The Charity Place

Twitter - how are you finding it so far?

So, did you set up a Twitter profile and start following a few people?

I know there will be a few people reading this that have been using Twitter for some time now, and have got the hang of it. But I know that Twitter can also be a bit difficult to make sense of initially, too, and you might need a few more pointers.

Things to do next to get a sense of what Twitter can do, and why it is so powerful:

• Follow a good few people you don't know

Really, if you haven't done so yet, you have to try this, even if it does seem a little bit strange in principle.

Yes, if you added people as 'friends' on Facebook and they didn't know you, they would most likely think you were spamming them.  Twitter is different.  You can follow anyone, and provided your profile description looks relatively normal, they won't have a problem with it.

Try to pick people that have something in common with you, who might want to follow you back.  You can use a directory like Twellow for this.  If you're a nonprofit professional, you might like to follow a few people in the NFPtweetup Flock, and even join it yourself.

If you still don't believe me, listen to what Stephen Fry says about Twitter in this video on the BBC News site, and get a sense of why you might want to connect with a load of people you've never met before.  Still, you won't really understand what this is really like until you try it - so try it.

I suggest following at least 20 people, but more like 50 is likely to give you the best insight.  Don't worry about reading every message, or 'keeping up' - that just wouldn't be possible and you're under absolutely no obligation to read every message posted by everyone you follow.

Just have a look at your Twitter stream every now and again and see what people are tweeting about.  You'll start to find some people are more interesting and/ or relevant to you, and you'll probably find you tend to look at what they are saying more often as time goes on.  Equally, you'll find the inverse.  And you'll see that some people tweet an awful lot, and others hardly at all - because Twitter is something different to everyone.  You just need to discover what it is to you.

• Use a Twitter 'client'

There is an enormous range of Twitter-related applications and tools to pick from, but the most useful of all surely must be the Twitter 'client'.

These are interfaces that integrate Twitter with your mobile or desktop, so you don't have to visit your Twitter page to read tweets from the people you're following your (AKA your Twitter stream).  My favourite desktop Twitter client is Twhirl, but just as many people I know like TweetDeck.  If you want to have a look at some of the other applications available for to download to your desktop or mobile, Twitter has kindly listed some of the most popular of them here.

One of the great things about using a Twitter client is that it makes it easier to keep track of any direct messages you are sent by other Twitter users you are following, and any public messages addressed to you, by separating them from the main stream of tweets from the people you are following, so you can see them easily (if you use Twhirl, you hear a nice little 'bling' sound when any come through, so you don't have to keep checking for them).

I should probably just explain the difference between direct messages and public messages:

Direct messages (usually known as DMs)
You can send these only to people that are following you. From their home page on Twitter, you just click on the 'message' link under 'Actions' in the right hand column of the person's profile  page or a Twitter client.

If you are using a Twitter client, it's much easier to send direct messages.  It will depend on which application you're using as to how you do this, but you can do it directly from any 'tweet' from that person that you can see in your Twitter stream or in reply to a DM or public message from them.

Public messages addressed, or referring, to you (known as @Replies)
You can send an @reply to anyone, whether they are following you or not.

You might do this if you are following someone and you want to say something to them but they are not following you, or you may 'overhear' an @conversation between someone you are following and another Twitter user that you may or may not know, and want to comment in reference to it - in a way that is clearly linked and that they can see.

So, using @ is not even strictly a reply, as you can send one to anybody at any time (I'm not encouraging you to spam people with irrelevant stuff, as they won't be impressed and it won't help you any either).

If the person you send an @message to is not following you, they may not necessarily reply, but they often do, too (it might be the first time they've ever come across you, for instance, and you might have said something interesting that they like the sound of, or they may think you look relevant to them from your profile biog).

You can also send @replies from Twitter clients, in very much the same way as you can send DMs. You can also send an @message to anyone at any time, simply by typing an @ in front of their Twitter user name (if you were going to send me a public message you would type @rachelbeer) in your tweet.

That's probably quite enough for now.

Do try following a few more people and using your @ and DM options to start a few conversations, if you feel happy doing so.

If you know a few friendly people on Twitter, start with them - most people in the NFPtweetup Flock will be happy to engage with you on Twitter if you mention how you found them and/ or your biog mentions that you work for a charity, or with charities. And, don't think the NFPtweetup Flock is exclusive in anyway - anyone with a professional link is welcome to join.

