Social Media Focus
How To Use Twitter To Boost Your Charity or Ethical Business
Let’s get straight down to it.
What can Twitter do for my organisation?
Your ethical business can use Twitter to quickly share information, advertise, get a handle on the market, and build up relationships with supporters and clients.
Your charity can use Twitter to gain support, inform, advertise, fundraise, raise awareness, attract volunteers, and do market research.
Twitter is the ideal space to build trust and inspire people to support you.
12 Top Tips for getting the most out of Twitter
1. Wear your heart on your sleeve
If you are transparent (and Twitter is the perfect place to be so) people will trust you. Share as much as possible. This means behind the scenes information, upcoming projects, your successes…
2. Keep it casual
The tone on Twitter is generally chatty, direct and genuine. Just be yourself. Make sure you always sound like a human being and not a robot.
3. Keep it snappy
This is kind of a given on Twitter (140 characters max per tweet!) but the general rule is the shorter the better.
4. Keep it topical
React to current affairs as this keeps you relevant and keeps people interested.
5. Ask questions
Use Twitter to find out how people feel about your company or cause. And don’t just stalk them: ask them yourself! People will appreciate the direct contact. What questions are they asking? What comments are they making?
And look lively; adapt to this information.
6. Respond
Try to respond to all compliments, mentions, questions etc. Remember that Twitter is a conversation. If someone does some fundraising for you, thank them on Twitter. This keeps the conversation going, and keeps it personal.
7. Tweet links, photos and videos!
Your tweets can include a link to any web content you want, like a blog post, a website, or a photograph or video. You know that people love to look at photos and watch videos, so make sure you have links to some.
You can even add videos to your Twitter timeline, link videos in tweets, or use the Twitter video service Vine. Vine lets you take short, 6-second videos from the Vine app and play them on an endless loop inside Twitter.
8. Follow the ‘right people’
This sounds snobby, but it’s true; people can see who you follow, so make sure that your list of followers is respectable and relevant.
Who should I follow?
Well, your supporters/customers/suppliers etc is a great start. Also, follow your competitors (fellow charities or similar businesses), and of course celebrities you admire (and would like to support you!)
A note about celebrities: you should definitely tweet them about your cause or business, but don’t be annoying, and try not to look too desperate!
9. Use Twitter to drive more traffic to your website
To do this, just put a link inside a tweet, encouraging people to click to find out more.
10. Add the Twitter ‘Follow’ button to your website or blog
Along with your other social media sites, you should add a Twitter follow button to your website, blog etc. It’s super easy to do, and should gain you a lot more followers.
11. Add your Twitter timeline to your website/blog
This is a great way to share your Twitter conversations with your website visitors (who will hopefully soon become Twitter followers!) Twitter provides widgets that let you embed a timeline on your website.
You can select the tweets you share on the timeline.
12. Let people spread your message for you
You should make it easy for people to share your content on Twitter. Add a Tweet This button to your website pages and blog posts, so that people can spread awareness of your cause.
P.S. Important note for charities: #charitytuesday!
Tuesdays on Twitter are Charity Tuesday, and you can read about its success story here. Basically, it provides a focal day for charities, encouraging people to tweet about that month’s chosen charity.
