Your Online Presence > Managing Content, Strategy & Development

To Twitter or not to Twitter?

By Lasa Information Systems Team

There has been a lot of talk and publicity recently about Twitter and its uses. This article will look at how Twitter could be used by voluntary organisations and things to think about if you enter the world of Twitter.

What is Twitter?

Twitter describes itself as “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers”.

Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt describes twitter as “I view all of these as sort of poor man's email systems”.

The truth is somewhere in-between.

In these tough financial times it is worth considering how to advertise and promote your organisation. Twitter allows you to get short/sharp messages out free of charge (apart from time and possible costs involved with using mobile phones to update) and also follow others you are interested in.

Paul Bradshaw of Birmingham University provides a useful beginner’s guide to Twitter and how to get started.

Why use Twitter?

Twitter can be used as a quick way for organisations to get their message out there. Supporters and potential donors can be updated with news, launching campaigns, recruit volunteers, advertise events, fundraising and ask people to write letters of support, share pictures and stories and seek comments.

The interconnecting networks of users help organisations to spread their message far and wide.

Who is using Twitter?

Three are a growing number of examples of voluntary and community groups currently using twitter:

• Bullying UK
• Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
• Voluntary Action Manchester
• The Dogs Trust
• NCVO

How to use Twitter?

Twitter only provides 140 characters per “tweet” it is vital that organisations get their message across in a short/sharp manner.

Provide useful information in your tweets: Post links to useful information in your field of interest, or that you think your followers will enjoy. Also, do not over-promote your cause. People will learn about your cause indirectly by following you and seeing you as an expert in your area.

How to reply to other tweets: When replying to someone on twitter, use the @ symbol before their username, i.e. @username. They will be able to see that in their @Replies section, which is available in the right-hand bar of their home page. It is important to have conversations with other twitter users to strengthen your network and meet others.

Think carefully about your biography: Make sure you have a biography in your profile so people can see who you are. Trust plays an important role in the world of social media, so you must give people real, credible information about yourself.

Tagging: As with all social networking tools tagging is vital for making better connections and helping people find your information. For planning events and campaigns a consistent tag allows tweets on that subject to be found much more easily, for example #crconf09 is the tag being used for the 2009 Circuit Rider conference. Type the tag at the start of your tweet and then people can find all tweets with that tag, see #crconf09.  For more information on tagging see the Knowledgebase article Let's Play Tag.

For more tips on using Twitter see www.change.org for 10 Twitter Tips for Nonprofit Organisations.

How much does Twitter cost?

Setting up a Twitter account in free. The costs in using Twitter come in terms of the amount of time organisations spend posting tweets and following other users.

One of the features of Twitter is that it can work with mobile phones to update from anywhere you have a phone signal. This means that updates can be made from an organisations conference and events. The cost of updating this way will be the same as the cost of sending an SMS (text message).

Twitter Tools

As well as updating your Twitter stream via www.twitter.com there are also a number of tools to allow you to do this from your desk or on the move:

• Thwirl A desktop client. Most of the features available on the Twitter website are accessible through twhirl, too. Plus, a lot of usability enhancements have been added.
• Tweetdeck As well as being able to tweet users can also split their main Twitter feed (All Friends) into columns allowing a broader overview of tweets.
• Accessible Twitter A development site creating an accessible interface for twitter.
• Mobile phones: According to Twitter “Sending updates to Twitter while you're away from your computer makes things much more interesting.” This is really easy to set up but it is vital to know what your text plan looks like to avoid unexpected large phone bills.
• Twitter feeds: There are a number of feeds to allow tweets to be updated on to a website. Twitter badges allow feed to be embedded in to your website, there are also other tools available such as twitterfeed.

Things to consider

One of the biggest questions to consider when using Twitter (or any other social media tool) for an organisation is that of “voice”. Is the person speaking on their own behalf or that of the organisation?

Organisations may also want to consider having more than one voice on twitter if there are particular and distinct areas of work, especially as this is likely to mean different audiences for different pieces of work.

For more information see the Knowledgebase Article Determining Your Social Network Needs.

Conclusion

Twitter can be a useful for organisations to get their message across and follow other like-minded organisations.

Though if an organisation is going to enter the world of twitter it is important this is planned and they know what they are going to say and how often they are going to say it. Rather than just signing up to Twitter because everyone else is...

For more information on social networking sites see the Knowledgebase article Should Your Organisation Use Social Networking Sites.

Making decisions about social networking can be difficult, to discuss this issues further visit the knowledgebase Your Online Presence discussion forum. If your organisation is considering social networking or has had real success it would be really useful to hear about your experiences.