How do I find people to follow on Twitter?

So, you've set your Twitter profile up, but you still can't see what all the fuss is about?  You need to start 'following' and connecting with some other Twitter users to understand what it can do and why people are so evangelistic about it.

What is 'following'?

When you follow another Twitter user, you are adding their updates (usually known as 'tweets') to the information you see on your Twitter home page - the page you see when you log into Twitter.  This is known as your 'Twitter stream'.  So you know what I mean, here's a shot of the top part of mine, where you can see tweets from five of the people I'm following:



How do I follow someone?

Easy - just go to their profile page and click on the 'Follow' button under their picture on the top left.

When you do this, they will receive an email letting them know that you have followed them, and this gives them the opportunity to check your profile out and decide whether to follow you back or not (whether they decide to reciprocate or not, you will still be able to follow them).

How do I find people I might want to follow?

Here are a few of the ways you can find people to follow that are either interesting or relevant to you:

• Search by name for people you already know, people you have heard of, or who are well-known and respected in your space, using the Find on Twitter option, featured in the Find People tab along the top right menu on your Twitter home page.  This tab also contains options to find people you know that are using Twitter through your Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail or MSN account.
  
• Search for subjects that people are 'tweeting' about, using Twitter Search or Twitter Monitter. When you see interesting tweets, just click on the name of the person that tweeted in the stream of messages, look at their profile and follow them if they look interesting.
• Follow Mr Tweet - a service that, among other things, will identify and recommend new people you might like to follow by referencing people you already follow against the range of Twitter users out there.  This service comes into its own when you have been using Twitter for a while and are following a few people, as Mr Tweet's recommendations become more accurate the more data he has to go on.
• Once you start following a someone you find interesting, see who they are following, check out those people's profiles and follow them too (if they look like they might be relevant to you).
  
• Use directories, like Twellow (here's a search for 'nonprofit' on Twellow to get you started, or you can search on any number of other keywords) or Just Tweet It (here's their 'non-profits' category), to find people listed under areas of interest and/ or specialism.
  

A couple more tips:

• Try to following around 20 people first of all (or as many as you feel comfortable with).  You'll find many of them will follow you back, provided you have included enough information in your profile for them to see whether you might be relevant or interesting to them, and you'll begin to discover how Twitter can connect you with people and ideas you may never have come into contact with otherwise.

• Make sure your profile represents you accurately, to give people a good idea of who you are, what you do, and what you're interested in - as this will help people connect and engage with you.  You can personalise your profile in a number of ways using the options in the Settings tab in the top right menu when you are logged into Twitter, including selecting a background theme or uploading your own design, and adding a photo of yourself (which makes your profile more friendly and human). Note that you have just 160 characters to describe yourself in your Twitter profile (so make each one count!), but you can also add a link to another of your online profiles, such as LinkedIn or Facebook, to help people find out more about you.

• You can protect your updates, so they cannot be viewed at all by anyone, and cannot be followed, without your express permission.  This is also found in the Settings tab, under 'Account'.  I would recommend that you do not opt to do this, simply because it makes it very difficult for anyone to decide whether you are worth following or not, since they can't see what you tend to tweet about, and therefore can't decide whether they will be interested in what you have to say. It also just seems a bit secretive and is not really in the spirit of Twitter, so the vast majority of people leave their updates public.
  

What next?

If you haven't done so already, you might want to post your first update or 'tweet'.

You have just 140 characters for each message, and the option to include a URL within that, should you wish to link to something elsewhere online.

Just type your message into the box underneath 'What are you doing?' and hit 'Update'.  And, before you post your first tweet, it's worth noting that it's going to end up being listed here, so try to make it something more interesting than mine was!

Don't worry, if you don't like what you've posted, you do have the option to delete it afterwards, by clicking on the little dustbin icon at the bottom right of your tweet (you will see this when you mouse over that area).

