Yesterday 12th December 2012 at 2:28 am, in the world day of the communication Benedict XVI became the first tweeting “Pope” ever in the history.
Not at all a Holy Spirit inspired first tweet, just an official hi to the 1,089,895 followers that the @Pontifex account got along the nine days before the “Pope” tweeted anything.
And I say the “Pope”, because Benedict XVI, the same as many of the spiritual and religious leaders around the world, who already had their own accounts in this social network, do not know how the hell a tweet is sent.
The first “Pope’s” tweet consisted of just a welcoming hi a polite thank you and a blessing.
“Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart,” the “Pope” tweeted and got 59,088 retweets and 21,299 favorites.
Who wouldn’t like to become the community manager of such Holy Shepperd’s fan club?
Claire Diaz Ortiz (Manager of Social Innovation at Twitter) points at blog.twitter.com that “Spiritual and religious leaders around the world spread their messages and maintain an exceptionally strong presence on Twitter. Perhaps not surprisingly, we see a very high level of engagement with religious and spiritual content: followers respond to these topics with replies, retweets, and clicks on links much more often than they do other subjects. From globally-recognized names to local pastors and faith groups, a wide range of spiritual leaders embrace Twitter to minister to their communities and share meaningful messages.”
Let’s have a look at the minister work at @Pontifex there are just seven messages hanging from the channel and all of them tweeted on 12th December. There’s no trace of the answers to the questions by the people tweeted with the hastag #AskPontifex and ther’s a poor crop of 0 messanges and 0 answers on 13th December.
Let’s see how busy shows the account in next days and months, but if this is just the pattern, I’m affraid that @Pontifex is one of those showcase accounts, aimed to receive the applause of fans, but not interested at all in engaging in an interactive conversation.
If one compare the @Pontifex account activity with the @DalaiLama, the official Twitter channel of the Dalai Lama one can read 864 tweets, which are widely retweeted by thousand of tweeters and earn thousands of favorites. The account posts 5,721,783 followers.
As the great part of the spiritual leaders on Twitter, including the Pope, the Dalai Lama does not follow anyone but himself and as Benedict XVI the buddhist leader does not tweet himself.
If the Vatican is just interested in generating buzz around the account both among catholic and not catholic tweetwers, perhaps this is a good idea. In fact there are thousands of retweets and favourites in each message. Just a couple of them have failed to engage the holy shepperd’s fans.
The #AskPontifex initiative rose a lot of comments with the hastag, altough not precisely to rise questions to the Pope.
But it would be a pitty that the catholic church lose the golden opportunity of starting a direct conversation from the very head with people around the world, instead of just adding an actually mute blue bird shape to the Pope’s logo.
Image over the headline.- Bednedict XVI logo and Twitter logo.
Related Eastwind Marketing links:
Most countries, still not taking advantage of “Twitplomacy”
http://www.eastwindmarketing.es/blogs/eastwindmarketingycomunicacion/en/2012/11/22/most-countries-still-not-taking-advantage-of-twitplomacy/
