Twitter if YOU FOLLOW US too.  Ask us questions, ask us for insights, we’ll point you to blogs and data on the issues at hand. “What are you doing?” is not a rhetorical question.  We really want to answer it especially when our elected officials genuinely ask and care what we think.

3) RT (re-tweet) the interesting conversations that are take place on the Hill and on Twitter. One thought provoking tweet could encourage 5, 15 or 55 amazingly thoughtful replies.  Oh sure, you’ll get some noise too, but the reward outweighs any risk.

4)  Start your own #DennyRehberg hashtag so we can tag our tweets on issues that you’re debating and working on the hill.  Some of us are actually willing to help you with reasearch on wind energy, agriculture, transporation, education… the things we all care about.

In summary, I respectfully ask that you quit following eachother on Capitol Hill and follow us, your voters.  I think you’ll have a much richer, more grounded conversation of what really matters.

Sincerely,

Bridget Cavanaugh

Bozeman, Montana

www.twitter.com/bcavanaugh

p.s. for my readers everywhere, I’m sure you have great ideas or examples to share for how our US leaders can better use social media tools, please chime in.