Become a professional tweeter
Inspired by Beth Kanter's book, The Networked Nonprofit, we've thought of several social media experiments that we'd like to conduct in the betterplace lab and you are invited to join us! Each month, we are going to devote time to intensive study and practice of particular social media tools and how they work, whether it's facebook, our internal team newsletter or, starting today, twitter.
We're not starting exactly at square one. I've personally been a tweeter since January 2009 at @Joanabp. And the betterplace lab has been tweeting since our launch in July this year. At this point, we're still lay people, which is to say that I tweet and follow intuitively rather than strategically. But that's changing today! And since we want to find out what kinds of benefits a social media strategy can have for a nonprofit organization, we are going to measure our successes and failures.
We want our experiment to also benefit each of our readers who may not yet use Twitter but might be interested, so we are starting with a few tips:
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a microblogging service that works to build and maintain networks and relationships with people and organizations who have similar interests or work on similar topics as you. Twitter has provided me with an abundance of exciting information and contacts. That's why I am one of the over 200,000 twitter fans in Germany. Worldwide, there are 105 million users registered (as of April 2010).
How can I best present myself?
First, choose an easily-understandable username. NGOs should use the name of their organization. We are called "betterplacelab" (spaces are not allowed). For our user photo, we've uploaded our logo. Social media experts have asserted the importance of showing personality rather than dry business-speak. That's why our profile doesn't say "The betterplace lab tweets: We research digital media for the social sector," but it is a bit more spicey and says "Joana Breidenbach | Founder of the betterplace lab | Dr. Anthropology | powered up! | Dennis Buchmann | creative writing mastermind of the lab | dry | red haired"
Who's following who?
The next step is to build up a network! In the lab, we're interested in connecting with others who are involved in digital/social arenas, development aid, philanthropy, fundraising and social media. Up til now, I collected contacts rather arbitrarily, through the search function "Find people." Or I have followed the suggestions of other twitter users. We are now following 97 people, which means that we have subscribed to receive their "tweets." And so far, 75 people are following us.
But how can we build our network more professionally? To this end, I made a mind map of our current network of follows and those who we follow and have tried to brainstorm which other organizations and individuals we should be coming into contact with over Twitter. From my @Joanabp twitter experience, I know that it's better not to follow too many people because then one is overwhelmed by the deluge of twitter updates. It's much more important to identify a few relevant contacts who themselves also have large networks.
How do I find relevant twitter contacts and establish a network?
+ search for known names directly through the "Find people" function
+ Follow the suggested "who to follow" list on your start page. There is a selection of users who have profiles similar to you.
+ Search for relevant keywords, such as "Online Fundraising," "whaling" or "human rights" for example to find interesting users.
+ Follow (some) of your own followers. You'll thereby show from the beginning that you are also interested in following others on twitter. Check out the profiles of your followers and and decide to follow them if you think they are interesting for your network.
+ Actively introduce people on your network to others, for example, draw awareness to a particular Tweeter to everyone in your network.
Over the next days, we will systematically grow and analyze the effects of these practices on our own betterplace lab twitter network.
Coming up in our blog (you can subscribe by RSS here): What is a good Tweet? How can I use twitter without putting in over hours? And how can I measure my twitter success?
(Translated by Becky Crook)
