It’s been a hectic first few months of Mayor-dom for Jennifer Roberts, who right now is in the midst of a clash with state government that’s gained national attention over Charlotte’s attempt to change it’s nondiscrimination ordinance.
Roberts has received praise and experienced vitriol for prioritizing her strong stance on inclusion into a council vote within two months of taking office, but today she gained national recognition of another kind, ranking among the nation’s most effective mayors on Twitter.
Marketing research group Development Counsellors International released a report today that ranks the mayors of the 250 largest U.S. cities by their effectiveness on Twitter during the first 60 days of 2016. New Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts ranked fourth on the list.
Roberts, who was sworn in on December 7, 2015, joins Stephanie Rawlings-Blake of Baltimore, Maryland; Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C.; William Peduto of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Stephen K. Benjamin of nearby Columbia, South Carolina as the top five tweeting mayors.
She said she enjoys using the platform as a way to speak with constituents and other city leaders, including Rawlings-Blake and Bowser, whom she has tweeted with in the past.
“I like to tweet back and forth with my constituency, to tell them about where I’ll be or events that are happening in our community, or reply to questions they might have,” Roberts said. “I tweet back and forth with other mayors, like with Denver’s mayor [Michael Hancock] when I wore a Broncos jersey after the Super Bowl because I said I would if we lost. So it can be fun sometimes or it can be a good way to talk about more serious things that are going on.”
Roberts joined Twitter with a personal account (@JenRobertsNC) in 2009 when she was a Mecklenburg County commissioner. She now uses her city-issued phone to run the mayoral account while keeping track of her personal account on her own phone. She said that it’s always her when a tweet goes out, unless she has someone snap a picture for her.
“I absolutely do tweet from my account,” Roberts said. “I may get a little bit of help if things start to get busy but I personally handle both of my accounts.”
DCI used a curved scale of five major criteria (see right) to judge just how connected any given mayor is through the micro-blogging site.
The interesting thing about the criteria is that Mayor Roberts did not rank within the top five in any of them individually, which assumingly means she was consistently cruising along somewhere near the top 10 in all of them.
The @CLTMayor account has been around longer than Roberts has served. In fact, it has been under the control of five Charlotte mayors now, including Roberts, as it was created in November 2012. This would have helped the new mayor in both audience and influence, but not in the other three, which strictly judged tweet activity between January 1 and February 29.
So the question remains: “That’s cool, I guess, but does it matter?”
It certainly doesn’t hurt Roberts to have such a connection with her constituents and others around the country. Mayors rarely vote in Charlotte, and much of their role is based on being a representative for the city. In battles like the ones she’s entrenched in now with Raleigh, it’s also a great platform from which to spread your message.
As the report’s authors wrote, “If Paul Revere had been a modern day citizen, he wouldn’t have ridden down Main Street. He would have tweeted.”
This article appears in Mar 23-29, 2016.
She might as well tweet all the time, because she is not spending the time on improving Charlotte job opportunities and support for small business owners that would create better jobs than a burger flipper or motel room cleaner.