Montevarchi, a small town of 24,000 in the province of Arezzo, is making a big name for itself on the Internet.
Over the past six years, the city government has amassed quite the social media presence: they launched their Twitter account in March 2009, joined Facebook in 2012 and capped it off recently with a You Tube channel. Pierluigi Ermini, who is responsible for the town council’s communications, explains that the platforms serve different purposes: Facebook contributes to a sense of community, while Twitter ‘mediates between the needs of the citizens, other institutions and public entities’.
It’s the Twitter page—@montevarchi—that is garnering the most success. The account keeps citizens up-to-date with real-time announcements and retweets of weather information, school cafeteria menus, upcoming plays and local festivities, coupled with photographs of life in the town and the rolling Tuscan countryside.
With around 17 tweets per day and over 1,100 followers, Montevarchi is one of the most social media savvy towns in Italy, in one of the least social regions. Tuscany is 15th in DeREv Consulting’s ranking of Italian regions by social media.
