To Tweet or Not to Tweet: Thoughts on Twitter
By Elisa Miller-Out, Singlebrook Technology, Inc.

What is all this fuss about Twitter? What use is it to associations, non-profits and other organizations anyway? Well, for those of you who are new to the world of social media, Twitter is a simple, free web-based tool that allows you to send a short message (140 characters or less) to a group of people who have decided to “follow” you and receive your messages. The message gets disseminated instantly to your followers’ Twitter accounts and can be received on their phone, mobile device or laptop wherever they are. Did I mention that it’s free? There is not much to lose by giving Twitter a try, except for the fact that it does take some time and effort to manage.

The first step with any social media campaign is to determine some goals. Are you trying to drive traffic to your web site and attract new members? Looking to encourage the sharing of ideas at a conference? Building a sense of community to engage your members or donors? Promoting new services, events or initiatives that your organization is working on? Twitter can be used to achieve all of these goals and more. It’s a very simple tool that can be used in all kinds of creative and unexpected ways. Twitter can be whatever you make it!

After you’ve set some goals and are ready to tweet, you need to build up a following, so that people are consistently reading your tweets. (Note that all of your tweets are publicly posted on the web, so anyone can search for certain keywords and discover your tweets, even if they are not following you.) You can attract followers in many ways: by promoting your Twitter account on your regular web site, by encouraging your membership to follow you, by tweeting regularly (2-3 times a week) about topics of interest to your target audience, by following other people’s tweets, by replying directly to other people’s tweets, and by holding contests/giveaways for people who follow you.

Once you have some followers, there are different strategies you can employ in your Twitter campaign, depending on your goals. For instance, if you want to spur some discussion of ideas around a particular session at a conference, you can establish a keyword for that conference topic and encourage your attendees to use it in their tweets. Keywords are referred to as hashtags in Twitter because you establish them by typing the word with the hash symbol or pound sign (#) in front of it to “tag” it. For example, if your keyword is “Association”, you would type #Association in your tweet. Then anyone searching for tweets about associations can look under that hashtag and find your tweet. Once you’ve established a hashtag for your conference and/or an individual conference session, people in the conference session can search for the established hashtag and find lots of messages with different people’s questions and thoughts on the topic. These can even be posted in real time on a screen during the session and can come from online attendees as well as people attending the session in person.

Some Twitter users have had success with contests and giveaways (prizes like free iPods for instance or even frequent little giveaways such as small amounts of cash or a free month of membership in your organization) that encourage people to follow them, tweet under particular hashtags that they want to promote or follow links to their web site. Spend some time brainstorming different strategies that would match your goals and then try some out and see which ones work best for your organization. Then you can tweet about them and share your best ideas with the rest of us!

Finally, it is important to periodically review your Twitter campaign and assess whether or not you are meeting your goals. The main cost with most social media campaigns is the time you or your staff spend managing them. Let go of the efforts that aren’t working and focus on the strategies that produce tangible results. Good luck with your Twitter campaign! And please feel free to continue the conversation about your efforts and ideas on Twitter!

Elisa Miller-Out is CEO of Singlebrook Technology, Inc., a custom web development firm with over ten years of experience in the association and non-profit industries. Specialties include: web databases, web-based applications, mobile applications, technology strategy and consulting, content management systems, and more. Visit www.Singlebrook.com, follow us at: Twitter.com/Singlebrook or call 607-330-1493.

Twitter Tips

• To start tweeting, just go to Twitter.com, set up an account, type your message in the field provided and post your tweet.
• To establish certain keywords in your tweet, use the hash symbol (#) before the word. For instance, if the keyword is healthcare, write #healthcare in your tweet. Then your tweet will be in the list when someone searches for that topic.
• Use services like Tinyurl.com or Tweetdeck to automatically shorten links that you are tweeting about. Long URL’s can easily use up your 140 character limit.
• There are many applications that can help you organize, manage and send your tweets in different ways. Tweetdeck and Twitterbar are just a few examples. If you search for Twitter applications in google or in your iPhone application store, you’ll find plenty more.
• Retweet: Like someone else’s tweet? Type the following: RT@username (the username is the name of the person who originally tweeted) and then either repost their tweet verbatim, comment on it or share the link they shared.
• To use Direct Messages, type D@username in your tweet or use the direct messages menu item on your Twitter screen. Direct messages will only go to the username you specified and will not show up in your normal stream of public tweets. It’s nice to send a direct message to new followers: “Thanks for following us on Twitter…” You can also include a description of your organization and what you are tweeting about. Direct messages should be no longer then 140 characters, just like any other tweet.