Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

Getting Value from Twitter

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

One of the social media tools that is getting a lot of press attention is Twitter, partly because of its use by the likes of Stephen Fry. So the inevitable question for charities and membership organisations is “should we be using Twitter to communicate with our members/supporters?”

The answer is - it depends … on:

  • What the demographics are of your target audience? Around 10% the online population are Twitter users, but retention rates have not been as good as some other social media sites such as Facebook. Of these, nearly half of Twitter users are young adults, very few children use it and a reasonable number of older adults (20% according to one survey).
  • Take into account how people use Twitter - see for example the recent report on BBC news site. Twitter generally has a low content level, so make sure your content stands out from the crowd.
  • What would you want to communicate to them, or what discussions would you want to have using Twitter? A number of organisations, such as the RSA, have Twitter feeds for informing/reminding people of their events.
  • If the communication is to be two way, this will need to be supported by resources - people expect Twitter to be very responsive and it will probably need an expert level person.

    • The likely conclusion for many NFP organisations, unless there are specific reasons, is to use Twitter in a “push-only” mode for announcements. The take up and effectiveness should be monitored to see how useful a contribution to your online presence it is making.

    If this type of announcement feed is unlikely to be valuable in your situation, wait and review again in a year.

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    Posted in Posted by Alex McLachlan | No Comments »