Twitter

I am 22, and have grown up in the era that has created social media, so I know what it is and I know its effect, but I decided to write this post. In my new job in fundraising, I feel I can't do enough. My knowledge is important, but  I feel it needs to constantly be revised and double-checked. Therefore I decided to write a post specific to twitter.

I have seen two great posts recently about twitter:
1. How your charity can boost twitter engagement
2. 3 simple ways to drive donor engagement on twitter

The first post details six great tips to improve upon twitter engagement. In my own words, here are the tips provided, and how I feel that these are relevant:
1. Use image psychology, which research has demonstrated creates the highest-click-through rate. I believe the evidence is shown in many posts that are not just for charities, but individual profiles. For example, when I posted an update about graduating university, it was scrolled-past, but when I posted a picture I got over 70 likes!
2. Analyse how the target audience identify themselves and create tweets specific to them. If you want retweets, to be favoured or to make any impact, you need to see what is popular, and to engage best with the audience.
3. Be simple in your ideas. There is no need to re-invent the wheel. If competition do certain services, there is no shame in promoting, and keeping yourselves unique. Use hashtags that you use regularly (I have noticed charities do this to promote their campaigns e.g. #NoMakeupSelfie)
4. Reverse psychology can work to your advantage. If you occasionally suggest not to read something, or not to donate to something, people might really want to.
5. Studies show that readers like to read sentences where the first letter of each primary word is capitalised. I have not personally done this, so I am not too sure!
6. Post tweets that you aim to get extra clicks to or retweeted, so be sure to take the effort to organise a Twitter marketing strategy and post tweets that speak directly to your supporters.

The second and final link instructs three simple ways that Twitter can help to engage and boost your relationship with your audience through retweets, replies and direct messages. It separates how to do all three perfectly.

Retweets:
As described in this post, it is essential to get retweets in order to build "your credibility by associating with other great ideas or organisations and expanding your reach by connecting with followers across the Twitterverse." To make it even easier to retweet, the article suggests that you aim to keep tweets to 115 characters or less. This allows followers an extra 25 characters to add personalisations when they decide to retweet your post!

Replies:
Kindful states: "Replies on Twitter are the best way to create an ongoing conversation with Twitter followers and increase your donor engagement online." Unsustainably, the post says in order to make it work successfully, you need to be on twitter constantly! It suggests checking twitter once an hour, to ensure there is never a missed opportunity to respond to tweets that are relevant to you and your audience. Most helpfully, it continues to provide the following guidance: "It’s important to note that where you place the @username in your reply matters. If you place it at the beginning of your reply as shown above, it will be visible by your intended recipient as well as any of your followers who are also following that recipient. If you place the @username somewhere in the middle of your reply it will be seen by the recipient and all your followers. This can be helpful if you want all your constituents to see a response to a common question about your organization."

Direct Messages:
DMs are great to connect to followers directly in a more private setting, as well as driving more traffic to your online fundraising campaign.This is the perfect way for you to reach out to potential donors in a more personal and discreet way. There is still a 140 character limit, so this means you need to be extra concise, while conveying compelling content. Some organisations may choose to send automatic direct messages to new followers, but to be unique it can be more compelling to stand out in your communications.