Twitter Tips for Nonprofits

We recently reached out to a group of nonprofit leaders and consultants asking them to share their insights and tips for how nonprofits can best utilize Twitter.  The contributor’s kindly granted us permission to share their thoughts with you.  While the topic of discussion took place in a group focused on nonprofits, many of these Twitter tips will be helpful to anyone using Twitter.  What follows is a transcript of a discussion that took place in a LinkedIn group and, as such, is conversational in nature.  We encourage you to visit the Twitter profiles of the respondents.  Of course, if you use LinkedIn you’ll find them in that online community as well.  Clearly they all have valuable information to share and we already eagerly follow them ourselves!

To get it started our friend @stephenpeacock asked the group

Question: Do you have Twitter Tips for Nonprofits?

@terrymslobodian shared:

I would suggest that a great place to start would be www.business.twitter.com/twitter101. It does a good job explaining Twitter, shares best practices and case studies. I would also recommend reading Twitter Power and following established Twitter- ers (Tweeters) such as yourself.

@aranelleconsult added,

We’re running into orgs that are giving up too soon on Twitter. Our advice: just keep at it. Try different styles. This is new for everyone. A little goes a long way. Block the junky/spammy followers and keep building a strategic followers list that will have long term value. Educate your internal stakeholders (board members and staff) to start twittering for you and about you and celebrate with you. Keep your tweets positive and substantive. A little sarcasm is okay, just don’t post too much doom and gloom about funding. Talk about program outcomes and people you have really helped. Celebrate with your followers but don’t gush…be honest and authentic. Tell jokes from Twitter adventures (people you have met online) at board and staff meetings, engage with people outside of the virtual world face to face in order to engage with you on Twitter. Make it fun. Followers will follow

@terrymslobodian replied,

Great advice, Leigh! What do you find is the best way to add a strategic following- which Twitter tools would you recommend? I have found Twellow, Twibes and Wefollow to be helpful.

@aranelleconsult returned with,

All good tools, Terry. I’m little less automated. I have several I want to try but haven’t yet had time. Have been doing manual searches of what catches my attention as an advocate, simply surfing and using Mr. Tweet. I also look for Twitter handles in other media I’ve historically followed (Linked In, blogs and news, ads) and listen for them on the radio. I still have a long way to go, but am enjoying the journey.

To which @terrymslobodian added,

“The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.” – Don Williams Jr.

Mr. Tweet is also good. One of the great things about our profession is the joy of always learning and growing.

Then @WANatlParkFund joined the conversation,

Great info all. The advice we received from a board member who directs Strategic Partnerships for Microsoft, with a focus on Twitter and Facebook, suggested

1. post interesting, mission related and newsy content at least once every day;
2. Re-Tweet (RT) related content from our followers to “share the love.”

Our Twitter page has been live for about 6 weeks and we are clearly reaching out to and engaging new audiences

@hendrey shared some very specific tips and helpfully provided examples,

I have two practical suggestions. First, add a social bookmarking module like Add This to your non-profit’s website to make it easier for your visitors to tweet your cause to their own networks.

Second, a related, common practice is to add a “Tweet this now” message to your organization’s email blasts. When the viewer clicks the link, they’re routed to Twitter and a pre-written cause-related tweet is displayed. All they have to do is click “Update” to retweet it.

It’s up to the organization to maximize their chances of catching the wave of supporters’ extended networks and interests via Twitter. The following is an example of a tweet I was encouraged to retweet earlier this week.

“Tell Verizon Wireless: Stop co-sponsoring a pro-coal, anti-environment rally. ‘edited short url’ (via @CREDOMobile)”

This tweet is okay, but who’s going to see it? My few followers and @CREDOMobile’s existing followers. It’s not just preaching to the choir; it’s preaching to the choir section leaders, practically. (Since I’m also the founder of LinkedIn Choral Enthusiasts, I’ll go for an extended metaphor here.) What I’m sure CREDO wants to do, though, is also preach to all the singers and music-lovers who haven’t yet discovered the choir, right?

My suggestion is to do more with this kind of tweet set-up. Before retweeting, I retooled CREDO’s tweet in a way I thought would make it likely to reach even more networks, and be more retweeted:

“Tell #Verizon to stop sponsoring a pro- #coal, anti- #environment rally w/that nut Hannity. ‘edited short url’ Pls RT #energy #va #wv ”

Okay, so now you know what I think of Sean Hannity (I did not hash him–# Hannity–since I didn’t want to intentionally attract CREDO detractors), but that’s beside the point. My tweet has a higher likelihood of being seen by anyone interested in Verizon, coal, environment, energy, VA, and WV…and that’s a lot of potentially-interested folks who aren’t (yet) CREDO supporters.