Twitter - Creating an account and a profile

When you create an account on Twitter - or any online platform - there are several things to consider.  Among them:

• Should the profile be set up in your real name, a nickname, or a pseudonym that masks your identity?
• Should you mix professional and personal information in your biog - mentioning your employer's name and how much you like clubbing in the same paragraph?
• What kind of profile picture should you use - something rather corporate and proper, a picture of you on the beach on holiday last year, a picture a friend took of you at a 70s fancy dress party, a photograph of yourself looking cute, aged 5, or a manga-style avatar?
• Should you restrict who can, and cannot, view your profile and updates?
• Should you be honest and open about all your views on life the universe and everything, talk about how drunk you got last night, post embarrassing pictures of your friends, and share your plans for the weekend - do other people even really want to know about all of that - or will you keep some things to yourself and your close circle?
  

When you are setting up a profile for professional reasons, this all becomes a little bit more complicated still, since you also have to consider whether you:

• Should you set up the profile as an individual or under your organisation's brand, or even a combination of the two?
• Should use your organisation's brand as the profile picture, a photograph of yourself, or something entirely different, and do you need your organisation's 'brand guardian' to approve this?
  
• Should use the 'corporate voice' of your organisation, your own, or a combination of the two?  Will you say 'we' and 'I' or 'the charity/ organisation' or 'charity name'?
  
• Should leave your organisation's profile open to anyone to follow or view, or restrict it?
  
• Can update the profile with any interesting things that you know your organisation is planning or currently working on, or whether you need to get approval from your line manager, the comms team or another internal department first? What's your organisation's policy on who can, and cannot, speak to the media, for instance, and is training given first to those that are approved to do so?
  

There are books and companies specifically created to deal with what's now commonly known as online 'reputation management', which just goes to show that these decisions, and the ramifications of them, are not to be taken lightly and how difficult they can sometimes be to make.  There is certainly a lot to think about, and to worry about getting wrong.

Generally speaking, I think there is much more to think about when considering setting up a profile that represents the charity or nonprofit you work for than there is when setting up a personal profile.  For a start, it's less likely at the moment that the public at large will search to see whether you, personally, have set up a Twitter account (unless you are particularly famous!), but you may not be able to set up a corporate Twitter account without it attracting attention - and followers - and you may not feel quite confident about that yet.

And, as soon as your organisation does have a Twitter profile, and starts to attract followers, you do then have a whole load more things to consider than the points listed above - but that's for another time.  For now, let's just focus on...

Getting started

If you're not already using Twitter in any capacity, I highly recommend you get started by creating a personal Twitter profile, rather than one linked to your organisation or using your organisation's brand in any way.

This will give you the chance to experiment and learn, without the pressure of having to worry that you'll make any blunders that might have a negative impact on how your organisation is perceived via Twitter, or how your organisation might perceive using Twitter.  It also means that, when you do come to set up a profile for your organisation, you can do so confidently, from an informed perspective, and will have a much clearer idea from the off about how you're going to use it - based on personal experience, rather than on theory.

Creating an account & profile

You can access Twitter from a mobile device, or a PC.

Most people start by trying Twitter on a PC, so I would suggest you try starting there, too.  To do this, all you will need is:

• A PC with Internet access
  
• An email account

Simply go to www.twitter.com/signup and you will see the following screen:

From here, setting up your Twitter account is very much like setting up a web-based email account, like Googlemail, where you choose your user name and you will be told whether it is still available.

If somebody else already has an account in the name you wanted, you will have to keep trying alternatives until you find something you like as - unlike Facebook - Twitter does not support multiple accounts with the same name (sorry John Smith).  This has not been too problematic to date, since Twitter was not that well-known until quite recently, but you may well find now that your name has been taken and have to think creatively to find something you like (or just go the fairly standard 'JohnSmith1975' route).

Some things to note:

• The user name you choose will become part of the URL of your home page on Twitter, where your profile information, the messages that you post, and the messages of anyone you follow, can all be found.  It will look like this: http://twitter.com/JohnSmith1975 (or whatever name you choose), and will be the name that identifies you to the Twitter community and anyone outside it - so choose it carefully!
  
• You can have CAPITAL letters in your name, as in the example above, which will show in your profile, and your updates, but your profile's unique URL will always all be in lower case.  Typing it into a browser with upper or lower will work regardless, and will not affect whether people can find you or not when they search for you.
• You can change your Twitter user name/ profile name at any time without affecting the record of your updates, replies or direct messages to others, but you will need to let your followers on Twitter know so you'll continue receiving messages from them.  Probably best not to do this, as it's a bit confusing for others, and it's worth remembering that you might not be able to change back again to the name you had before, as someone else might nab it!
  

