Twitter recently celebrated its sixth birthday and announced to the world that it sees 340 million tweets per day and has increased its user base to 140 million (a 40 per cent increase from 2011). Twitter has literally changed the way people communicate, evolving language to a new short form of 140 characters. Twitter users have mastered writing short messages and summarizing their thoughts, much more effectively than before.
A few years back I was attending my friend’s graduation ceremony at the University of Windsor where Peter Mansbridge addressed the 2010 graduating class (he also received an honorary doctors of laws degree). When Mansbridge began his address, he gave the audience a 140 character Tweet. It was supposed to be a summary of his entire speech and meant to show the graduates that communicating an entire message into 140 characters was destroying effective communications in media. I completely agreed with him that today everything is converted to short form messages. Recognizing this shift is one thing, but ignoring this significant change with inactivity is simply unproductive. We have to accept the reality that social media networks are becoming a new tool of communications.
With the birth of the online world, information has become so readily available that its abundance can be overwhelming. People need to figure ways to choose the right information, analyze what resonates with them, and choose messages among all the clutter. Many times opinions of products, services, and organizations depend on the ‘voices’ of community influencers on the web. These influencers disseminate information about your mission and cause to other people. So it is important that your organization learns how to use social media and be part of these online social networks to relay its messages.
Image from Socialtimes.com
Since social media is becoming so widely used, then it would be futile not to use social media networks, especially those with such a large user-base like Twitter. Using Twitter as a tool to connect to your audience will however require knowing your audience and understanding how they are motivated. The short messages have to get the reader’s attention or else your message can simply be lost among millions of other tweets.
Learning how to use Twitter isn’t too hard, especially with tons of tutorials out there. There are also different social media management dashboards, such as HootSuite , that can make managing your Twitter account more efficient.
But being effective on Twitter requires a bit of creativity. You have to somehow set yourself apart from other organizations. Here are some ways to be creative with your Twitter account:
- Use hashtags to mark a campaign, program or organization success– start a hashtag contest, celebrate a marked day related to your cause (e.g. international women’s day IWD) or start a hashtag discussion on a social issue to engage others in your cause
- Encourage celebrities to actively participate in your campaign – generate buzz and raise awareness about your organization or programs by not using celebrities as a traditional endorser but as a person participating in the larger discussion over an issue
- Hold a Tweet-A-Thon – a creative way to pass information, motivate and inspire people especially when raising donations for a cause.
Celebs to Go Silent on Twitter and Facebook for Charity
How Non-profits Use Social Media
How Poop & Social Media can Raise Awareness for Charity
NonProfits and Social Media 