If you wait for your supporters to take the time to “improve” your pre-fab tweets, you won’t have a satisfactory outcome. First, very few supporters will bother to do this. I’m just really geeky and couldn’t help myself! Second, you may lose control over your message if it does get retooled. Notice that in my re-writing, I actually dropped the name of the organization. So you want to write a really good tweet that will be retweeted as-is, and will be seen by as many interested parties as possible.

Here’s a pre-fab tweet from BoldProgressives.org that did a good job, and which I happily retweeted as it was:

“Petition Congress, pass the Kennedy Bill (and nothing less). ‘edited short url’ @BoldProgressive #kennedy #hc09 “

@BTalisman kept the discussion going,

Great discussion and resources. I am finding clients overwhelmed with the social media – too much to do, too little time and human resources. Tools we are using to make it more accessible and usable are ping.fm which will send your tweets to all or any social media sites you choose. It gets better when ping.fm integrates with Hootsuite.  Hootsuite allows you to schedule your tweets. And allows more than one tweeter. So we have been able to engage staff, board and volunteer in tweeting – scheduling them – editing as necessary and amping up the content and output to really get some messaging out there.

We try to average at least 6-10 tweets a day output- very message driven – stats – mission – program – challenges – questions – events – news – facts. We also spend time RT participating in #followfriday and #charitytuesday to share the luv. Twitter karma is based on give and take (like all karma). Also we have to spend time acknowledging those who follow and have developed a standard message we cut and paste into a DM once or twice a week to check followers, follow them or block them. All important moves on Twitter.

Facebook had been the realm of a person at the agency until we were able to set up formal pages, cause pages etc. So Tweets are sent automatically, but an hour a day is spent reviewing friends and responding and posting events etc.

We have formed LinkedIn groups for clients when appropriate.

We have also established YouTube Channels for clients when appropriate.

Blog blog blog – like Twitter – more than one person can post. It is not the responsibility of ONE person.

All is linked to the motherlode of a website. I view the ecosystem of the social media focused around the organization’s website. Linking back as often as possible.

AND all of this must be a PART of an overall marketing and communications strategy.

The whole conversation hit a note for @terrymslobodian who shared,

Great discussion, all! This link identifies 90 foundations and foundation staff are on Twitter You may want to follow some of them and learn some other best practices.

@aranelleconsult returned with even more thoughts,

Just to add to Barbara’s great tips, we used to use to recommend Ping.fm with some of our clients but felt that it doesn’t work with all content and can make you look a little spammy to your followers if they are also following you in multiple social media sites. I think it’s great if you are doing alerts like school closings or flu updates, but constantly pushing a webinar everywhere on Ping can make your follower’s eyes glaze over and they will start mentally ignoring you. We have used Tweetlater (editor’s note: TweetLater is now SocialOomph)and are starting to look at Hootsuite as it has a better looking interface…but can be slow. Setting up “weekend” posts so you can have a life is a great strategy, but again, remember to not get too lazy or too automated. (People can see right through it and be turned off) We think it is better to sometimes just take a break so you can stay fresh and relevant. During the week or during major events we advocate doing “live” posts as much as possible in order better engage followers and remain as original as possible.

@BTalisman returned once again to add,

I would contend scheduling appropriate tweets is okay as long as they are fresh – so looking at the week ahead for an organization – press conference, special event, facts about the mission/work, volunteer opportunities lots of stuff that can be tweeted in advance and still be timely…leaves much more time for the impromptu up to the minute tweeting as long as most of the content is current. And engaging others in the process certainly helps. I would never advocate only scheduling tweets, but when human and financial resources are tight- it helps keeps the messages flowing.

So there you go fellow TwitterFools, some great insights from a generous group of nonprofit professionals. Several even went above and beyond and included their thoughts on other social networking sites and tools as well.  We are most grateful to them all for sharing with us.  Remember, go follow them now.

This is still an active conversation thread on LinkedIn and if more useful tips are shared we’ll be sure to post an update in the future.  For now, we’d really be interested to hear what you think. So, before leaving…please share your thoughts below.