MPs on Twitter: Te Ururoa Flavell

Te Ururoa Flavell is the Maori Party MP for the Maori seat of Waiariki. He has been an MP since the 2005 Election.

Te Ururoa has a back ground in education and teaching.

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He has been on Twitter for just over 3 years, he is not a high user of Twitter, having only sent 735 Tweets in those 3 years. However, he does have a solid following, with over 2,000 followers. For someone with such a low number of Tweets this is a pretty good following.

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There is a high number of links in his Tweets, which I will refer to later on. However, what stands out to me is the fact that 255 of his Tweets, or around 1/3 of the, have been reTweeted, and on average those have been reTweeted twice. This is a rather good level of reTweets. However it would be interesting to see who those reTweets come from.

 

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I do like that he uses Maori in his Tweets. However, as I talked about in my tips for MPs/Candidates post, linking Facebook and Twitter accounts together is something that I wouldn’t recommend. But I recommend that Te Ururoa, and other MPs, keep up the use of Maori in their Tweets.

 

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These little Tweets about what he is up to help to inform people about the busy life of an MP. It would be nice if he followed up some of them with a photo the next day.

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I know it can be difficult getting good images with a cell phone, but images like this kind of defeat the purpose. It is possible to get good images with a cell phone, with some practice.

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It is good to see him reTweeting images that he is in. Normally I would comment on the soft nature of this image, but I know how hard it is to get good images on a cell phone, inside, early in the morning.

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Using something like the Nike+ app is a good thing to see, we have all heard the stories of Maori being over represented in negative statistics for health. Having leaders set good examples, and talk about it online is a good thing. Keep talking about it Te Ururoa!

 

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Te Ururoa is also willing to speak his mind and be forceful on Twitter. Which is a good thing. there is nothing worse than following an MP who isn’t willing to speak their mind.

 

Over all Te Ururoa is doing a good job, he has a good following, who obviously interact with him. He just needs to build on that. I would suggest not linking Facebook and Twitter. Treat them as the different creatures that they are.

matthew