Western Australia’s City of Stirling has used its Twitter site to make a live announcement of its new Mayor and Deputy Mayor, following a special council meeting to elect the two in October.
CEO Stuart Jardine said social networking sites are generally used to inform people about life, love, work and any other topic you can think of.
“Today, we see a change in the traditional landscape for ‘Tweets’,” he said. “From today, you can now include announcements of a Local Government Mayor to the list.
“As I understand it, the City of Stirling is the first Local Government in Australia, if not the world, to announce the election of its Mayor live via this social networking source.
“Social networking tools represent a great opportunity for more timely situational awareness to keep the public informed.”
The City of Stirling doesn’t restrict its forays into social media to just Twitter – it also uses YouTube, Facebook and MySpace.
Council’s Director of Community Development Trevor Holland said the City has only been using Twitter since late July and already has a growing tribe of followers.
“This is an excellent result when you consider we have only promoted the site via a small footer on our fortnightly advertorial ‘Scoop’, published in the local community newspapers,” he said.
The City also uses Twitter to promote upcoming city events, seminars, workshops, community consultation, media releases, awards and council meeting dates.
For more information, follow Stirling on twitter.com/CityofStirling
