• Top 25 most connected World Leaders on Twitter

    Twiplomacy is the first-ever global study of world leaders on Twitter. The governments of almost two-thirds of the 193 UN member countries have a presence on Twitter: 45% of the 264 accounts analysed are personal accounts of heads of state and government, but just 30 world leaders tweet themselves and very few on a regular basis.

    This study shows that while the social network invites direct interaction between users, few world leaders take advantage of this opportunity to develop connections. Almost half of world leader accounts analysed don’t follow any of their peers. A quarter of world leaders and governments follow President Barack Obama and the White House, but @BarackObama and the @WhiteHouse have established mutual Twitter relations with only three other world leaders: Norway’s Jens Stoltenberg, the UK Prime Minister and Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev.

    European Union President Herman van Rompuy (@euHvR) is the best connected world leader with 11 mutual follows. Australian Prime Minister @JuliaGillard is the second most connected world leader. Many governments use Twitter as an automated news feed from their website or Facebook page. As of 1 July 2012 the 264 accounts enjoyed a combined following of 51,990,656.

    Click on the continents above (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Oceania) and select your country.

    @eu_commision@euhvr@number10gov@jensstoltenberg@vdombrovskis@medvedevrussia@vladarh@elysee@prcavacosilva@desdelamoncloa@megovernment@najib_mikati@bmegovernment@najibrazak@juliagillard@johnkeypm@pmharper@barackobama@presidenciamx@laura_ch@juanmansantos@presidencia_ec@sebastianpinera@ollanta_humalat@CFKArgentina

  • Best nation branding on Twitter

    How do you market a country on Twitter? The obvious choice is to secure your country's name on Twitter. In the second part of Burson-Marsteller’s Twiplomacy study (http://twiplomacy.com/country-promotion) we have been looking at country name Twitter handles. Only nine of the 193 UN country accounts are officially managed by their government or tourism organisations. @GreatBritain, @Israel, and @Sweden are government-run and have been very successful at promoting their countries on Twitter either as part of a country promotion campaign, or an exercise in people’s diplomacy.

    Burson-Marsteller digital strategists have analyzed the English names of the 193 UN countries: 36 country accounts (18.6%) have been suspended by Twitter and are no longer available; 73 accounts (37.8%) are either dormant (43 accounts, 22.2%) or inactive (30 accounts, 15.5%), the latter have never sent a single tweet. The accounts of 13 countries (6.7%) are protected, ie private and of the remaining 71 active accounts almost half are used to spread news about the country through automated newsfeeds.

    Considering their potential, country accounts are not very popular. @Indonesia is the most followed country account with 193,349 followers, followed by @Mexico (171,712), @Israel (66,511), @Sweden (65,771) and @Spain (48,161). The curators of @Ireland are the most active with 163 tweets/day followed by @Sweden with 120 tweets/day. Both accounts are also the most conversational replying to other Twitter users, on average, in every second tweet.

    It is interesting to examine who has registered these country accounts. @AntiguaBarbuda, @Barbados, @Belize, @Lithuania, the @Maldives, @SouthAfrica, and @Spain are managed by the official tourism organization while @Madagascar was registered by DreamWorks Animation, makers of the Madagascar films.

    The data for the accounts was collected on 9 November 2012. Read more about the best country branding on Twitter and the people behind your country’s Twitter account here.