talking twitter

After the announcement yesterday that Twitter is stopping its free sms messaging service in the UK, I’ve been thinking a bit more about it as a tool and its use within the sector.

As I’ve mentioned here before, Twitter is essentially an instant messaging tool.  Posts (or tweets) are limited to 140 characters and you can follow and reply to other users.

Twitter is becoming increasingly popular with both individuals and organisations as a way of keeping people updated.  It taps in to the way that people are picking up their information, in bite size chunks and on the go.  You can view Twitter updates on your computer desktop, on your Facebook page or on your mobile phone; you can contribute to the Twitter discussion in the same way.

Some current interesting twitter feeds are:

·      Wateraid (http://twitter.com/wateraid)

·      NAVCA news updates (http://twitter.com/navcanews)

·      Oxfam (http://twitter.com/oxfamgb)

·      Plan UK (http://twitter.com/planuk)

·      Dogs Trust (http://twitter.com/dogstrust)

·      Department of Communities and Local Government (http://twitter.com/communitiesuk)

Keeping supporters updated with the work of your organisation increases their connection and loyalty to your cause.  The simplicity of Twitter also means that they can feed back directly to you.

Twitter can also be used to help people have input into a discussion or event.  Ruralnet have used Twitter to help people engage with their conferences (http://twitter.com/collaborate08) and we’re giving it a go with the NCVO collaborative working conference (http://twitter.com/NCVOcollaborate).

Discussions that start as tweets can quickly gain momentum, just like the ColaLife project, started by Simon Berry.

How can organisations use Twitter?

There are a number of ways that organisations can make use of Twitter, such as:

·      notify people about news from your organisation

·      follow the progress of a specific project

·      encourage people to contribute questions to an event if they can’t attend in person

·      collaborate with others working in a similar field

·      quickly access information and opinions from other users

·      give progress updates on a fundraising drive

Following people on Twitter

You can view any one user’s posts on Twitter by going straight to http://twitter.com/username.

To actively engage with Twitter you need to register an account – either as an individual or on behalf of an organisation or event.

Once you’ve registered, you can click follow to keep you with as many people as you like.

Posting on Twitter

On your homepage, just fill in the box with a maximum of 140 characters.

If you want to direct your message to someone in particular, then include their username in it somewhere, such as ”@louisebrown get off of twitter and do some work”.

If you want to include a web link in your post then Twitter will automatically turn it into a tiny url to condense it.

Tagging on Twitter

The construction of twitter is so simple that it doesn’t easily allow you to search out tweets on topics or search back through posts.

Because of this, people have started to use hashtags to describe their posts, such as “has anyone heard today’s speech by Stuart Etherington? #NCVO”.  You can find out more about following hashtags at http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Hashtags.  Find out what is being said by putting your search term in to http://search.twitter.com.

If you’re inspired to start tweeting then come and find me at http://twitter.com/louisebrown.