8 Twitter tips and reminders for nonprofit social media campaigns in 2015

Welcome back again to the Miratel blog and thanks for reading. The end of the year presents the ideal opportunity for nonprofits and those who work on your social media management or blog/content to revise strategies and incorporate new ideas as we head into 2015. Over the next few weeks we’ll take a look at some of our recommended social media tips and blogging ideas that you can carry forward into the new year.

Today we’ll take a look at Twitter, for most organisations Twitter remains one of their preferred three or four social media platforms to share content upon and that is with very good reason. Twitter continues to grow as a very effective B2B and B2C communication tool although in this case business to donor is the term we should be using. I wonder if anybody has coined B2D at this stage? The evolution of Twitter has for the most part coincided with the evolved sophistication with which people are using social media in general. The numerous refinements and versatile tools that can be used for Twitter greatly enhance your ability to connect with potential donors and indeed to help donors to find your nonprofit. My top 8 recommendations for Twitter use in 2015 includes both newer and older tactics but each can help you improve the effectiveness with which you use the tool and in turn continue to develop your audience.

Images

Hopefully you’re well aware of the fact that tweets that feature images (as well as other social media posts) are much more likely to be engaged with than those without. Adding an image is simple, beneath the body of your tweet there’s an option to do so but it does limit your 140 character space somewhat. Taking the time to select the right image for your post or better yet create a custom one with your logo or text (for example with a blog post link) can make a lot of difference so do to spend the time. According to this article from social media examiner images more than double the likelihood of engagement whereas I would suggest images can enhance the value of a tweet by even more than that.

URL shorteners

When you are working in such a limited space as 140 characters every keystroke is valuable and there’s absolutely no reason you shouldn’t be using a URL shortener o help create the space you need. My particular favourite is bit.ly but others are equally useful and worth a look. In addition these tools also provide useful metrics to help you measure the work you do and although some of that is replicated within your twitter analytics it’s still a handy option.

Using the space available

All too often you see a tweet that loses effectiveness because even the limited space afforded to you by twitter hasn’t been used fully. Take some time with your tweets and describe the content in an engaging way that will make those who see it become more likely to respond, share, reply or click. From my experience almost all of the tweets that I compose or share via a retweet can be improved by taking the time to edit, consider hashtags and fill all of the space that is provided.

#Awareness

Hashtags can and have in the past provided enough discussion to fill an entire blog post, or six. Make sure that you do evaluate the importance of a consistent hashtag for your organisation tweets and also apply suitable tags specific to the content that you are sharing. With millions of tweets per day more often than not proper hashtag use can be the biggest determining factor in your content being found. There are apparently 500 million tweets per day but even more impressive is that there are more then 2 billion twitter searches per day, stop and think about that for a minute.

The evolution of…..Twitter

Engaging

At times people are so preoccupied with creating and sharing content that engagement, which should be at the heart of social media, can get overlooked. Make sure that at the very least a daily check is made for direct messages, new followers and retweets. Each of which provide a platform to begin a relationship which may well end in a new donor for your organisation. I recommend that a standard thank you message and link to your website be created for all new followers of your account, it creates an instant and hopefully timely message which shows that you appreciate them taking the time.

Following

In the early days of twitter and even now in some venues it is recommended that you follow every account that follows you. Over the long term I wouldn’t recommend this tactic as your standard practice. If your twitter account is very active, follow those who are either very active/have a high number of followers themselves and/or those who are specifically involved with causes, companies or organisations that have some genuine relevance to your own. Depending on the age of your twitter account some are also being capped at following no more than 2,000 other accounts and if you reach that ceiling you’ll be forced to stop following some to allow room for new additions.

Measuring data

Tweeting daily is of course very important but failing to take the time to measure your data and engagement rates means that your effectiveness in using the tool is never going to be as optimal as it can be. Use Twitter analytics to understand changes in your engagement rate, determine what content gets retweeted and what receives favourite status. Knowing which of your tweets cause a buzz and which are practically ignored can greatly help you to refine the content that you share.

Lists

If you’ve ever signed on to your twitter account, particularly if you follow hundreds or thousands of other accounts you’ll be bombarded with status updates, so many that you couldn’t possibly differentiate what is most important and relevant to you. You do want to see the tweets that are worth sharing or engaging with and the best way to effectively accomplish this is by dividing those you follow into lists. This will allow you to segment the accounts you follow into much more manageable and specific slices. To learn more about Twitter lists visit this guide about using lists from Mashable.

I could continue with more but I’ll save some for 2015, one of the soon to arrive features on a widespread basis for both Twitter and Facebook is a within platform ‘buy’ button that could certainly also see the arrival of the donate button shortly. This feature could enable users of both social media platforms to donate to their chosen cause without ever leaving the respective social media channel, assuming this happens it will be one of the largest social media developments for nonprofits in the coming year. I can’t wait to see how well it works.

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For nonprofit, nonprofit fundraising, CSR business and other news, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Pinterest or subscribe to our RSS feed. 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.