Connection Café: Things To Do In Twitter

	Things To Do In Twitter
	Posted by at Mar 03, 2009 09:54 AM CST Categories: Constituent Empowerment, Nonprofit Trends, Social Media

I like Twitter, personally. I learn a lot from the flow of information out of Twitter. I am alerted to great articles, posts and presenatations I would probably never find. And I don’t think I am alone in feeling this way. In fact, I know I’m not alone. Twitter has had a banner 2008.

Statistics

• ~5 million users at the end of 2008

• 70% are new users

• 10 thousand new accounts created each day

• Net result is 600% growth in 2008

Statistics are courtesy of HubSpot.

So, I’m not the only one out there who became a new user in 2008 and who plans to keep using in 2009. But why? Some people say Twitter is just a bunch of noise, broken up into 140 character sound bytes. I agree, but I also disagree.

Why Tweet?

Twitter can be overwhelming. I remember the first time I added Twitterific to my iPhone and I suddenly saw this massive list of tweets by total strangers. I thought to myself, “No way am I going to use this!” But then I went directly to Twitter and saw how I could choose who to follow. Finally, I saw a manageable stream of information, and I began to see how I could benefit from it.

Side note: there is probably a way to do this in Twitterific, and it was just user error on my part, but I never did figure it out.

Like most social media, there is dialogue going on, and like Holly Ross and I have (independently, but great minds think alike) both said, the dialogue is more like a party than a conversation, with a lot of voices, but not so many that the action can’t be followed. It occurred to me, I could listen in on the conversation Connie Reece was having with David Armano and Beth Kanter. Now, who wouldn’t want to hear that, but until Twitter, how could you? It was as if I was suddenly invited to the cool kids’ party. And although I was still the invisible dork just listening, at least I was there.

Deanna Zandt has a great (and less embarassingly informative than my last three sentences) post on why people use Twitter. In it, she says organizations can use Twitter to spread the word, connect to the community and humanize your organization.

What are some nonprofits doing in Twitter?

These are some of my favorit examples of nonprofits doing great, creative things with Twitter.

Sharing news – Many nonprofits share news, articles, events, and resources via Twitter, simply by posting links in their tweets.

ACS

Tweet-ups – The Blood Center of Central Texas held a tweet-up to encourage people to give blood. People from the Austin area who are on Twitter and either came across the tweet-up or were in by someone else via tweet congregated to meet each other, and of course, donate blood. Learn more about the tweet-up.

Real-time customer support – The MD Anderson Cancer Center listens on Twitter by constantly searching for keywords, in an effort to find people who are at the facility who need help.

Deanna Zandt has another great post on how to use Twitter. If you are new to Twitter, it provides a nice overview of all the terms and basic practices to use.

What could they be doing?

Twitter could be an excellent tool to empower your constituents, provided they are supplied with plenty of fresh content, links, and enough encouragement. Using Twitter is easy enough, having something to say is the hard part. I could imagine an organization who knows their constituency uses Twitter in their personal lives running a “Tweet A Day” campaign. The campaign would consist of a place on the website to pick up pre-written tweets about any and all programs. Include links to program details, and use a service like tinyurl or other similar services to provide a Twitter friendly url. Encourage your constituents to pick these up and tweet one each day.

Don’t rely on constituents to act, though. Tweet these items yourself. Encourage your constituents to follow you on Twitter and re-tweet your information.

Another idea is to encourage your special event participants or personal fundraising page owners to tweet about their experiences. Ask them to cover both the physical participation experience (in the case of special events) as well as the peer to peer fundraising experience. Make sure they include links to their personal fundraising pages in the tweets. Imagine a walker tweeting once per mile about their experience on walk day, or a personal fundraising champion tweeting about the feeling they get when receiving a gift in support of their personal effort to stop global warming.

Twitter is an easy way to reach a lot of people, if you provide great content. Like all social media tools, however, it takes nuturing. You must spend time building content that matters. Also, in Twitter, you can only reach as many people as your social graph includes, so be friendly, follow other people who share your interests, find people who care about your mission who also have a lot of followers and ask them to re-tweet your material.

Things To Do In Twitter

Why Tweet?

What are some nonprofits doing in Twitter?

What could they be doing?

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