Once you have entered your information, Twitter will send you an email to verify your identity - that it was really you setting up your account - and you'll be able to activate your account and create your profile.

You can fill in as much or as little of your profile as you like, and add a photo or not, so you can start to play around with Twitter initially without really needing to identify yourself - and you can make your updates private while you're doing this, if you like.

However, I would recommend being transparent about who you are - and including a picture of yourself if you have one - as people can be suspicious of anonymous profiles and, if they don't know you are a 'real' person, or know anything about you, they'll have no reason to engage with you.  Engaging with others is the point of Twitter, too, so unless you are super-nervous about it, I would also recommend that you don't make your updates private.  After all, if people don't know what you have to say, how do they know whether it might be interesting to connect with you?

Problems?

If you are going to be accessing Twitter from a work computer, you may also need to check that the site has not been blocked by your IT department (as many social networking sites often are) and that emails from Twitter will get through to your work email address and not blocked by a super-efficient spam filter.

You may find you need to make a case to your IT department to allow you to explore and use Twitter for work purposes, and to help create the circumstances for that to be possible.  If you followed the advice in my earlier post in this series, you will already have discussed this with your line manager - and got their buy in before starting to set up the profile - so they will be able to support you in this if you need it, and you will be able to rest assured that everyone is clear that you will be using Twitter as part of your role and that you have permission to do so.

If all of this is really a problem, or you feel you need to be sure that Twitter is worth all the effort before you bother speaking to your line manager, you can - of course - set up a profile from your computer at home and have a play with it out of work hours first.

So, happy tweeting (which is what posting messages on Twitter is usually called) and I look forward to connecting with you on Twitter!  It's best when you start following a few like-minded people, so why not start by following me and I'll post tomorrow with a few ways to find more people you might want to follow.

If you have any questions on this post, you think I've forgotten something important, or you want to ask me to include something specific in future 'how to' posts, please leave a comment.  Thanks!

Twitter - in the news again

I was reading the London Lite on the way home late yesterday and was surprised to read this:

''Microblogging' website Twitter has increased its traffic tenfold in a year.
The site ... hit headlines last month when Jonathan Ross used it to discuss his BBC suspension.  Its traffic has increased 974 per cent.'

This morning, thanks to a tweet, I discovered that this data came from Hitwise, who say,

'As a source of traffic Twitter is still in its infancy, but is becoming more important every day.  A number of news sites, blogs and video and picture websites already rely on Twitter for a significant amount of their traffic.'

This chimes with what I commented on in my post on Monday, under the subtitle 'How is Twitter entering the mainstream?', so it's nice to have some stats now to back up the hypothesis.

What I also discovered yesterday was that Philip Schofield confirmed that it really is him tweeting from this Twitter profile, live on This Morning - at viewers' request.  Somebody has posted a clip on YouTube, and it's well worth a look at what he said, as he describes it rather nicely:

Apparently, there was a bit of a buzz on Twitter as a result of Scholfield's evangelising and, as speculation grows about Twitter getting a mention on Jonathan Ross's show tomorrow night, I now see that Richard and Judy are also preparing a piece on Twitter for their show.

You can't get much more mainstream than that, really, can you?  Twitter traffic is about to surge up again off the back of this, by my reckoning.

Watch out Twittersphere: Here comes everybody!

More from me later on setting up an account, and profile, on Twitter, and joining the conversation...

Twitter - what is it and should we be using it?

So, you're thinking about getting started with Twitter, but what do you need to know about it and what are the sorts of things you're going to have to consider?

Let's go right back to basics, for the uninitiated, to make sure we don't leave anything out (if you know this bit, don't complain - not everyone does - we'll get to more advance stuff in the next few posts):

What is Twitter?

There's no point in me saying what's already been said well by others, so here's the Wikipedia entry for Twitter which is probably the most accurate and succinct explanation I've seen to date.

If pictures are more your thing, you might also find this little film about Twitter by Common Craft a useful illustration.  This film has also been around a while now, and Twitter has changed a lot since it was made, so I don't think it really does Twitter much justice.  It might just give you a flavour though.

