Twitter has proven to be a powerful platform for politicians, and the mayors of Alberta’s two largest cities are two of the best among their peers at using the social media site to connect with constituents and deliver information.
Twitter Canada has conducted a study on the accounts of mayors from Canada’s 25 largest municipalities after discovering our country’s mayors are quite skilled at using the platform.
“Twitter is a great platform for local politics just because it is so conversational. Such a big part of navigating the political climate locally is regular integration with your constituents,” Twitter Canada head of communication Cam Gordon said.
Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi has the most followers among the 25 mayors with 353,000. Iveson ranks fourth with 121,000 followers.
Iveson is ranked fifth when it comes to Twitter mentions. Toronto Mayor John Tory is the country’s most mentioned mayor on the social media site, with 90 per cent more mentions than Nenshi who is in second place on that list.
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Gordon said Iveson and Nenshi have become trailblazers on Twitter for other mayors around the country.
“Alberta has two of the best in Don Iveson and Naheed Nenshi, and I think a lot of other Canadian mayors take cues from a lot of things we’ve seen come out of Alberta,” Gordon said.
One area where Iveson has the lead over Nenshi is in the number of followers – 2,055 compared to the Calgary mayor’s 1,243 – which might be helping to put Iveson in a more favourable light with constituents, Gordon said.
“You sort of ask yourself, ‘what is the optics of this?’ Does this indicate that the mayor…Don Iveson is following 2,000 people, that is one more way, one more visual that may say to the average Edmonton resident, ‘It’s like okay, he’s listening, he’s following me.'”
The data was collected by Twitter Canada on Feb. 6.
The average Canadian mayor on Twitter has 61,000 followers, follows 1,800 accounts, has sent 5,400 tweets and has liked 1,900 tweets.
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