The Charity Place

Twitter - why use directories?

I found a new Twitter service the other day called We Follow - which calls itself a 'user powered Twitter directory'.

In a previous post on finding people to follow, I shared a link for Twellow, which is a similar thing.

I like the look of WeFollow, just because it's so simple and uncluttered, but you can only add yourself to three categories, which is a bit frustrating.  A lot of individuals, and a lot of charities, are a lot more multifaceted than that.

I've signed up to We Follow anyway though - because directories are a good place for other people to find you, so can help you attract new followers.  And because people find you via a category search, like 'nonprofit', it's likely you'll share a genuine interest with them, so it's a win win.

If you're a charity and followers find you using a directory, the chances are that they are pretty interested in what you do - exactly the sort of people you want to engage with.

At the moment, Twellow is more searchable, because you can add far more categories to your profile, which creates more ways for people to find you.  Twellow also allows you to link to more of your social profiles, which makes it easy for people to engage with you on the platform of their choice.

 
There are plenty of other ways for your supporters to track down your Twitter profile, including promoting and linking it to your Facebook page, your YouTube channel, your website - all of which will help bump the page rank up in searches.

There's also Twitter Search (which has recently added an advanced search, which helps you drill down further into niches and interests).

I would still say it's worth registering with directories though, just so you are covering as many bases as possible and making it really easy for people to find you and engage with you.

Like Twitter search, they'll help people find you based around their interests, rather than by your brand - and that's very powerful.

Come to think of it, Twellow automatically creates a listing/ profile for you when you start using Twitter, which you have the option to claim and amend or add to.  Have you claimed yours yet?

Serious fun from SXSW - the Social Media Nonprofit Poetry Slam

I've just been catching up with this session - run yesterday at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas - via the Twitterstream and the links to various blogs that people have shared in their tweets.

Conducted entirely in rhyme (yes, really), the session was moderated by Beth Kanter, with contributions from:

• Danielle Brigida - National Wildlife Federation
• Wendy Harman - American Red Cross - National Headquarters
• Carie Lewis - The Humane Society of the United States
• David Neff - American Cancer Society [Judge]
• Katie Paine - KDPaine & Partners [Judge]
• Holly Ross - NTEN [Judge]

Unsurprisingly, Twitter is mentioned heavily - along with a range of other social media - in the examples shared by the panel.

Beth has kindly shared a comprehensive range of content from it here, on her blog - including the slides, transcripts of the poems recited by each of the panelists, along with a variety of links to help you get a fuller picture of the nonprofit case studies, experiences and insights that the session pulled together and shared.

And here's a video (via the NTEN blog) of the panelists in action:

Looks like a lot of fun, whilst making a serious point about how charities - and brands in general - are re-evaluating their traditional views on metrics, measurement and ROI to account for a different style of engagement with supporters through social media. 

It's really quite clever to deliver a session on measurement and metrics in such a unusual and engaging way - reflecting how social media enable nonprofits to engage supporters in helping them meet their challenges in new and innovative ways.

Beth also shares some reflections from the session on her blog here.

Twitter - Are you a 'natural born twitterer'?

Yesterday I shared an article from The Chronicle of Philanthropy featuring advice and examples of Twitter for nonprofits, which featured a quote from Jeff Manning of the The Lance Armstrong Foundation. If you missed that post, here's a link to it.

Following on from that, I thought I would share this interview with Lance Armstrong that I came across this afternoon on TechCrunch - declaring him a 'natural born Twitterer' - as it contains a couple of insights that might be useful.

In the interview, Lance says of Twitter,

'140 characters fits my personality well. I’m not much for small talk ... I see long drawn out emails and I delete them. It also brings a certain transparency to my life that others may have never seen or realized. Lastly, it works great for talking about the thing I care about the most (behind my family) and that’s fighting cancer. Twitter builds grassroots movements quicker than anything I’ve ever seen.'

These are useful principles to bear in mind whether you're tweeting as an individual or on behalf of the brand of the charity or nonprofit you work for. Being as transparent as possible and focusing on what's important to you/ your organisation gives your followers a clear idea about who you are and what you stand for - and something honest and real to engage with.  As Lance puts it:

'It has to be 100% authentic... people are smart. They know when they see something real.'

