5 Twitter Tactics for Super Effective Nonprofit Supporter Engagement

Since its inception, social media has continued to grow to include more platforms that feature different ways in which to interact and engage with one’s community. Nonprofits must choose which networks to incorporate into their digital strategies to expand their reach and optimize engagement opportunities with their target demographic. Last week I wrote about 4 Facebook Changes to Help Strengthen Nonprofit Fundraising and Engagement Efforts and although Facebook is considered king, Twitter has become a super effective component of a nonprofit’s social media marketing initiatives.

In 2012 Twitter reached 500 million registered users with 140 million users tweeting 175 million messages on a busy day across the globe. There are many benefits to maintaining a presence on Twitter which I have covered as part of our Social Media Series in posts like 6 Twitter Setup Tips for Nonprofit Fundraising and 6 Twitter User Insights to Increase Nonprofit Fundraising & Engagement. If you have been actively using Twitter and are not yet seeing the results you’d like from your efforts, implementing the following 5 tactics will help bolter results and increase exposure and, in turn, followers:

1. Proper Spelling & Punctuation – Despite the 140 character limit, its critical to ensure that a tweet is properly composed avoiding spelling and grammatical errors. If your followers find it difficult to decipher your tweets due to misspellings or made up abbreviations they will easily give up and overlook your post. Unnecessary or misplaced punctuation can also detract from the desired impact of the message. It’s better to craft short and concise tweets rather than longer ones that include misspelled words and/or unknown abbreviations that will lose your audience.
2. Retweet and Get Retweeted – Simply posting tweets may not generate the desired exposure as they will only be noticed by your existing followers. To effectively expand your reach you want to actively share other’s relevant tweets and compose tweets that will motivate your followers to retweet yours which will potentially incite their network to follow you and retweet (and on it goes). The latest research shows that 92% of users retweet content that they find interesting. The types of tweets that often generate a retweet include statistical and newsworthy information, inspirational quotes and cause related facts. It’s important to try different types of posts and pay special attention to any patterns of which ones are being retweeted and garnering the desired attention from your followers.
3. Interact and Respond – Reach out and start a conversation with a follower who sent out an interesting tweet. Be sure to use their Twitter handle beginning with an “@” sign to send messages that will get noticed. Also, acknowledge any follower who is new, has messaged you, mentioned your Twitter handle or retweeted one of your posts. A simple “thank you – how are you today?” can go a long way. Try to make a conscious effort to do this 2-5 times per day and you will soon see your Twitter results skyrocket – @Replies and @Mentions are a key Twitter engagement strategy and put the social in social media.
4. Use Hashtags with Limits – Using hashtags can be beneficial and are an integral part of tweeting as it’s the best way for your tweets to be found and keeps a conversation or history of what is being said about the associated word. As there is already limited characters in a tweet using 3 or more hashtags makes it look cluttered and confusing. Overusing this feature in a single tweet is ineffective. Keep your hashtags to industry or cause related keywords and you will find that more of your target audience will pay attention.
5. Scale Back on Appeals – Certainly the ultimate goal is to convert your followers and supporters into donors. However heavily promoting your cause and appealing to your audience for donations can turn-off even the most loyal supporter. Twitter should be used to engage, interact and inform your community so it’s important to only tweet an appeal at strategic times that will logically garner your follower’s support. For example at the start or toward the conclusion of a campaign/event/accomplishment or following a well reported incident. A good ratio of appeals can be 5% of all tweets but you are in the best position to determine the ratio for your organization.

Tweeting – like conversation – is an art form that takes time to perfect but with patience, perseverance and strategic interaction you can begin building an audience of followers that will appreciate the information you are sharing and will want to share it with their followers (and so on and so on).

You can check out our complete Social Media Series which includes several posts on Facebook along with Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin and others.

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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.