Go @Sweden!

Casper Hedberg for The New York Times (from article)Sweden wants its citizens to run the country's Twitter account @Sweden. Each week, a new citizen is selected to tweet for the entire week.

This is an amazing idea – get actual people who represent your “brand” to guest Tweet. Sure, it gets unruly. Absolutely there are going to be missteps. But if your brand is about people – why not get those people to share what they think is awesome about life?

Check out the article from the New York Times. The gist is – each week, a Swede is selected to run the @Sweden twitter account. You can’t nominate yourself – but once selected –the general mentoring you get is: Remember how many people are following you and be good. (Sounds like the first line of my social media 101 workshop) People as young as 16 and youngish as 60 have been selected so far.

This strategy is the sort of thing that gets me excited about the way we communicate via social media. The Swedish government sanctions this. It’s how Sweden hopes to show the diversity of its people and build tourism.  That sort of risk taking and brand identity sharing is needed with social media. Yes, even among community managers. We manage the community – we don’t have to be the sole voice of the community.  We thrive on authenticity – what’s more authentic than allowing your consumers (or citizens) to speak for themselves?

Update: Did I speak too soon? Aparently, the citizen from this week is a troll (someone who posts to entice controversy) Sweden has not stepped in to censor her - they are decidedly against censorship. Definitely check out the story, it's going to be interesting to see how they handle the negative (and offensive posts) this week.