Twitter is a unique social media platform that can be utilized in several ways to support nonprofit organizations’ fundraising and marketing efforts. Twitter helps nonprofits to reach their target audience, spread awareness about their cause, and drive donations. However, It is more than just a tool to advertise your events and causes; it also provides numerous opportunities for meaningful engagement with your audience. The usage of Twitter for a nonprofit should be tailored to the specific needs and preferences of the organization’s target audience to achieve maximum impact. In this blog post, we will discuss how nonprofits can use Twitter to achieve their goals.
Create a Twitter account
The first step to using Twitter is to create an account. Make sure to choose a username that reflects your nonprofit’s name or mission. You can also create a second account with a similar username in case your first account gets suspended or deleted for some reason.
Once you have created the account, you can start to customize it by adding a profile picture, header image, and bio. Your bio should include a brief description of your nonprofit, your mission statement, and a link to your website.
Pinning a tweet on top of your profile that includes a link to your donation account is another way to encourage people to donate easily.
Follow relevant accounts
To build a community on Twitter, you need to follow other accounts. Follow other nonprofits, influencers, and individuals who are interested in your cause. If your nonprofit’s aim is to help destitute girls access education, then find people who are also involved in organizations, communities, or online groups that emphasize equality of opportunity in education.
By doing so, you can build relationships and engage with your community.
You can use Twitter’s search function to find relevant accounts and join in on conversations.
Another way to find the right accounts is using Soaster’s account recommendation tool to find real and organic accounts to grow your Twitter community.
Share your story
Twitter is a great platform to share your nonprofit’s story. Use Twitter to highlight your impact, showcase your successes, and share your challenges. Regularly inform your followers about your activities, where you spend the money you have raised etc. Talking about your activities creates confidence in potential donors. People want to see where and how their donations are and will be used.
Use images and videos to explain your goals. Record videos of your activities and share a 1- to 2-minute video on your account. If your recording is too long to share on Twitter, then publish it on Youtube and give a link to your channel.
If possible, it would be great to create testimonial videos. These videos could include donors and people whom you are helping. These kinds of videos will make your account more engaging. Use Twitter to share news and updates about your nonprofit.
Know your audience
Engagement is key on Twitter. But before engagement, you should know about your audience. Rapidly have a look at the profiles of your followers. When you’ve just started your Twitter journey, it’s easy to analyze your followers. Gradually, you are going to start to know better about your followers: how they engage with your posts, how they respond, how much traffic you drive to your website or donation page, etc. These are important metrics to have an idea of how effectively you are using Twitter.
While you are getting familiar with your audience, start to plan your tweets around how to get more engagement. Identify post types that get more comments, retweets or likes and create more of them.
When planning your sharing, remember not to be too promotional. That means you should not constantly share the link to your fundraising page or visual posts that request donations. Try to differentiate your posts with things like news, blog posts, and videos relevant to your nonprofit. You cannot always create content in your niche. The best way is to curate content from other Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, and websites as long as it is relevant and adds value.
Engage with your followers
As we said above, engagement is very important to grow your Twitter community and get donations. The first rule to increase your engagement is sharing relevant and attention grabbing tweets as we talked earlier.
Secondly you can try to join in on relevant conversations. Respond to tweets related to your nonprofit’s field, retweet and like posts. This will help to build relationships and establish your nonprofit as an active member of the community.
Another way to improve your reach is using hashtags. You can employ hashtags directly associated with your nonprofit or event, or you can search for hashtags aligning with your sector and the interests of your audience. You should just use a few hashtags per post. Also, by using hashtags relevant to your nonprofit in the comments, you can increase your visibility and expand your reach.
You can also use Twitter to ask for feedback and opinions from your followers.
You can send direct messages to your followers. They might not see your tweets but they will probably read your DM.
Drive donations and raise funds
All we talked above is about improving your online visibility and building an engaging community. Once you achieve this, your fundraising efforts will be much easier. The more people trust in your nonprofit the easier they tend to make donations.
As we mentioned earlier, in order to drive your audience to your webpage or other donation links you can leverage your account’s bio, a pinned tweet and posts.
But there are other options to get donations. One of them is Twitter tips. The Tips functionality on Twitter allows you to integrate specific third-party payment services into your profile. By enabling Tips, your followers can express their support by clicking on the Tips icon and making payments or Bitcoin transfers through the third-party platforms you have linked to your profile.
The other option is “Subscription” which Twitter has recently introduced. Subscriptions serve as a means to financially support individuals on Twitter for their valuable contributions. When you offer a subscription package, your followers can subscribe to receive exclusive tweets specifically crafted for them. This is a way to get financial support from your audience. But keep in mind that to benefit from this option, you have to have a blue mark.
Conclusion
In conclusion, using Twitter for a nonprofit can significantly boost the organization’s visibility, fundraising, and marketing efforts. By creating a tailored and engaging presence, nonprofits can connect with their target audience, share their story, and foster meaningful relationships.
By following the steps outlined in this blog post, organizations can effectively utilize Twitter to achieve their goals, including creating a compelling account, following relevant users, knowing their audience, engaging with followers, and driving donations.
