Tag Archive for ‘organizations’ at Amy Sample Ward’s Version of NPTech

I might be on a Quality Control string here, judging by the title of this post and my recent SSIR post, but I think it’s valid.

More and more people and organizations are using Twitter, the micro-blogging tool that lets users answer the question, “what are you doing?” with short 140-character sized posts to the world. Even more people and organizations are talking about Twitter. I’m sure you’ve heard buzz, whether you meant to or not, and whether you are a Twitter-er or not.

Darren Rowse’s post today on TwiTip focused on the question, “What value are you creating for your followers on Twitter? What’s in it for them?” I think this is a great question for individuals AND organization to consider and here’s how…

Quality Twitter-ing from Organizations

No one wants to be friends with a building, a billboard, or a fundraising flier. They want to be friends with people. Even though your Twitter account (or you Facebook group, or anything else for that matter) is representing the organization, people still expect real people to be behind the messages.

Keeping your organization’s Twitter feed from feeling too impersonal is easy:

Have a conversation (using the @ feature on Twitter to reply to others’ messages)
Show some personality (comment, don’t just advertise)
Show some emotion (don’t fear the emoticon or web laugh hahaha )
Be real (your organization probably doesn’t have an answer to everything, share links that aren’t just from your website)
Be helpful (use search tools like TweetScan or Twitter Search to find people talking about subjects you can help with and send them a link or info)

Recently, I looked at The Womens Museum’s Twitter feed for a slide I contributed at the NFPTweetup. I examined the messages that appeared on the main page of The Womens Museum’s Twitter feed (the most recent 20 or so) at the time I visited - I was looking to see how balanced the messages were so created some categories and tallied the messages where they fit:

Self Promotion with Links: 6
Self Promotion without Links: 6

Questions with Links: 4
Questions without Links: 3

Fundraising with Links: 1
Fundraising without Links: 0

Affinity Promo with Links: 4
Affinity Promo without Links: 0

Information with Links: 0
Information without Links: 3

I think the numbers are pretty balanced! The messages are true to mission/vision of the museum by including retweets (or forwarding on the messages of others), links to websites other than their own, compliments, transparency, and inclusion.
If you use Twitter for your organization, try measuring the messages with the above categories and see how balanced your messages are! Or create new categories and see how the numbers work out.

Quality Twitter-ing from Individuals

Of course it’s always hard to lay yourself on the line by putting forth strategy, guidelines, or even tips. Because, hey, look at me - oh wait, I’m not perfect either

Dan Bowsher, of Newbury, UK, nails the value of Twitter, I think, in his comment on The Evening Standard’s piece about Twitter (emphasis:

Twitter is not something you can gain any value from if you dip into it for a couple of hours. Twitter is about engaging with and building a community of people and allows you to tap into information, trends and opinions far quicker than traditional media. To that end, I find it invaluable. The fact that Twitter also enables developers to create applications that allow users to capitalise on its functionality, is also a major benefit.

Quality content on an individual user’s perspective is really rooted in engagement. Days when I feel like I’m disconnected, Twitter and email are too quiet, or I’m out of the loop with news and conversation, it’s becuase I haven’t connect with anyone. Replies on Twitter are made using the @ and someone’s user name, like @amyrsward if you wanted to talk to me. All I need to do is start listening, by browsing recent posts, and then responding to individuals using the @ to jump into the conversation, ask questions, or provide responses. And as quickly as that, I’m back in.

It’s definitely a good idea to measure or gauge the balance of your individual Twitter stream as well, but it isn’t as easy as examining the organizational stream. Here, because of the above point that conversation and engagement is key, it’s more important to measure between @ messages and standard messages.

Remember:

You are, every day, building that personal-brand, but that doesn’t mean you get to be blowhorn
Potential clients, bosses, friends, or significant others could be reading what you say
People are ultimately good and have come together on free community tools like Twitter to share information, you should too
You get out what you put in; don’t be disappointed with the tool if you don’t have the time to set it up or use it

Ultimately, the Golden Rule of Twitter: Provide the links, information, conversation and content that you would like to find in everyone else’s stream, too.

Happy Twitter-ing, all!

Originally posted on the Net Squared blog.

Twitter is a service for people to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of short (140 character) messages. This micro-blogging tool has seen growing use over the last two years from individuals, activists, organizations and even news companies. (Click here for the Common Craft video on Twitter.)

Tu Diabetes is a great example of a group using Twitter to engage with communities online. Tu Diabetes is an online community where members help each other out, educate themslves and share the steps taken every day to stay healthy while living with this very serious condition. Tu Diabetes employs a gamut of web tools in its process of reaching out to new community members, keeping the community informed, and educating the public.

I recently spoke with Manny Hernandez, Tu Diabetes community founder, to take a closer look at Tu Diabetes’ Twitter story.

I asked Manny if Tu Diabetes has a policy or strategy for building the followers/following lists. He explained that, “every week or two, we do a search for the term “diabetes” on Twitter and selectively add certain people. We avoid adding people who are clearly using Twitter for SPAM or strictly commercial purposes. The Twitter search only looks in the people’s profiles, so we go a step further and use TweetScan to do a search in tweets containing the term “diabetes”. Then again, many of them are SPAM but a good number of them are legit and are made by people who could potentially be interested in what our community has to offer. We add those folks to our list of followed people. When you take a look at the product of our “adds” you see a very diabetes-centric timeline, which makes for a very interesting and inspiring reference. Also, we typically see people we add on Twitter joining the community. When people get a chance to see that you are for real, that the community is offering valuable information and support, people take the extra step and join. I don’t think this is something that works this way outside of nonprofit, but it is a model that I highly recommend for non-profits to try.”

I also asked what the specific strategy is for posting content via Twitter. Manny explained that, they “use Twitterfeed to automate the posting of a few of the RSS feeds that TuDiabetes has: forum topics, blog posts, etc. Depending on their volume we have Twitterrific posts to our Twitter account periodically (typically a few times per day) with relevant content (all our content is centered around diabetes). We also post manually periodically, every time there is a relevant topic or announcement that we want to make sure appears in our Twitter timeline.”

Twitter is a great avenue for cultivating and igniting conversations as well as getting your information out. I asked Manny if they had been part of some conversations within Twitter, and not just their online community space, and he confirmed that “occasionally other Twitter users contact us with questions. We’ve had a few media people contact us through Twitter too.”

I think Manny really nailed a great idea for organizations or online communities looking to explore Twitter’s use: “When people get a chance to see that you are for real, that the community is offering valuable information and support, people take the extra step and join. I don’t think this is something that works this way outside of nonprofit, but it is a model that I highly recommend for non-profits to try.”

Twitter, and other micro-blogging tools like Identi.ca and others, is another way organizations can be more open, transparent, and available in real-time to answer questions, provide information, and keep the community informed about both the work being done and ways to get involved. Here are some other organizational Twitter accounts you may want to check out:

Is your organization using Twitter, or are any of your staff members using it? What questions do you have for organizations adopting micro-blogging tools like Twitter?

Amy Sample Ward’s Version of NPTech