Who is @GreenPhillyDave?

If you’re active in the local Twitterverse you have may have interacted with or come across Dave Greene, an enthusiastic green-minded local resident who is involved in everything from shiitake mushroom growing to advocating for the Philly Land Bank. He is often engaging with those involved in the sustainability movement and cheering on green successes in Philadelphia.

As it turns out Dave Greene is a fictional social media character, not a real person, dreamed up by wind power energy company Clean Currents.

“What we wanted to do was to create a platform where we could help people find sustainable resources, live a greener life, and have some fun while doing it,” said Megan Barrett, communications manager for Clean Currents. “It’s been fun so far. People have asked if he is a real person and we’re very upfront with that.”

@GreenPhillyDave’s Twitter bio. 

Clean Currents was already involved in the conversation around sustainability through its partnerships, events, and campaigns such as the recent Lots of Power contest. But the company wanted to know if they could carry that same approach to community engagement into the digital world.

In Dave’s first blog post, he explains: “[Clean Currents] needed someone on the ground, someone to point out the great work other awesome organizations are doing to make Philly more sustainable, someone to help give a little bit more power to the great community of good works Philadelphia has to offer.”

Do you bike in the snow? I’m trying to figure out if I can handle another day of being soggy and frozen…

— Dave Greene (@GreenPhillyDave) December 10, 2013

From our Partners

Fingers crossed the Land Bank bill makes it through this session! @PhillyLandBank http://t.co/DSk2kNlLme

— Dave Greene (@GreenPhillyDave) November 27, 2013

To bring the character to life, the Clean Currents team sat down and created a personality profile of likes, dislikes and quirks. “Greene” is an obvious play on words and the name Dave was chosen for its familiarity. At 30 years old, he resides in 19147 zip code chosen for the sustainable activity going on in the area — think farmers’ markets, the South Philly Food Co-op, the Passyunk Gardens, Passyunk Avenue shops like Urban Jungle, Cloth, the various community gardens, and more.

A team of three employees contribute to the voice of Dave Greene who shares content and comments on local projects beyond renewable energy. Over on the Clean Currents blog, Dave provides opinions on avoiding Black Friday, failing at composting, and the scariest environmental problems.

For Clean Currents success isn’t exclusively measured by the number of likes and retweets.

“We were really more interested in having an audience that was engaged. We’ve changed some of our strategies to build a unique audience interested in what Dave is talking about and all the green things going on in Philly.”

You find more of Dave at facebook.com/GreenPhillyDave, on Twitter: @GreenPhillyDave and on cleancurrents.com.