Some social media accounts are meant to inform about what a program, department or organization is doing. If is just an announcement account: we are having this event, we are having a press conference, here is something we want you to know, etc. that's okay... but it means your social media activities are probably NOT worth following.
Twitter is not the most popular social media platform overall, it doesn't have the biggest number of users of any social media platform, but to reach certain audiences, it is the very BEST social media platform. This page is about getting the most out of it.
Just as there is no one-size-fits-all event that will do everything you need - recruit donors, thank volunteers, educate clients, etc. - there is no one magical social media app that will reach everyone you want to reach and no single way to use a social media app to get the success your organization desires. Twitter is one tool in a nonprofit's, non-governmental orgnanization's (NGO), charity's or government's toolbox of ways to communicate, but you will still probably have to use other tools.
The web page you are reading now is specifically about Twitter, but some of the advice is applicable to other social media channels - and whatever comes next. But remember: Twitter is not Facebook. Instagram is not Twitter. Whatever the next big thing in social media is probably not like anything else. You are going to have to adjust how you communicate on each social media platform that you choose to use, just as you have to adjust how you communicate to a room full of 30 corporate executives versus 100 teenagers in an auditorium versus an office meeting with two of your board members.
No nonprofit has just one communication goal. A nonprofit theater for children is not only going to try to sell tickets for its productions but also to try to educate the public about the importance of the arts for young people. A nonprofit that helps empower young women to use computer technology is going to market to get participants in its programs but also promote awareness about why such a mission is needed. A nonprofit that serves the homeless has certain message specifically for clients and different messaging for those it wants to donate money.
I like breaking up external marketing activities into four areas:
That first two bullets are the easy categories and these are how most nonprofits use social media. But nonprofits that limit themselves to just these functions are very much missing out on the power of social media. For those nonprofits, social media is just a box to check, and they probably wonder regularly if it's really benefiting them.
Using public communications to talk to current participants, volunteers and donors can help recruit more participants, volunteers and donors, for instance. And organizations miss out even more on the benefits on social media because they don't create activities to encourage a change in behavior, to encourage a particular way of viewing something or to generate emotional support for a cause: the importance of wearing bicycle helmets, the value of performing arts to a community's quality of life, spaying or neutering dogs and cats, how to fight government corruption, etc. That kind of awareness-building affirms that the nonprofit is relevant and necessary, and can support all of the communications goals of a nonprofit .
In addition, social media is more than an online billboard or a flyer on a bulletin board - it's an engagement tool. Nonprofits that benefit from social media use it to ask questions of followers, to respond to follower comments, to solicit feedback, etc.It is because of these different ways that different programs within one organization may want to use Twitter and because audiences want to customize the kinds of information they receive that some organizations have more than one Twitter account. This page will also help agencies decide if having different Twitter accounts for different audiences is appropriate.
On another page, I talk about daily/regular tasks your program should be undertaking via Twitter and Facebook. And on yet another page, I detail how a nonprofit, government agency, charity, school or other cause-based program should evaluate its online activities, emphasizing that online action should create and support offline action (not just hundreds of "likes", but more volunteers, repeat volunteers, new donors, repeat donors, more clients, repeat clients, legislation, or public pressure on elected officials, etc.).
But this page is about a Twitter strategy, specifically (though, as I mentioned earlier, some of this can be adapted for other social media use).
Your Twitter account - the name that follows @ - needs to be easy to remember and recognizable. It's limited to just 15 characters. Your organization or program name is probably too long for your Twitter account name. A recognizable acronym is a good choice, but it might already be taken. If you are a nonprofit shelter of some kind, could you combine the word shelter with the name of your city, if it's short enough - like @tomtownshelter? If you are a government program focused on parks, could your account be something like @tomtownparks?
Your Twitter name can be longer (50 characters) and it should be the FULL name of your organization or program, if at all possible. A user should see your Twitter name and know what company, organization or program that account is associated with.
Your Twitter description should have the full name of your organization or program if it could not be contained in your Twitter name. If the program is part of an agency, this is where the full name of that agency should appear. If there is room, your description can also have any keyword tags you use frequently. Here's more about the awesome power of tweet tags.
