ONS Digital

The Autumn Statement was on 23 November and once again, we decided to tweet our statistics during the speech.

We organise and coordinate a live tweet-along to events such as the Budget and Autumn Statement to inform the debate and demonstrate transparency in the statistics which may inform these decisions.

Looking at the analytics from the recent tweet-along, the increase in new followers to the @ONS twitter account demonstrates that tweeting along to events increases the awareness of ONS and shows how we are reaching new users.

The engagement with our stats, as seen below, peaks due to the Autumn Statement tweet-along. The majority of the engagement is retweets of our content. This means we are reaching a much wider audience than just those who follow us on twitter. This is why our impressions are much higher in the bar chart below.

Read the most shared tweets from the ONS Twitter account during the Autumn Statement:

https://twitter.com/ONS/status/801434766331486209/photo/1

There was also a peak in replies during this time period; this demonstrates that we are building new relationships and answering questions people may have about the data, which is good for reputation and strengthening relationships online. After all, social media is a conversation and should have two-way dialogue.

We get lots of positive feedback from users about sharing our stats in a relevant, open way. We got some nice tweets from followers:

We’re not the only people to be sharing our statistics and adding data to the conversation around the speech. Some data-savvy journalists also pulled out data about the productivity puzzle and welfare spending during the online debate:

https://twitter.com/cromulentjosh/status/801410168005201920

Our social media team coordinates the event but we couldn’t do it without the help of statistical experts across the organisation. We had an amazing cross-section of statistical areas covered, some statisticians were live in the room, tweeting on the fly and others were taking part from across the UK. Here are some of the most shared tweets from our brilliant statisticians:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/801405504228642816

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/801411639929176064

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/801411949703680000

To follow our experts, please see our Twitter list of tweeting statisticians and follow them for the latest data and insights in their field.

If you would like to get in touch or have any questions about work we do in the social media team, please tweet me or email me.