Posts that are a hit and spread virally on one social media platform, usually bomb on the others! So, it’s important to customise your approach and make full use of each social media channel’s specific tools and features. Use the following tips to make certain that you are using your NFP’s Twitter account in a way that portrays your nonprofit in the best light while increasing its reach!

Pay Attention to Length and Grammar

Avoid long tweets that are overloaded with too much information and confusing abbreviations. You only have 140 characters, so make the most of them to convey information that is clear.

Include Links

According to this infographic, 92% of engagement with brands on Twitter is from clicking on links. You can also increase engagement 12 times over simply by asking others to retweet links. Including a link to longer content also makes it easier to stay within the 140 character limit for tweets.

Don’t Bombard Your Followers

Interacting with brands and others on Twitter is supposed to be fun, and not work. So, be careful not to bombard your followers with too many tweets. Spread out your tweets across the day, about 2 to 8 times a day is a good rule of thumb.

Don’t Ignore Your Followers Either

What happens with you run “hot and cold,” in your personal relationships? It’s likely that you’ve lost more than one friend or romantic connection if you go back and forth from being overly attentive, to pulling a disappearing act on a regular basis. Do this to your Twitter followers and you will notice the same phenomena happen. Don’t bombard your followers with too many tweets, but don’t ignore them either. Spread out your posts each day, and don’t forget to send a couple of tweets on the weekends when you are more likely to capture the attention and interest of your followers.

Be Interesting, Exciting, and Involved!

Are you only using your Twitter to curate the great content created by others, or to share your NFP’s breaking news and events? To really get your followers motivated, it’s important to keep things interesting! Shake things up by creating a Twitter contest or host a live Twitter chat and discuss a topic that’s of special interest to your followers. Make it easy to keep up with the conversation by creating one or two hashtags for the event, but be careful not to spam your followers by including too many hashtags, or creating hashtags that are too long or confusing to follow.

Know What Types of Content Increase Engagement Best

Since you can include images, as well as links in your tweets, it’s important to understand what types of content work best to increase engagement. While it’s perfectly fine to share a link to branded content and longer posts on your NFP’s actual website, the types of posts that are most often liked, shared and retweeted usually include one of the following: polls, stats, quotes, how-to guides and lists.

Don’t Forget to Use Analytics!

Via its new analytics tool, Twitter offers a host of information about the interests, lifestyles and preferences of your followers. This tool also provides insight into which of your tweets are hitting the targets and metrics that you want. Take advantage of this information and use it when creating your tweets so that you know more about the types of tweets your followers want and crave!