Following these guidelines means people will be able to more easily find your agency, organization or program's Twitter account. People are going to search for your account using your organization's name or your program name. This means that putting your mission statement in your Twitter description is probably NOT a good idea - that's not how people will find you.
Try to find nonprofits in your area or that are national organizations that you are particularly familiar with via a Twitter search. Note how hard many are to find because they never use their full name in their Twitter profile!
Here's an example of all this in practice - the League of Women Voters in Washington County, Oregon.
The Twitter account name is this: 
@LWVWashcoOR.
It's not what I would have chosen, but it works.
For the Twitter name: League of Women Voters Washington County OR.
For the Twitter description, the account doesn't have to use the full name, since almost all of the key words from the chapter's name are in the Twitter name. That allows for other words to be used so that people can find the account by searching. In this case, the account went with the names of as many cities in the county where it works as possible, as well as the word "Oregon" so that it was crystal clear which state this chapter is in. The account also has hashtag keywords that the account uses in its own tweets and looks for most often. The resulting description, which you can see in the illustration and as text below:
LWV WashCo, Oregon. Hillsboro, Beaverton, Tigard, Sherwood, Cornelius, Forest Grove, Banks, North Plains, Gaston, Gales Creek #elections #vote #voting #orpol
Because of these choices, if someone is looking for League of Women Voters Hillsboro, on Twitter, they are going to find it. And because the word Oregon is in the description, anyone who sees this will be able to know which account is Oregon and which is, say, Florida.
Because there was room for more text in the description, I put in these keywords/tags: #Oregon, #elections, #vote, #Vote #Voting #OrPol (it means Oregon politics - it's a popular hashtag in Oregon) and #Politics. That way, if someone were searching, say, Oregon and politics or Oregon and elections, the account would come up in the search.
And one of the things I'm most proud of about this account was I was in charge of it: the national office and the then-president of the national offices ended up following our little all-volunteer chapter on Twitter.
Some social media accounts are meant to inform about events that are coming up: we are having this event, we are having a press conference, this just got published, our offices are closed because of snow, etc. That's a good way to use Twitter, and you should use it for that. However, you really should be posting other information as well:
Many organizations use social media to sharing information that encourage a change in behavior, or a particular way of viewing an issue, or encouraging general, emotional or mental support for a cause. Depending on the mission of your organization, these could be tweets about:
These could include quotes from famous people, celebrities or politicians that tie to your mission. These absolutely can also include retweets! Retweeting other organizations' is a fantastic way to both promote your cause and to show solidarity with others (and they may even start retweeting you as a result).
Social media is NOT one-way communication. Any social media account should include a focus on engagement. If all you do is post information to your Twitter account, with no likes, no comments, no questions and no retweets, and you also never like tweets by other organizations, never comment on such, never ask questions and don't retweet, you aren't using Twitter - or any other social media - correctly. By engaging with others online, you:
Ask questions of your followers, respond to follower comments, post polls, etc. Make time to do this at least twice a week - have a Twitter time just for activities to generate engagement: like other tweets, comment on other tweets, ask a question in response to a tweet, etc.
Also, consider jumping in on a trending topic. If #Haiku
is suddenly trending, for instance, it means that, somehow, tweets that
are Haikus are suddenly something a lot of people are doing, and taking
it with #Haiku. Throw together a Haiku about a program!
#ThoughtfulThursday often trends on Thursdays - what could you tweet
with that tag about your program?
Another way to engage users is by live tweeting - posting to Twitter while you are at an event - your own event or one by someone else. Live tweeting is a great way to engage with an online audience, but it can be hard to balance sharing info as it's spoken or happening and not overwhelming your audience.
Live tweets should:
You don't have to tweet every minute or even every five minutes. Just a few times in an hour could be enough. Live tweets could be from:
Who you follow on Twitter says a lot about your organization. People will post "following does not mean endorsement", but it is still seen that way by many people. Some of my rules for a nonprofit, NGO, government program, etc. for following others on Twitter:
Should you follow political parties on Twitter? You may - but if you do, stick with local offices and follow ALL OF THEM. At the LWV affiliate, for instance, I had the account set up to follow all political parties in Oregon - we were focused on getting people to vote and to know where to find information about candidates and legislation, so following all political parties fit into that mandate. A better idea might be to put those groups on a private Twitter list and check that list regularly to see what they are saying.