Lance goes on to say he tries to:

'Keep it positive. There are plenty of times I felt like crushing someone for what they say or did but I avoid it.'

Clearly, many charities and nonprofits deal with challenges and issues that are not, in themselves, necessarily positive, and need to be transparent about the realities of this in order to attract support.

However, what he means here is that it's important to respond positively to criticism or negative attention.  And it's just as important, if you're about to start tweeting on behalf of your charity or nonprofit, to set expectations with your director or board about the likelihood that this will happen, because you're bound to encounter it sooner or later.

If you haven't yet started tweeting at your organisation, I think it's worth thinking this through, and discussing it with colleagues in your communications team.  They will be adept at handling negative media coverage, and dealing with common misconceptions, and able to advise on the kinds of issues that generally arise and what your organisation's position is.  You might consider working together to develop some guidelines or general principles, so that you (or other staff tweeting on behalf of your organisation) can feel confident that your tweets are aligned with brand values and key messages.

Remember though, whilst it's good to plan and anticipate scenarios, you should try to avoid over-thinking your approach to Twitter and be led by the character of the medium - which is, by its very nature, fast and informal.

If you are going to tweet on behalf of your nonprofit's brand, it will be totally unworkable if every message you post has to be signed-off internally beforehand, if you adopt too corporate a tone, or if your tweets don't show any personality.  Even if your profile name and picture is your organisation's brand, you'll still only get real engagement with the Twitter community if you let something of the personality of the individual using the account show through (Dogs Trust do this really well).  In fact, it's unrealistic to think that won't happen anyway, unless you only post generic updates - and, believe me, if you do that you won't be getting the most out of using Twitter for all your efforts.

So, if you can, try to be a natural born twitterer - and do what feels right, rather than getting bogged down with policies and rules.

You might want to follow Lance Armstrong on Twitter for a while, and decide what you think about his style of tweeting.  You might find it interesting to compare his tweets to those from The Lance Armstrong Foundation. Do they have the same voice; how does the content and style differ?

I've been following Lance on Twitter for a while now, and I've never really noticed that he tweets as frequently as the article says.  Mind you, as he says, 'Most tweets I send people don't even notice'. That's a useful insight too.  Although your tweets can be read at any time, people have busy lives and aren't going to hang on your every word, or read every tweet.  Another reason not to be too cautious or precious, and just experiment a bit.  And if you post a tweet and have second thoughts about it later, you can always delete it or - better still - be transparent, and correct yourself or invite some positive debate about it.

Twitter - Advice from The Chronicle of Philanthropy

I wanted to share this article entitled, 'When Characters Count: Advice for Charities on Making the Most of Twitter', by Caroline Preston from The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

It contains a variety of examples of nonprofits using Twitter in various ways - which might be useful for those considering starting to use Twitter or wanting to understand more about how to get the most from it - and some useful advice from 'nonprofit social-media experts', including the following list:

Find out where your supporters are. Do some casual research to learn if people who care about your cause are talking about it on the site.

Listen to others. If you sign up for Twitter, don't just start blasting information about yourself and your organization. Find out what people are saying about your charity, and what information they're looking for.

Don't be a bore. Readers don't sign up to follow a group's Twitter account because they want a litany of links to press releases. That's what RSS feeds are for. So inject some personality into your messages.

Be professional. While for an animal-rights group blogging about vegan recipes may make sense, posting about how disappointed you were in last night's episode of Lost probably doesn't.

Engage with users. Twitter is a two-way dialogue: You send out messages, and readers and supporters will probably respond with questions and suggestions. Nonprofit officials who use Twitter say they try to respond to some, if not all, of the comments they get. Even Lance Armstrong, who has more than 130,000 followers on the site, sends out general responses to all of his followers if he has been asked the same question again and again, says Jeff Manning, online marketing manager at the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Monitor your account. In a recent tweet, Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, compared Twitter to owning a dog: "Among other things, you must walk it a few times a day or you are in trouble." Claire Sale, social-media specialist with the American Red Cross, agrees. She says that charities can risk losing readers and respect, at least among Twitterati, if they let their accounts idle for too long.

