What Twitter can (cannot) do for your organization
Prepared by Noureddine Achemlal, E-Mediat Morocco Strategy Advisor
Although born in 2006, Twitter is still a
mystery to many people. Some consider it more difficult to grasp as Facebook, others simpler. However, Should your organization use Twitter? If
so, to say what? And for
what purposes? But first, what's a hashtag?
What
is Twitter?
Twitter is a social network for
sharing information.
Twitter is similar, in its presentation, to
a Facebook wall. On this wall, you post messages that do not
exceed 140 characters. You post Tweets which end often with
links to pages that you want people to go watch.
You do not post sentences like
"in a bad mood this morning." You can do
it, but it is preferable to post information that will really interest
your audience...
On Twitter, we're not friends with
someone. We follow him/her. That is, we follow the information
that he/she posts. We can, therefore, follow anyone, as long as the
information posted seem interesting. We are followers who
have followers.
Twitter is not just talking
about ourselves (indeed, personal information is not strongly displayed the
profile). We don’t only share personal information. We retweet, that is we also
share others’ tweets with our own networks.
Finally, Twitter needs to be used regularly. There is no
interest to tweet once or twice a month because no one will follow you.
Which bring us to the question…
Twitter, what for?
If you are an organization that advocates
for a cause or holding a public awareness on
a theme, perhaps you have an interest in using Twitter because
it can allow you to give resonance to your voice. You
post regularly on the current state of your projects, about your
cause, about how your organization is “fighting” to be heard, what the
policies say, links to your blog articles, etc.
If you organize a festival type
event and want to make this event bigger, Twitter is also
likely to be helpful. You follow the
steps of the
event organization step by step, you post names that joined your programming, you
make calls to volunteers, you post prices, you post links to articles in your blog...
And if you work in another
field, you can always try Twitter. Having previously defined the objectives for using this
tool.
In
all cases, you do not post only your information. You retweet other information, from time to
time as well.
Remember: Twitter allows
you to spread information widely. But if you other interests than
this, Twitter will not do much.
What is a hashtag? The speed of Twitter
A hashtag is a keyword preceded
by the # sign. For example, if you
post a message on Twitter with #NG, others can find your
tweet by typing the keyword on the search box. A simple example? Go to the site: http://www.hashtags.org. In the search
box at the top left, type the word "NGO" and press "Enter"
key. Hop! You get, in real time, all the written
messages on Twitter containing the hashtag "#NGO".
No, it's no coincidence that the
media almost bless Twitter for its speed...
NGO’s objectives with Twitter
In conclusion, here are the advantages that Twitter can bring you.
-
Boost your
network (by being active and responsive on Twitter)
-
You
can search for partners (follow the person or organization with whom you
are likely to link)
-
Grow
your expertise and reputation (meaning talking about you
subject regularly by sending interesting links related to your theme, always more people who
follow you)
-
Bringing Internet
users to your web site/blog (systematically disseminating articles for
your blog and encouraging people to discuss them)
-
Keep
an eye (thanks to the people you follow, Twitter acts as a
monitoring system on the topics that interest you)
-
Improve your
ranking (by posting on Twitter links leading to pages of
your blog, you are likely to drive up these pages in search
engines ...)
