A cursory glance around the room at delegates of the Social Media Exchange, 1st June, 2009, made me feel terribly old fashioned with my notebook and pen.
Many of the delegates were “tweeting” / blogging away on their laptops, ensuring debate could happen between delegates, and between people outside of the event, throughout the day and beyond.
Conference organisers asked delegates to use a hash tag: #smex09 (see below for explanation) in all of their tweets and blogs so conversations about the event could be tracked by anyone. 
Here at CharityComms we recently created our own Twitter feed and now have over 360 “followers”. This is a drop in the ocean compared to other charities like BullyingUK who have over 9,233 followers.
As we started to use our feed, lots of questions came to mind: what tone should we use? Should we follow all the people following us? What’s a retweet? How often should we tweet? How do you build up followers? What is a hashtag? And what is #charitytuesday?
With this in mind, we thought we’d share some of the information we’ve learnt about Twitter from other charity communicators, and from the Social Media Exchange.
What is Twitter?
First things first ... for any of you who don’t know what Twitter is (where have you been?) – it’s a micro blogging site allowing people to send 140-character updates or “tweets” to a website, where anyone can read them, but where your tweets are dropped directly into the feeds of your “followers”. You don’t have to follow tweets on Twitter.com , it can be more efficient to follow them through applications such as Twitterlicious or Madtwitter.
What is Twitter for?
You could argue that it’s really what you make of it – it can be for: creating or joining communities of interest, engaging with stakeholders and supporters, getting news out quickly, following topics you’re interested in, asking peers questions... and the list goes on.
Setting up a Twitter feed is easy, but thinking about how to actually use it can be daunting, particularly in a charity communications setting where time is precious and most communications are signed off by at least one other person.
Twitter is a great feedback tool
Social Media Exchange speaker Ali Holder, an Information Development Librarian, at Westminster Libraries, recommended finding out what people are already saying about your organisation on Twitter.
This sentiment was echoed by, Nick Reynolds, Editor of the BBC’s Internet blog. Reynolds recommended that organisations monitor a range of social networking sites, using a feed such as Netvibes.
Reynolds said: “in the first six months of post I was in hand-to-hand combat with people who were slating the BBC, on blogs and message boards and sites such as Twitter ... you have to be careful of any negative online buzz as it can be leaked to the press.”
Create a good product
Use searchable key words in your Twitter feed name so that people can easily find you. Remember to fill in all the biography and link information – to create a product that sparks people’s interest. Also make sure you have a good clear avatar (an online representation of you) as this can make the difference between someone reading your tweet, or skimming past.
Find your Twitter voice
It can be difficult to know what kind of voice to speak with on Twitter – the authoritative voice of your organisation, or a more personal tone? Holder said she strived to achieve a balance between the two.
This is definitely something worth considering before you set your feed up. As you are representing your organisation, you probably don’t want to tell your followers about what you had for breakfast, but you shouldn’t take all personality out of your updates either.
Kate Fox, New Media Manager for the Mersey Basin Campaign, believes the key to Twitter is not thinking about it as something to broadcast your messages through. Speaking at the Social Media Exchange she said: “It’s about having conversations and it’s about people’s relationship with your organisation.”
One person who has successfully found his voice on Twitter is Rob Dyson, Pr Manager at Whizz Kidz. Dyson recently made it into JustGiving's top 25 UK charity tweeters and had this to say on tweeting:
“It’s about...sounding human, asking questions, and answering them – listening and responding. It is after all a conversation – with real people hitting the buttons. No one wants to talk one way to a robot, or a sales pitch; and automatic Direct Messages that fire off when people follow you quickly appear disingenuous and false. Just pretend you are in a room with all these people. Would you go up to each one and talk at them in their face?”
Followers
The more useful and interesting your updates are, the more likely others are to follow you and to “retweet” your updates to their followers. Also if you want a particular organisation to follow you, a good way to let them know about you is to follow them first.
You can find the people you want to follow: through the Twitter search, by looking at who is following other people, or through applications such as Whoshouldifollow.com. This particular application will find followers you might be interested in by taking your username and looking for users who overlap with the people you follow.
Some people in the “Twit
terverse” argue you should follow all of the people who follow you - out of politeness (to find out more click here).
Is anyone listening?
With many people following thousands of organisations at a time, do people really engage in what you have to say? One look on Twitter tells you that people are engaging and having conversations all the time.
Dyson said: “People won’t engage you without you engaging with them – either through direct and genuine questions to followers...or tweeting something useful, pithy or interesting that resonates with people beyond your cause. This is where marketers and salesman entirely miss the point with Twitter.”
Who should tweet in your organisation?
Dyson said: “...at present it tends to fall to people in comms or digital / web teams that have understood it and adapted to it very quickly. As more charities’ senior staff come to understand its importance and relevance, we may see dedicated social media officers and assistant roles, or the use of external consultants and agencies outsourced to manage the resource.
“It might be, as in Unicef’s case, that one account is shared – and different people (with different voices) split the tweeting up. Whoever does it should quickly become a mini expert on the different areas of the organisation though – or at least always know who to source an answer from. Whizz-Kidz (@whizzkidz) for example has had beneficiary families getting in touch, as well as fundraisers and volunteers – each requires a bespoke response. And each deserves a tailored dialogue, rather than an automaton answer.”
Use hashtags
Use hashtags to track and mark topics. If you include a hash tag (for example the one mentioned above: #smex09) in your 140 character update, people will be able to trace your update, by typing the given tag into the Twitter search. This allows people to follow particular topics and debates. For example thousands of users are posting tweets under a tag called #charitytuesday which was created to help charities spread the word about their causes. Eventually tweets do slip off of the site, but stay indefinitely on: http://hashtags.org
We hope you’ve found these tips useful and please do get in touch if you’d like to share how your organisation uses Twitter. Send an email to: emma@charitycomms.org.uk
If you would like to find podcasts, webcasts and presentations from the Social Media Exchange please visit: http://socialmediaexchange.org.uk/
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CharityComms