Tiptoe into fund raising. Twitter followers cannot replace loyal donors, and charity officials should not neglect the latter while experimenting with one-time campaigns on the networking site.

Develop guidelines. Not every staff member at your charity should be using Twitter in the organization's behalf. Choose one or two people to be in charge of the group's Twitter account.

Avoid taking offense. Because anyone can jot off a quick comment via Twitter, a charity is almost certain to receive a few negative, and even nasty, messages.

Read the full article here.

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.

NFPtweetup - during and after

I'm delighted to report that the first NFPtweetup, held last night (4.30-8.30pm, GMT), seemed to be enjoyed by those that took part, and provided a useful forum to bring people together and start exploring all things Twitter for nonprofits.

To think that it started out as a casual, off-the-cuff, remark in a conversation between two not-for-profit tweeters...

... but evolved to be so much more - just like so many things do, wherever social media enables like-minded people to come together.  You can see most of this by looking through tweets mentioning NFPtweetup here and checking out the wiki here.

In all, 35-40 tweeters participated - either in person and/ or online - to share ideas, insights and thoughts, and discuss some of the issues and opportunities for charities and nonprofits using, or thinking of using, Twitter.

(I should say that, although Twitter was the focus of the event, one of the main objectives that emerged as the idea for the event evolved was to engage around the topic of social media in general, using Twitter as an entry point for the conversation - since many of the challenges, considerations and opportunities are the same across the many social platforms.)

To get as much value from this gathering of minds, and allow it to be shared as widely as possible, I put a shout out to everyone before the event to submit one slide capturing an idea, a thought, an observation, a question or an example related to nonprofits' use of Twitter.  This was the result:

NFPtweetup Collaborative Slideshow

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: collaboration socialmedia)

Brilliantly, this collaborative effort was even featured as Top Presentation of the Day on Slideshare which took it to an even wider audience than that for the event itself.

As you might expect of a gathering of nonprofit geeks, there was also plenty of content generated during the event that we've shared across the web.  Here are some links for those interested:

You can access much of the content via this search of hashtags.org.

Tweets including NFPtweetup can all be seen here, too (this would usually be the case at hashtags.org, but the service was down for development when the tweets for NFPtweetup started, and the team at hashtags.org say they are not intending to backdate to aggregate what they missed during this time, because it would take them too long!).

Blog posts (known at time of writing):

• Post by Damien Austin-Walker, from Timebank

• Post by Amy Sample Ward, from NetSquared

• Post by Howard Lake, at UK Fundraising
  (Howard says this was the UK's first NFPtweetup. I think that's true...)

• Post by Ed Walker, from UCLAN

Photos:

• Photos on Twitter tagged NFPtweetup.

Videos and more are being listed here on the wiki as they are created and shared.

With content still being posted, and conversations - having been started on Twitter - moving to other social sites, including The Charity Place, I hope that this event has acted as a catalyst to open up the area of social media a bit more, make it more accessible and unleash its potential for charities and nonprofits.

Thanks again to Just Giving for supporting this event, and to everyone that attended, contributed and participated.

So, should we have another one in a couple of months? Perhaps to explore the burning issues that came up this time that we only had chance to scratch the surface of? Any feedback greatly appreciated...

NFPtweetup - sponsored by The Charity Place and Just Giving

This is primarily a heads up for anyone reading this blog who may not have heard about NFPtweetup yet.

This event is taking place between 4.30-8.30pm (GMT) on Monday, 24 November and is open to anyone working in the not-for-profit space who either uses Twitter or has an interest in the applications of Twitter, and other social media, for charities and nonprofit organisations.

There are more details here on the wiki, and you can participate in the event either by attending it physically at the Coach & Horses, Greek Street, Soho, London, or by participating online (if you attend in person, you'll be able to enjoy a drink or two with the compliments of those nice people at Just Giving, who are kindly supporting this event).

All details and information are on the wiki so, if you are interested, please have a look.

You don't need to register for the event, although it would be nice if we knew to expect you - either in person or online - so we can do our best to include everyone in the conversation; and signing up to the wiki is probably the best way to make sure that happens.

If you're reading this, don't be a lurker - join the flock!

