There was an interesting piece in Tech Crunch earlier this month on how charities can leverage Twitter to raise awareness and money. Twestival which raised $250k for charity:water was featured as was Blame Drew's Cancer and others.
The bigger question is how non-profit organizations -- many of whom struggle to maintain a website and/or a blog -- best integrate Twitter and tools like it.
Here are three basic questions to consider:
1) Where is my audience today?
Are your core audiences using Twitter? Which social networks do they use? The reality is that even if your audiences are not currently on Twitter, launching a well-designed campaign on social networks including Twitter can help you identify new groups of supporters.
Turning tweets into advocates and donors can be tricky though so thought has to be given to how you a) convert folks coming in via social media and b) creating opportunities for folks who may not "join" but are still interested in helping you.
2) What level of resources and effort are required to maintain our social media presence, including Twitter?
We get this question a lot. Be careful not to underestimate the amount of time and effort it takes to maintain a meaningful social media presence. Also it will be important to find a style and updating schedule that fits your organizational rhythm.
3) What do I need to get started?
Develop an action plan which defines:
a) goals of your social media presence (be specific),
b) time per day/week invested in maintaining your presence
c) team members responsible for presence
d) process for approving content
e) metrics for evaluating effort
Then test-run your action plan for 1-2 weeks and evaluate. It will probably need some tweaking.
Conclusion
When it comes to social media, walk before you run. It can be tempting to leap at every new and hot social media network but simply having a presence is not in itself good strategy. Know what you want to accomplish so that you can measure value to the organization for the effort you invest.
TechCrunch article:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/05/tweetraising-the-potential-for-charities-on-twitter/
Comments