Every individual charged with social media management knows the importance of having a strong presence on Twitter. We constantly hear about organizations “engaging” with their followers, growing their social media footprints and using “bird-of-mouth marketing” to increase their impact.

This all sounds great, but how in practice do you get your organization to stand out in an already overcrowded Twitterverse? Here are 5 tips to get you started:

Optimize Your Profile For Impression & Action

Twitter gives organizations a ton of space to make an impression on their profile pages, but few really take advantage of it. With Twitter’s recent updates you can now customize this page more than ever before. Customizable areas include:

• Your profile picture – The icon that is included with each of your tweets
• Header Image – The large image filling the header of your profile
• Profile Headline – The description below your name
• Best Tweets – Tweets automatically selected by Twitter for their engagement that appear larger than others
• Pinned Tweets – Tweets you select to showcase at the top of your profile

Before customizing your profile, you need to decide two things:

1. What impression should a viewer have when looking at your profile for the first time? For example, should they know your mission? Or your areas of impact?
2. Once on your profile, what is the second action you’d like them to take to engage deeper with your organization? Do you want them to click a link to register for your next event? Or perhaps donate to an important campaign?

Once you make these decisions you can craft each of the elements above to tell the story and funnel viewers into their next steps with your organization. As an example, you might ensure your tagline quickly articulates your mission, your header image displays a picture of those you are helping, and your pinned tweets provides a link for donations.

Be The News Source for Your Cause

Twitter can be a great megaphone for your organization. It’s a place to announce news, events, achievements, etc. Unfortunately, only your biggest fans will continue to follow you if that’s the only insight that you’re sharing on Twitter.

Instead of restricting your tweets to news about your organization, turn your twitter account into a reliable and insightful source of news for your cause, whatever it may be. Set up news alerts related to topics close to your organization, and when something pops up be the first to share the news with your Twitter followers. The more news and opinions you share, the more your followers will see you as an authority in for your cause, and the more engaged they’ll be the next time you ask for a donation.

Go Beyond Text, Share Images and Videos

The days of the 140 character count Twitter post are behind us. These days to engage with your followers you need to include photos, graphics and videos in as many of your posts as possible.

Obviously there is a significant time commitment involved in producing quality visual content on a daily basis. There are two easy ways to work around this:

1. Share another organization’s content:

While it’s not ideal to share another organizations visual content rather than your own, if you see something that would be of value to your followers it is worth it to share it with them. Don’t think of it as promoting another team’s content. Rather, you are positioning yourself as a great source of quality cause-related information. One way around concerns about sharing another’s organizations content would be to give them “Kudos” for the work you support.

2. Share a “Behind The Scenes” look at your organization:

We all have smartphones that will easily share photos. Taking a moment to snap a “behind the scenes” photo of your team hard at work in the field is one of the best ways to connect with your audience. It gives you eye catching content to share on Twitter while also showing your followers that your team is more than just a username.

Follow Those That Care About the Cause

Twitter is a two way street. The best way to quickly grow your list of followers is to show the users that you would like to follow you that you are interested in what they have to say, too.

There are a few tools out there that will help you to do this. Our favorite is Just Unfollow, a tool that allows you to follow users that are talking about a certain keyword or using a hashtag that is relevant to your cause. Unfortunately, the technology isn’t as discriminating as we would like. While it’s helpful to use a tool to follow many users at once, you will still need a human to go through and determine which of those accounts are really valuable to your organization, and which are not a good fit.

Connect By Asking Questions

Keeping your followers engaged on Twitter isn’t all that different from keeping individuals engaged in a face-to-face conversation. What is your follower’s favorite subject? Themselves!

Everyone has ideas, opinions and questions, and everyone wants to share them with you, you just need to give them the opportunity. By asking a question in your posts you are not only opening up yourself as an expert and gaining valuable information about the way your followers think, you are also engaging with them in a way few organizations do. Your followers will love the chance to share their thoughts with you. Not only that, but their followers will view these interactions in their feeds, opening up your organization to a whole new audience.

How is your organization standing out from the crowd on Twitter? Share some recommendations below.

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