20 Ways to use Twitter (not just in business)

Howard Lake | 20 March 2009 | Blogs

• Tagged with:
• Digital
• Management
• Volunteering

Whilst much is being written about the exponentially growing use of twitter as a tool for ‘keeping in touch’ and ‘sharing’, only now are we starting to see some evidence-based thoughts on how it can actually help us to generate income.
Stephen Fry’s much publicised use of twitter to raise the profile of a Norfolk Fenlands wildlife charity is one high profile example but what interested me most this week was this blog; “20 ways twitter helps business beat the economic downturn” (written by Andrew Ballenthin for the Community Marketing Blog).
It’s written by Canadian business authors specialising in the online marketing world but of the 20 tips highlighted, I believe 13 are equally valuable to fundraisers and another 3 will be, once we understand how to integrate twitter into our broader communications mix.
Who of us wouldn’t find these useful:

• developing more insightful relationships with our suporters
• having access to free information and help from like-minded individuals
• reducing time taken to search online for information
• doing some research about particular individuals, organisations or groups before we approach them
• finding out what people think about what we’re doing for free
• improving our website SEO and ranking performance

I’m paraphrasing the full list but what’s probably most valuable is the fact that these tips have come from business research.  That is, these are things that people are actually doing and which are having a measurable, tangible, positive impact on their businesses.
I vote we learn from the commercial world’s experience, build on our sector’s already impressive knowledge and exploit these ideas, making them work even better for us!
 

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.