Follow Friday: @janschakowsky

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) is “only now kind of getting more warmed up to Twitter,” according to her office. Her journey toward social media inspiration began in mid-October with her first-ever virtual town hall, a new but now fairly common practice by members of Congress in the digital age.

“All these new technological advances have offered new opportunities to communicate with constituents,” Schakowsky told The Hill. “Hundreds of people now follow my updates regularly because of the town hall I did on Twitter.”

Adjoa Adofo, Schakowsky’s press secretary said: “I believe that was the most she ever tweeted, but she truly enjoyed it. I think her words right after were ‘Well, let’s do that again!’”

Schakowsky will occasionally write her own tweets for @janschakowsky, but usually she’ll tell a staff member to tweet for her, Adofo said. Staff tweets keep constituents in the northern suburbs of Chicago up to date about what she’s saying on the floor and in media appearances, and how she plans to vote on certain issues.

The congresswoman “is more familiar with Facebook,” Adofo said, explaining the many cross-links posted on Twitter from the other social media site. “She also, I think, has a personal profile on Facebook.”

While she is still acclimating to Twitter, Schakowsky recognizes the benefits of the micro-blogging tool. This year, she used it to help raise awareness for an issue she is passionate about: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps.

This year, Schakowsky, who also participated in the food stamp challenge — a pledge to live on food stamps for a week — used her Twitter account to keep her almost 5,000 followers in the loop.

Schakowsky took recipe suggestions from her followers, printed out the recipes and carried them around with her all day.

“And she actually took it to a press conference and kind of waved around everyone’s tweets saying, ‘Hey, this is what I got on Twitter and these are the suggestions I got,’” Adofo said. “So she really did take people’s suggestions when she developed how she would plan out her week with the food stamp challenge.”

Schakowsky has also been helped along in her initial uncertainty about Twitter by Democratic leadership, who have hosted an annual social media competition for members for the past two years. 

“She was very gung-ho about that [this year],” Adofo said. “She placed pretty well.”

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