How many staffers reportedly had to approve a tweet for the Mitt Romney 2012 campaign Twitter account?

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TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

8 Dec 2014 · 2 min

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A short spoken segment from TJ Walker's live-stream in which he reports on a University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) study finding that Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign required 22 staffers to approve tweets. Walker critiques this as overly bureaucratic for real-time social media use, argues for a streamlined approval process (suggesting no more than about three approvers), and notes the trade-off between speed and risk when assigning posting authority.

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A new report from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hills shows that Mitt Romney's campaign, when it was putting out a Twitter post, had to be approved by 22 staffers. Folks, if you were thinking the Mitt Romney campaign wasn't the quickest on foot, quickest to react to things in the media and political charges throughout 2012, well, you now have more ammunition. A new study into the organizational structure of that campaign reveals that 22 separate staffers had to sign off before a tweet could be posted to the Mitt Romney for President Twitter account. Now, folks, I understand you're running for president. You can't just assign this to one 23 year old staffer and let this person say anything and everything anytime, because it could blow up in your face and you could spend all of your time reacting to crises in the media that you've made for yourself. So it can't just be one person, but 22. I don't know how you do anything with 22 people approving without it taking a week. And it reminds you of that old children's game where you whisper in one ear and you go around the circle and the message becomes something completely different after it's gone through that many ears and that many mouths. So, message to future presidential candidates, you've got to have a streamlined operation when it comes to your Twitter account. 22 is too many. One may be too few, but at some point I think the number shouldn't get more than about three, otherwise you're going to lose the ability to use it as a news medium. And at some point it becomes an archive medium only.