A disclaimer

I've been trying to turn more charities onto the possibilities of social media for a while, because of the enormous power they have to enable organisations to meet their objectives - if used strategically.

I'm saying that again, because it's key and it concerns me that it's a point that many people keep missing.

I'm not advocating using Twitter, or any other social media, for the sake of it (or because it is cutting edge, 'cool', new or exciting).  I am keen to develop a deeper understanding that social media are a powerful set of tools that can help charities and nonprofits achieve important objectives that contribute towards their corporate/ organisational plans, and their missions.  This means activities like building awareness of their work, raising funds, delivering support, scoping and understanding need, communicating important messages to supporters and stakeholders, recruiting donors, campaigners, volunteers, staff, advocates, growing a greater voice to influence policy and provision of local and national services, developing better solutions and so on.

I'm also very aware that there are some very practical barriers for a lot of organisations - whether they are rooted in resources (time, money, people power, structure), knowledge, understanding, experience or a combination of these - factors can make it very difficult to put together a business case, or create a culture, for testing these tools.

So, where was I? Oh yes, that's right:

NFPtweetup is all about coming together with others to explore these (and any other) burning issues, share thoughts and ideas, meet new people and maybe even collaborate.  I hope that it turns out to be a great forum for people not using Twitter or any other social media yet in their organisations to consider what might work for them.

Twitter: Where did Obama go?

Over a week ago now, I noticed a post on, Valleywag pointing out that, after having tweeted throughout his campaign for the Presidency, Barack Obama's Twitter account had since gone surprisingly quiet.

The article suggested that his 'followers have been pumped and dumped — Twittered into contributing money and time, and then passed over for more presidential means of communication'.

I can understand why they might feel that, too.

A few days earlier, this was one of the things I was careful to draw attention to in the article I wrote (annoyingly, the link always shows 'Page not found' on first click through and needs to be reloaded before you can see the article) for the CharityComms website, which ended:

'If you actively engage people anywhere through a social platform, you will have become an important part of their online world and your absence will be noticed and commented on if you suddenly disappear from the landscape.'

The 'radio silence' of the Obama Twitter account has provided the perfect case in point to prove this and, because it has such a high profile, we can see how people have responded and learn from the insights this provides.

There are important lessons to consider carefully here if you already using social media or considering dipping your toe in.

Social media offers huge opportunities to genuinely connect with your supporters in a way that most other media is not able to replicate. As a user of Twitter, I know that it really feels like being part of a community: If you ask for help or advice, it's unusually forthcoming, people are very supportive of each other, and — once you've built relationships with like-minded others — you are missed if you don't tweet for a while, and even asked if you're okay when you haven't been around for a day or two. 

Most other social platforms have similar cultures.

For charities, it is important to understand that the connections you are making with your supporters using social media are with real people — not just user names or avatars — and real people have feelings.

One of the reasons social media is so powerful for charities is its ability to bring supporters closer to your organisation and your work, but with this comes a degree of accountability.  This is particularly true if you have asked something of them — money, time, attention, engagement — and they have given it.

Another thing to bear in mind is that social media create a culture of meritocracy, where you connect and engage with others based on how much you give, mutually respect and share.  Those that only use their Twitter profiles to promote themselves, don't engage and don't give anything back, don't get too much of a positive response, quickly find that they are 'unfollowed' and and can even be considered 'spammers'.  It's important that you keep adding value to the environment.

There will be many that will continue to follow Barack Obama regardless of whether he tweets regularly again or not, simply because he's the President elect and because they're interested to see what he'll do next — many, because they'll be looking for an opportunity to criticise.

If you're a charity, this is not as likely to be the case.  If you do not stay active in your social communities, you are more likely to lose followers and connections than Obama is.  However, like him, you will also undoubtedly lose some of the goodwill and engagement that you spent time and energy building up; all of which will diminish your opportunities to generate income, awareness and greater support of your work.

Social media is a great leveller, and individuals can make a lot of noise now — positive and negative — using them.  For charities and nonprofits, the challenge is to make sure you give your supporters the information and motivation to create as much of that positive noise as possible.  Don't let fear of negative buzz inhibit you either: If you concentrate your efforts on filling the space with positive buzz, there generally isn't the space or the appetite for anything else.