Are you thinking of Twitter as part of your nonprofit marketing mix? Learn more to know what it takes to be successful on this platform.
Twitter is not only a great platform to create awareness and reach out to qualified donor prospects but is also a great tool to broadcast volunteer opportunities.
Getting successful on Twitter requires you to learn the art of tweeting, i.e., creating (recreating) structured tweets, managing audience expectations, and most importantly, a good content strategy.
Three ways to Improve your Tweeting Strategy
1.Inform your Audience
Rutgers University researchers put Twitterverse into two categories (Informers and Meformers). Only twenty percent of Twitter users are informers and publish content that matters.
However, Twitter is mainly an information-sharing platform. Posts that are informative and worthwhile score 2X times more attention than others. And since the channel demands frequent updates to broadcast your campaign, here’s a quick rundown of content ideas that work well.
a. Curate and share multiple data points and insightful analytic soundbites from your existing campaign. Always include a link to the long-form content asset.
b. Use Twitter polls to increase engagement by asking open-ended questions or encouraging your audience to share their opinions.
c. Develop multiple tweets around a common content theme like a series of powerful quotes revolving around your cause. Learn about your supporters by tweet-dropping into their accounts and seeing their previous tweets.
d. Share native videos whenever possible. Tweets with videos get ten times more engagement than those without
Pro tip: Strategically re-purpose the content you produce for various other platforms with your Twitter followers in mind and post cross-channel.
2. Lead your Audience
Twitter Greatness is an amazingly sensible idea about follower growth. A quick way to get many people following your organization is to convey to your audience that you know what you are doing.
People like to follow organizations or personalities that are creators of change or doers of something inspirational. As a nonprofit, you are already doing great stuff and are monumental in bringing a positive change. Next, adapt a tweeting style like great leaders in their industry do.
a. Social media is all about sharing and showing. Has your organization recently been recognized? Do not forget to mention it in your bio
b. Did you come up with a new partnership or participated in a research project – use powerful terms like ‘expert’ or ‘official’ to grow your followers
c. Create a set of unique hashtags that best represent your cause and use them generously
d. Choose a few attention-grabbing quotes from your blog posts, and convert them into tweets.
These doable ideas establish authority in your domain and earn you trust from your supporters.
3. Track your Audience
Nowadays, social media success is hardly measured by follower count. There are analytics tools to measure other metrics like engagement growth, donor response time, number of leads generated, etc.
Here are some tips to help you use Twitter in other meaningful ways and keep your metrics in a good spot.
a. Do not miss out on a pool of high-potential donors due to lack of organization. By managing and scheduling your post through a centralized dashboard like Hopeful, track individual interactions with your followers in real-time.
b. Learn to switch from replying on-platform to DM. For your key donors taking the conversation to your ‘Direct Messages’ gives you up to 10,000 characters to respond
c. 72% of people who write to you on Twitter expect a response within an hour. Work on your response rate, to have the upper hand with your Twitter strategy.
Circle back to your social media goals for Twitter and then decide against what metrics you want to measure your progress. If your metrics increase exponentially, it means your strategy is working. In that case, continue doing whatever is working for you!
Have more ideas that can help other nonprofit organizations achieve Twitter success? Let us know in the comments section below.