Use it. Enough said. Just kidding, I’ll give you more then that!
Seriously though, Twitter is becoming a huge news and real time information hose right in front of our eyes. I’ve been on Twitter since 2008, so around four years and it’s been very cool to see it morph and explode. One of the interesting things to watch grow is how businesses and non-profits use it. There’s no doubt that if you run an organization there is a benefit to being on Twitter. Also, most people understand that you need to have a plan in place when using the platform.
Because there is so much to cover for Twitter I’m going to break this up over two posts. The first one being on the plan or “Why” behind Twitter and the second being on the “How” or how to use the tools available well.
Plan
Often times in churches or non-profits we have someone who learns about the effectiveness of Twitter and creates an account for the organization or someone else (A.K.A. The Person In Charge) hears about it and find the most tech savvy person on their team and deems them the Social Media Guy/Girl. While it’s exciting that these organization and ministries want to get involved with the conversation often what is missed is a plan.
Having a plan in place is extremely important. If there isn’t a plan in place typically what happens is the Twitter account get’s neglected, misused, or nothing good really comes from it. Then when it comes time to judge its effectiveness no one knows how to give results or answers. In a typical business people would probably look for the ROI (Return on Investment) and measure that by how many sales have been made through or because of the account. While sales for some companies are important, it’s a weak measure. In the case of non-profits and churches that metric doesn’t even translate.
Knowing that, here are the two most important parts of the plan to figure out first.
1) Why are we doing this? – This is extremely important to answer. It’s also important that there is a culture in your organization that understands why the Twitter account is there and what it’s used for. (That’s just a good rule for anything though.) Some of the questions to ask when working on the “Why” are “who is this account for?” and “how will it make our organization better?”. Also important to know is what your company values are and how will they be implemented into this account.
2) What’s the win? – If you really think through these two questions you probably recognize that they are the same question, just two different ways of asking it. It’s so important to know what your win is. This comes from really understanding what your Twitter account is all about but puts more context around it. “If we are doing what our account is about then what will that look like?” Knowing the win helps makes it a more useful tool in the long run.
These are just two building blocks for your plan. The rest is good leadership and management. Who runs it, what tools to use (I’ll cover that later), what type of content to push out. I really believe if you can get your organization understanding these first two questions of the Why and the Win then you will be on the right path.
Have you walked through this process? What challenges have you faced? Have you done this for your personal account?
