Using tags to stop scrolling through Twitter

If you meet a group of political professionals, there is a good chance that someone is at that moment scrolling through Twitter. But it isn’t simply because they’re addicted to social media (though they might be).  

It’s because social media is one of the most important conduits of information that people in politics need to do their jobs properly. We’re on our phones because if we aren’t, we might miss that tweet that we’ll need to know about when we write our next press release, policy brief, or show up to the next meeting. 

However, acting as a de facto wire service while letting us also do our work is not something that traditional social media was designed to provide – leaving us all scrolling endlessly through noise looking for the signal we need. 

Designed for social networking, not working

Problems with today’s approach 

Traditional social media – Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube – are based around users spending time on their apps engaging with their content. That content – mostly text for Twitter, images for Instagram, short videos for TikTok – are the things that act as the foundation for those platforms. 

That may work for entertainment, conversations, or other consumer activities, but when it comes to working in politics, we rarely care about that thing that the platform provides, as much as we care about what that thing tells us about something else that matters to us. 

Imagine if there were a tweet that said “Sen. Joe Manchin today announced support for Build Back Better” with an image of his press release.  

This is not a clever tweet, a funny video, or a hilarious image. It’s a sentence and a JPEG of a PDF. It is probably – as a collection of words and images – one of the most boring social media posts ever media. Yet it would still absolutely go viral. But why? 

No one would read that tweet for the sake of the tweet itself and the wordplay or opinion contained in it. They would read it because of what it relates to – legislation pending in Congress, the issues that legislation would address, and the evolving position of one of the most powerful Senators.  

What tweets are about is what we’re really interested in, but there’s currently no great way to find what we need without reading each one in a row. 

Tagging as a solution 

With Legislata’s posting function, we make it easy to connect a post to what it’s about. Each post can be associated with a contact (person or organization), an issue, a topic (which can be a collection of issues or a different category). If your office – what we call our virtual workspaces – is connected to one of our state networks, a post can also be tagged with a bill in a State House. 

Every office starts with a set of topics and issues that are widely used, but you can create as many as you’d like. Each tag is specific to that office, so, unlike a hashtag, you don’t have to worry about posts tagged with “Main Street potholes” to be mixed up with every Main Street in need of repairs – just yours. 

By tagging a post, you make it clear what that post is about. You can also, thanks to some of Legislata’s features to maximize the utility of tags, helps that post be much, much more useful to both you and your audience. 

This post has a tag for a bill, topic, issue, and a contact. When we next have a meeting with Mr. Garfield, we can filter all posts to those tagged with him and this post will come up. No more searching through inboxes or Google Drives to find what we need.

You can filter by tag 

When I was an analyst managing a daily publication, I’d often see a news item that I didn’t need for that day’s work, but I knew would be useful in the future. I was left with either hoping I’d remember it, emailing it to myself, or bookmarking it and hoping I’d remember which bookmark it was. 

With posts and tags, I can save the link to the item, add a few sentences about why it matters, and tag it with an issue. Weeks or months later, when I’m working on that issue, I can search through my posts and easily find it and see what I was thinking at the time. 

For example, imagine I’m a staffer whose boss cares about climate change. I read an article that the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in New York is becoming an offshore wind assembly area. I think that might be a useful comparison for a part of our district with an underused waterfront. But today will be focused on constituent services and I don’t have time to investigate further. 

Rather than emailing a link to the office that gets buried in our collective inboxes or forgetting altogether, I create a post in our shared office titled “Brooklyn wind turbine assembly news” with the description “Could be useful for our district. We should connect with the local officials in charge to see what went well and poorly for them before the next big economic development bill.” I then tag it with “Climate”, “Renewable Energy”, “Economic Development”, and “H1234”, the bill in question.  

Now, whenever I need to prep for any of those topics, I filter our office’s posts by those tags and this item comes up. No more trying to remember where everything is or scrolling back through bookmarked tweets. 

Notifications let you save time...  

You can set up notifications for certain tags in offices you’re a part of. If I’m a transportation activist who has joined the Massachusetts State Government office, I can be alerted whenever a new post is created tagged with “transportation” or any other tags I care about. 

This immediately lets me save time. Rather than constantly scrolling through twitter for things related to transportation from my elected officials, I know that if any news happens, I’ll receive an email or see a notification next time I’m in Legislata. 

… and be heard... 

Notifications are also a major benefit to those creating the posts.  

If you’re an elected official and you want people to know that you testified on behalf of a transportation bill, you can post a tweet with your testimony, but there’s a chance that your audience is not online when you post. You can also email out your testimony to advocates, but that might be lost in inboxes. You have a signal, but it’s hard to cut through all the noise. 

By creating a post in Legislata and tagging it with “transportation”, you know that every group who cares about that topic enough to set up a notification will be alerted to it. They’ll also be able to find it later much more easily when they filter all posts by that tag so that when they are writing their next press release that they’ll be able to easily include your quotes and give you the credit you deserve.  

Your message will be targeted to those who care most without you having to do more than add a tag. 

… and collaborate more easily.

Notifications on tags are available for every office, for those that are news communities for entire states to your own. This lets you be alerted to important items within your organization or team or to stay up to date with what is the issue of the day. 

Take the first example above. Let’s say you also work for that elected official representing a waterfront district. You are the point person for all climate policies so you set up a notification for “Climate” within your office. When your colleague created the post about the Brooklyn wind turbines, you received a notification. Now, without the need for messages, emails, or scrolling through Twitter yourself, you are aware of a news item that you can use in your work, saving you time and letting you focus on the policy work that you want to do. 

How to start using tags 

You can sign up for Legislata here and start creating posts – and tagging them – as soon as you’d like.  

You can also request access to the Massachusetts State Government and Massachusetts Elections offices to see tags in action and stay on top of events without scrolling until you run out of battery. Fill out the below form and we’ll be in touch within a day.