Twitter can be a great tool for your nonprofit’s efforts, depending on your strategy, audience and internal capacity. If your audience isn’t on Twitter or your staff isn’t able to keep up with a rigorous posting schedule, Twitter is likely not the social media platform for your nonprofit.
General Advice
Similar to LinkedIn, you’ll want to fill out and optimize your profile to maximize followers. This may include upgrading to a professional account with Twitter for Professionals. There are several tools exclusive to this type of account, including having access to your analytics, profile spotlights that can highlight your location, your store or shop, or a link to your site that can operate as a CTA.
In addition, you’ll be able to tag your organization as a ‘Non-Governmental & Nonprofit Organization,’ which can help distinguish your brand from business and other nonprofit organizations on Twitter.
Twitter Blue is another service that offers several features like the ability to edit and ‘undo’ tweets, post longer tweets, share longer videos, and have access to SMS two-factor authentication.
Posting Advice
Posting on Twitter differs from other platforms in that you should aim to post much more often, around 2-5 times a day, including retweets. Tweets should be short, to-the-point and written for mobile users since many people use Twitter exclusively on their phones.
Consider using emojis, hashtags, and mentions strategically rather than overloading the tweet or making it difficult to read.
Tweets with links have a higher retweet rate— and are a great way to drive more visitors to your website!
Tweeting and retweeting current news stories that are relevant to your organization, mission and programs is good form on Twitter (and more broadly across all platforms).
Tweeting photos and videos should be a part of your strategy.
Statistics, quotes, and CTAs also get higher numbers of engagement, especially those linked to images and graphics that are relevant to those content topics, mission and programs.
Although there are varying opinions, it’s best to avoid liking your own tweets, though retweeting important ones after about a week can be good for reaching a new audience or getting more eyes on your content.
Just like other social platforms, responding to and engaging with your followers is important.
Follow them back, like their mentions and replies, respond to DMs, like their tweets. All of these things make you seem more engaged as an organization and show that you care about your audience.
Advertising
Twitter ads have been relaunched and are more expensive than they’ve been in the past. Promoting tweets is a more budget-friendly option.
There are a number of ways to get your organization’s Twitter profile in front of new eyes, which Hootsuite has an excellent guide on.