Governance, Twitter style

Exactly one month after Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) took over as the Prime Minister of India, his “Twitter First” strategy has yielded an important result: his account is now the fourth most-followed world leader account and will become the third-most followed in the near future.

He has even overtaken the @WhiteHouse in terms of number of followers and will soon only trail Barack Obama (@BarackObama) and Pope Francis (@Pontifex).

As we’ve written before, there were nearly 60 million Tweets on our platform during the Indian election, thanks to all key stakeholders — candidates, news organizations and users — embracing the live, public, conversational platform that is Twitter. Narendra Modi was the top elections-related term on Twitter during the entire polling period, more than AAP and INC combined. On Counting Day itself, Narendra Modi and BJP accounted for over half of the 2 million elections-related Tweets. His Twitter account (@narendramodi) has grown by more than 1 million followers since his election win, while the official account of the Prime Minister’s office (@PMOIndia) has grown more than 40% since his swearing-in ceremony. Of course, his election victory Tweet remains the most retweeted Tweet of all time from India.

But even since the election, the Prime Minister has begun ushering in even more innovations and best practices with respect to his Twitter strategy; @narendramodi has replied to congratulatory Tweets from world leaders when he took over office and has since continued the trend, tweeting extensively about his trip to Bhutan.

Twitter has emerged over the last month as the key platform to keep track of what the government is busy with: the PM has been using his personal handle (@narendramodi), complimented by his office’s official handle (@PMOIndia), to share updates.

The Prime Minister’s cabinet is flocking to Twitter as well, with nearly 40 ministers and ministries already sharing daily updates with their followers about the goings on in their respective ministries.

It is heartening to note that these Tweets are being posted live, are conversational, include media and provide a rich context into the functioning of the government. Here’s a list of the Union Ministers that are already on Twitter. You can subscribe to it to keep yourself updated of the latest Tweets being shared by them.

Stay tuned here for more updates on how Twitter is being used by the center government and government bodies across the country to connect with their constituents.