Once upon a time, reaching thousands of supporters meant securing spots on primetime TV or investing in an expensive ad campaign.
Today, all it takes is one click of your mouse.
Twitter gives charity communicators the opportunity to motivate supporters and talk to the media almost immediately.
A tool this powerful is difficult to ignore. But is Twitter really the right communications tool for your charity? And how can you use it effectively?
Five golden rules
Here’s our five golden rules for becoming a shining star in the Twitterverse:
1. Think before you tweet
With Twitter, your message is out there in an instant – so it’s more important than ever to spend time planning what you’re going to say. You’re only writing a few words, but as with any communication you need to think about your audience – who they are, what they want to know, and what action you want them to take. Look out for news stories that link to your cause. Timely tweets like: “Read the new unemployment figures at tinyurlxxx and see how we’re helping people get back into work” are a good use of your time on Twitter.
2. Remember your house style
Tweets should always conform to your house style to ensure communications remain consistent across the board. The immediacy of Twitter makes it tempting to get personal, but do you really want to tell the world that “It’s doughnut day in the office. Yummy!”? Tweeting may feel more informal than a blog or a press release, but make sure you adhere to formal rules governing tone, style and subject matter.
3. Get a second opinion
Tweets can be posted in seconds, but their repercussions could last much longer. Do you really want to be the person who misspells the disease your charity is fighting against? The internet never forgets – so give your tweets to someone else to check before they’re shared with the world.
4. Build your brand
Always work to Twitter’s strengths. Twitter isn’t great for the ‘hard sell’ or communicating complicated information. However, it’s an amazing tool for building relationships with like-minded people around shared concerns (“Did you see the article on child poverty in The Daily Mail this morning? Click here to sign our pledge to help poor communities.”) It’s also great for bigging up your charity and boosting traffic to your website. (“Today we took our petition to David Cameron. Watch the video here.”)
5. Make it the best 140 characters you’ve got
Writing an effective tweet is like solving a cunning crossword puzzle. Somehow you have to get across your message in 140 characters or less. Still, that hasn’t stopped various wits amusing themselves by tweeting 140 character versions of entire Shakespeare plays. To meet this challenging word count keep your message focussed and stick to one idea per tweet. And be ruthless, get rid of any unnecessary words from your copy. Phrases like ‘in order to’ or ‘it seems that’ should be first for the chop.
