4 Ways to Improve Your Nonprofit Twitter Strategy
Twitter can be a crowded place and everyone’s audience is different. There is no universal formula for a nonprofit twitter strategy, but these four tips can help improve your nonprofit’s twitter engagement and stand out above the clutter of the news feed.
1. Be Less Self-Centered
Everyone knows the 80:20 Rule (80% of your content should be about helping your community; 20% should be self-promotional), but we are all guilty of using more of a 20:80 rule. It’s hard not to promote your organization all the time when you’re surrounded by it. However, in order to use social media successfully you must add VALUE to your followers and the value is created beyond just your organization’s content.
How?
Try sharing other organizations and bloggers content. No one likes someone who talks about themselves all day and your organization should be no different. Share content that enhances or relates to your organization’s work. Try finding key influencers who can help improve your nonprofit’s twitter presence.
2. Be Human
Scheduling tools help everyone save time and they are great! But oftentimes automating posts and using a scheduling tool dilutes your personality, turning your organization into a robot. Twitter is a two-way conversation and by automating your posts you are eliminating some of the conversation. Your followers want real interactions!
How?
Make an effort to engage with followers. Try thanking and retweeting them. It’s a small and easy gesture that goes a long way. You don’t need to retweet and thank every single follower, but try implementing a plan based on your audience size. Maybe that means you thank one person a day for a follow and only retweet one follower a day.
Additionally, don’t use an automated response, personalize the response. It is easy to tell when someone didn’t take the time to respond. Not only is it proper etiquette it will help your organization build better relationships with your community.
3. Evaluate Content Performance
Understanding the effectiveness of your content can be an easy fix to increasing engagement.
How?
Try keeping track of content you’re sharing. Generate a report at the end of the month to see which types of content and topics worked best. (You don’t need to buy an expensive tool this can be done using twitter analytics.) Eliminate or decrease the topics that don’t work and increase the topics that do work. This will improve engagement on your posts.
4. Integrate More Visuals
News and content is constantly distributed through Twitter all day long. It is easy to get lost in the mix with all the tweets. Integrate visuals to make your content stand out from the crowd.
How?
Pictures are key. But why not try a short video? People scanning their Twitter feeds are more likely to see an image than a plain-text post that looks just like all of the rest.
Need help? Leave a comment below or connect with us on Twitter @mediacause or via email at connect[at]mediacause[dot]org. Be sure to check out our blog for other Twitter and social media tips.