However, please just take my word for this for now:

You can't really understand what Twitter is, and why it's good, without trying it out for yourself.  If you haven't actually done so yet, and you haven't followed a few interesting people for a few days, just try keep an open mind for now.  I'll try to explain why...

The Common Craft film refers to this proposition on the Twitter home page,

'Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?'

However, one of the interesting things about Twitter is the way that its users have shaped its evolution, and turned it into so much more than a service that could have been just the 'status update' function from Facebook without all the other bits, into something altogether more engaging, interesting, popular and powerful: a global information network.

The founders of Twitter may have envisaged it as a service you'd use just to let other people know what you are doing, but Twitter users very quickly started using their 140 character messages in far more useful and interesting ways.

As well as sharing information about what they're doing, Twitter users are just as likely to post links to interesting pages they've seen on the web, pictures they've just uploaded to Flickr, a new blog post they've just written or read, details about an event they're organising or attending, something that's just happened, or is about to happen, in their local area, or perhaps a charity initiative they're supporting (that they hope you'll support too).

That's probably enough about what Twitter is, because you'll learn the rest through using it - and you'll hopefully be able to take quite a few shortcuts through that learning process from the rest of the posts yet to come in this series.

In the meantime, it's worth thinking about this:

What are you hoping to get out of using Twitter?

You may not have a clear idea at this stage about this, but it's worth giving some consideration before you dive in and create a profile on Twitter to represent your organistation.

If you can, do a little bit of research beforehand to find out how other organisations in your space have used Twitter, what they have achieved through using it, what they have learned, what kind of resources they needed and so on.  This will give you some idea about what it might be able to do for you, what you need to consider and what to expect.

You should also consider how you think using Twitter will help you to meet the existing objectives of your role and/ or department.  If you can't see how it will, perhaps it isn't the tool for you.

Try using this check list to help you think about this and decide:

• What do we need to achieve?
• How do we think Twitter will help us achieve these goals?
• Which audiences are important?
• How will Twitter help us to engage with those audiences - are those audiences using Twitter?
• Do we have the resources to create engaging content on Twitter?
• If we start using Twitter, can we sustain what we start, whilst still delivering all the other aspects of our role/s?

If you can, go through this exercise with your colleagues and your line manager - because it will be important to get their buy-in from an early stage to help move things forward and for there to be a broader commitment to using Twitter should you decide to do so.

In the next post of the series, we'll move swiftly on to setting up a Twitter account and profile, and start to explore some of the thinks you might need to consider when setting up a 'corporate' Twitter account.

(Apologies for not posting this yesterday as promised. Type Pad seemed to be malfunctioning through yesterday afternoon and evening and I gave up in the end.)

So, what's the big deal about Twitter?

You might have noticed that I quite like Twitter and, if you've been reading some of the posts on this blog or following me on Twitter, you'll probably know that I think it can be a powerful addition to a nonprofit's toolbox - with all manner of uses.

Because of this I'd meant to blog specifically just on Twitter for charities and nonprofits - including an easy 'how to get started' guide - since the spring, but I always ended up feeling like there was already so much information out there that there wasn't any need for more.  Conversely, I'd come across at least one interesting Twitter-related story or service, or gain a new insight, every day and find I almost had too many reasons to blog about Twitter that I got to the point where I didn't know where to start, or what level of detail would be relevant to most people. The result: I didn't write the posts.

So, why write about Twitter now?

I realised over the last few months, partly through organising NFPtweetup in November, that although I may be connected to a number of people in the nonprofit sector that use Twitter and who are pretty Twitter literate (twitterate?), there are still many more who have never heard of it, are not sure what it is, don't know how to use it, or understand how it might be relevant to them, to their professional role or their organisation.

At around the same time (the latter part of 2008), I also became aware that Twitter was about to become more important; that its reach was about to extend beyond the somewhat niche audience of techies, bloggers, entrepreneurs and media types that had been the early adopters of Twitter, and into the mainstream.

How is Twitter entering the mainstream?

Celebrities and politicians started to use Twitter, which sparked interest from outside the Twitter community and from the traditional media (not just tech journalists); from gossip columns, tabloid press and broadsheets - and, most recently, even international television news.

