4 Twitter tools to make your #nonprofit #fundraising efforts shine

I’m a strong advocate of social media and the value that it can bring to a nonprofit organization particularly in terms of building public awareness, networking and an improved ability to hear what your audience are doing, feeling and thinking. I’ve been working with Twitter for six years and have seen it refined from a very raw tool where most people just focused on celebrities’ tweets to an important networking tool for the sharing of information and in many cases a news ticker that works in real-time.

At the heart of finding, building and engaging with an audience via Twitter is developing a planned approach to using hashtags. As you’re aware a #hashtag allows a Twitter message or Twitter conversation to be filtered much like a frequency allows a radio station to broadcast, without a hashtag you are bombarded with every tweet posted among the millions added each day whereas a hashtag allows a user to see or post a message that is specifically about a given topic or event. For nonprofits Twitter proves itself to be extremely valuable for promoting event awareness or in many cases a charity has essentially managed to make a hashtag their own, almost as a moniker for Twitter.

This presents a series of important questions:

• How does one go about determining which hashtags can build an audience?
• What terms are being used and where are they being used?
• Which hashtags or variations of them are the ideal choice to help connect with interested users on Twitter?
• How are people in your circles using Twitter?
• How can I easily measure the effectiveness of my Twitter efforts?
• Who are they connecting with, influencing or being influenced by?

I’d recommend reviewing and experimenting with each of the four tools listed below and see which helps you the most to build up a hashtag circle of your own or create a variation on something that already has a profile within the world of Twitter. In addition the more you understand how people are using Twitter the more successful your own networking efforts will be.

MentionMapp: MentionMapp is extremely interesting and very easy to use. With it you can see who a particular Twitter user has been engaging with and helps you to understand who they influence. It also allows you to explore discussions and communities that centre around specific hashtags. It’s perhaps the most valuable Twitter tool when looking to map out a communication strategy on the platform. Visit MentionMapp to explore the tool.

Hashtagify: Not the best name for a tool but genuinely useful for the Twitter user. It’s a very visual tool which is nice and allows you to see how a network extends from a given hashtag as you’ll see on the example below. A very useful tool to help you eliminate or include certain hashtags based on how well they network. Among many cool features another tool it provides is a list of related hashtags to your selection in terms of reach which I use frequently. Visit the hashtagify site for more information.

Twitter Analytics: Twitter’s own analytics have improved immeasurably this year and are certainly the best starting point to measure the effectiveness of your ongoing nonprofit social media campaign on Twitter. Easy to understand data lets you really zoom in on which tweets have had the most impressions, retweets, replies and caused an overall buzz. All of the data is also available to download so that you can track and measure your Twitter strategies over an extended period of time. Not a tool you’ll look to on a daily basis but an ideal way to gauge what is effective every few weeks or once a month. Learn everything about Twitter Analytics and login here.

Tweetdeck: I couldn’t live (in Twitter terms) without Tweetdeck and if you’re in the habit of either using multiple computers, tablets or mobile devices and/or manage more than one Twitter account you’ll want to use it too. Tweetdeck is better than ever now that it’s a web application rather than a free standing program, so you can login or keep it bookmarked from any device. It also links to Facebook and Linkedin in addition to allowing you to remain logged into multiple twitter accounts. You can search for keywords and reply, favourite, tweet or retweet from one account, several or all. Below is my Tweetdeck dashboard and while it might look a little overwhelming it really does provide great flexibility. Get up and running with Tweetdeck. 

Of course there are many dozens of other Twitter tools but armed with some or all of the four listed above you’ll be able to navigate your way through Twitter more efficiently and harvest a better understanding of what is working well and above all build more connections with your organization. If you have any questions or comments about these tools or Twitter in general please don’t hesitate to ask.

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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including PCI compliant inbound telephone fundraising, outbound telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery fundraising services, donation processing and receipting and direct mail fundraising services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all our business decisions  and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.