BURLINGTON, Vt. -
A chat with Burlington's mayor doesn't require a City Hall appointment. Mayor Miro Weinberger says you can reach him with a tweet.
The city council was so impressed with the mayor's social media skills it passed a resolution to establish an official Twitter account for the mayor.
Weinberger says social media, including Twitter, helped his campaign for Burlington Mayor. Now that he has the job, Weinberger says social media will help with one of his promises, to make the mayor's office more transparent.
"Twitter is certainly a different medium than anything that came before it," says Weinberger.
The mayor admits at first he was a skeptic of social media. Now he says Twitter can help quickly send and receive information, including about a delayed construction project.
"I tweeted some photo's of that kind of showed people what was going on. I think it helped people understand what the issue was there so I think it's a really important way to bring attention to good things that are happening in the community to challenges to the community," says Weinberger.
The Burlington City Council agreed. This week it created an official mayor's Twitter account, called @BTVmayor, which Weinberger can now use.
"I think he should be tweeting about key issues," says Rich Nadworny, a digital strategist and owner of Delicious Digital Marketing and Strategy.
Nadworny says while Twitter can be a good thing, the mayor and his team need to be careful with their 140 character tweets.
"I think it's important for the @BTVmayor account to be used for mayoral activity and not for campaigning and not for shameless self-promotion," says Nadworny.
Weinberger says besides the challenges, Twitter can still be a good, less formal way to talk to people.
"I think that's an exciting thing that wouldn't be possible just a few years ago," says Weinberger.
The mayor says it's likely members of his team will tweet using the official mayor's account. Weinberger says he will continue to use his personal account that he started during the campaign.