The US election really started to put Twitter on the map - both John McCain and Barack Obama had Twitter profiles hard at work as part of their campaigns, and Obama's use of social media, in particular, was dissected across the web, by bloggers, marketers, fundraisers and clued up journalists.  Not long after that, our national treasure, Stephen Fry, started tweeting, followed by various celebrities, including Britney Spears (you can't get much more mainstream than Britney Spears), John Cleese and, most recently, Jonathan Ross.

Ross (who tweets as 'wossy') has been getting a fair bit of media attention recently, too, in the wake of the 'Sachsgate' controversy, so the press have been very keen to report on how he has been filling his time during his enforced sabbatical, by following his Twitter stream. In fact, over the last month or so, barely a day has gone by without Metro running a Twitter-based story in their new column, 'The Ridiculant', Jonathan Ross or otherwise.

And when Britney Spears started tweeting, it was covered by all the usual celebrity columns and magazines, which meant that readers of 'Now' magazine heard about Britney's house move via Twitter.

According to a recent report from The Telegraph, even the Church of England's Bishop of Buckingham, The Rt Rev Alan Wilson has become a fan of Twitter and has been enjoying following @wossy's tweets.

I'm betting that Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry will mention Twitter on @wossy's show, when he returns to our screens this Friday (perhaps they'll even tweet live?).  If they do, it's bound to mean that Twitter becomes even more widely adopted.

Regardless of whether they do or do not, Twitter hit the International headlines, including a spot on BBC News, last week when the pilot of US Air, Flight 1549 had to make an emergency landing on the Hudson River. You would have had to have been living in a cave to have missed the story of how 'citizen journalist' Janis Krums, took the first picture of the remarkable scene with his iPhone, posting it to Twitter, from where it spread across the world before the traditional news networks had even picked the story up (not the first time Twitter has been credited with this power).

Why is all of this important and relevant to charities and nonprofit organisations?

Twitter has 'come of age'.  It has enough users now that it's become an established part of the landscape, it adds so much value to so many people and organisations, it is permeating the offline world more and more now and it has already outlived one of it's competitors.  It feels to me that it has either reached, or is fast approaching, a tipping point - and a point at which those that have dismissed it up until now as a fad or a 'niche network for geeks' should consider being more open-minded about its potential.

So, my advice is, if your organisation hasn't genned up about Twitter yet, or you have just tinkered around the edges with it, 2009 is the year to reconsider it seriously as part of your strategy. At the very least, you should be starting to explore and learn about how it might be able to help you achieve your objectives, so you are closer to being able to leverage what it has to offer you in the future.

According to data from Nielson Online, Twitter was the fastest growing social networking site in the US between September 2007 and September 2008, achieving a 343% growth rate (Facebook came in at the number six spot, growing 116% over the same time period).  Although, Twitter has only a tiny percentage of the users that Facebook has globally, the Nielsen data shows the potential for that to change, which means it's conceiveable that Twitter might prove to be a much more important and valuable channel through which to engage with supporters and stakeholders in the not too distant future.

Don't get left behind!

Whether you are already using Twitter, or thinking about trying it, there is a whole range of things you could be doing in this first quarter of 2009 to move your organisation forward.

To help you do that, I'm going to write a series of Twitter posts, specifically for nonprofits, that cover everything from getting started with setting up a Twitter profile, to building a community, and leveraging your networks to produce value for your organisation.

Much of this will be informed by real questions that charities and nonprofits have asked me, or posted on Twitter or at The Charity Place, over the last few months, including the feedback received from the first NFPtweetup.

I won't be reinventing the wheel, as there are already plenty of great resources about how to use Twitter all over the place online and it would be daft to duplicate them where they already exist. Rather, I will pull as many of them as possible together in one place for easy reference, and attempt to do so in as logical a progression as possible - adding insights and stories from my experiences, and the experiences of other nonprofit professionals, along the way to keep it as fresh, accessible and useful as possible.

How you can help

As I post, it would be great if you could add your thoughts, experiences and anything you think I've missed, in the comments on each post.  That should mean we end up with a really thorough set of crowd-sourced resources for the sector.

Look out for the first post, tomorrow, on getting started with Twitter...  If there are any burning questions you have on this, do post them now so I can build them in.