The Social Media Experiments Continue

Sanjay Mehta

Joint CEO,
Social Wavelength

The account declares WHO it is, that is running the account each week. And certainly, these are different, and ordinary citizens.

For example, the few people who have run the account for @sweden include:
1. A Christian Minister
2. An organic sheep farmer
3. An immigrant blogger
4. An "average lesbian truck driver"

The people who are picked to tweet for Sweden are free to write what they feel. The account is not really 'moderated'. Each person who is assigned to run the account has a contract, which stops him from using the account to put out racist comments, personal attacks, advertising or tweets that affect national security. Other than these, the citizens managing the account can tweet about anything!

So there have been cases where the person running @sweden has criticized the foreign minister, and there have been other tweets which are not exactly always flattering about things in Sweden.

And which is how they intended to be. In the words of Tommy Sollen, the social media manager of VisitSweden, "In this age of internet and transparency, if you want to be credible, you have to let go of control and empower the people. We want to be seen as progressive, open, credible and truthful."

Now this activity is clearly a double-edged sword. While it clearly generates a lot of hype and interest, and brings curious traffic to see what is happening on the Twitter account, there are some not-so-good aspects of Sweden which also get shared out. Will it worry potential tourists? Will it attract potential tourists?

The jury is clearly out. One thing is clear though, that uniqueness gets noticed and attracts followers / fans. In this case, the @sweden account has generated global interest. Which would have been hard to do, if it was one more simple average tourism twitter handle.

So have you noticed anything very unique in social media recently?

What is your new social media experiment all about?

Back 1 2