You can follow personal accounts - a consultant, an employee or a volunteer's Twitter account - if those accounts are dedicated primarily to your cause, and there are no posts on those accounts that, in association, would cause someone to doubt the credibility or character of your organization.
Do NOT follow:
I limit my followers to less than 1000. I put absolutely every person I follow on a Twitter list, and I look at my Twitter lists regularly to see, say, only tweets by accounts that focus on capacity-building for nonprofits, accounts focused on Afghanistan, or my colleagues.
If you tag someone on a Tweet - if you use their Twitter handle in your message - that person receives a notice when you tweeted that message. Use this function when you want to associate a tweet with someone for the public to see, and you know that person or staff at that organization would like being associated with what you have tweeted. Don't use it just to get someone's attention - if you want someone to see your tweet, send them an instant message on Twitter linking to the tweet and saying, "I want to make sure you see this."
I've got more about the awesome power of tweet tags here.
The answer to this question is maybe.
A client that follows your Twitter account will probably want a lot of very different information than a financial donor might want, and vice versa. And if your organization promotes a particular cause - say, gardening at home - there are people that may want to see only posts related to that cause and not all of your other information (office hour changes, where your executive director will be on Friday, etc.).
People don't want to try to read and consume all information out there - they want to focus on specific information and topics. HOWEVER, it's unrealistic for most organizations to create multiple Twitter accounts.
That said, a lot of organizations never consider the possibility of doing so, and they should. United Nations and government agencies frequently make this mistake: they suddenly decide to close all social media accounts within their agency except for the main one. Social media accounts within one agency should be combined ONLY if the audience for ALL of those accounts is, for the most part, the exact same people. And the reality is that, very often, different programs communicate in very different ways. And from a user and reader standpoint, social media should allow a person to customize the kind of information they see, through who they "follow" and who they "like."
Picture a county government that has several different departments managing very different projects: one department manages roads, one manages building and land use permits, one manages parks and recreational sites, one manages public health programs, etc. If I run a nonprofit organization focused on a public health issue, I want to follow a Twitter account that tells me JUST about county government public health program activities - I don't want to slog through tweets about road closures. Plus, that public health department may want to do more than just share press releases: they may want to share messages reminding the general public the importance of hand washing to avoid the flu or encouraging the public to ask questions about a specific public health issue. Those messages are going to get lost amid posts about a change in the building permit process. The person managing a social media account for that public health program is going to have a different way of managing that account than the person managing the overall Twitter account for the county government, which may be just an announcement-type account rather than one that is focused on building people's awareness about an issue, promoting behavior change, soliciting feedback, etc.
Here's another example: a United Nations country office has a number of
different programs: one focused on de-mining post-conflict areas, one
focused on political reforms, one focused on combating child labor, one
focused on maternal health, one focused on encouraging energy efficiency
and consumer-level practices that help the environment, and on and on. It
would be a mistake for that UN country office to limit its Twitter
activity to one overall Twitter account for all of these programs, because
each of these programs have VERY different audiences and very different
ways of communicating. Absolutely, that UN country office needs an overall
Twitter account. But I would argue that each of those programs could
justify having its own Twitter account as well.
Absolutely, the main government agency Twitter account can (and should!)
retweet some messages from its individual programs' accounts, so that
partner agencies, the media, government officials and donors can see them.
But an individual program may need its own Twitter account.
In short, to defend a Twitter account, a program has to be able to show how its audience is very different than the main agency account, and that to force it to use only the main account would bury its messages in a sea of information the followers it wants really don't care about.
Do NOT create a gateway from Instagram or Facebook or any other social media platform so that whatever you post there gets posted to Twitter. If you do, many of your tweets won't make sense. Twitter is NOT Facebook - your messages there won't look as they should on Twitter with any of those gateway tools. Plus, the audiences on Twitter are very different than on Facebook. Also, these gateways break frequently, so that the photo you posted on one platform doesn't show up on Twitter.
Scheduling tweets is okay, but it puts a layer between you and your audience. It's fine to schedule tweets, but you still need to log on, at least twice a week, and undertake the engagement activities that are posted here, as well as the daily/regular tasks your program should be undertaking via Twitter.
