10 ways nonprofits should use Twitter

For community organizers, Twitter makes a lot of sense.

Organizing is about building relationships and mobilizing people around a cause. Twitter does exactly that.

I have noticed that many organizations don’t understand that Twitter is a social network of one-on-one peer relationships.

Organizations, although they enter with brand recognition, don’t always become dynamic members of the community. Rather, they just show up and push their own information out.

In a real world community, you wouldn’t stand in the town square and shout your message—so why behave that way in a digital one? Just being on Twitter is not enough. Rather, as in real-world organizing, you need to meet people where they are.

I created the following list of rules for my own organization to help the decision makers better understand how to be more than a town crier, as well as to make Twitter work better for us and our cause.

10 Twitter rules for nonprofits:

1. Follow back

Twitter is social. Communities run on reciprocity, so follow back the real people who follow you.

Having roughly the same amount of followers as people you are following is not harmful to your brand. It shows that you don’t think you are too important to have relationships with the people you want to influence.