This presentation was delivered at Social Media for Social Good in Glasgow on 26 April 2012.

1. Twitter
How your organisation can make 140 characters work for you
#begoodbesocial
Marc Bowker
www.about.me/marcbowker

2. Twitter has revolutionised the way we interact online.
It has made us used to communicating in real time.

3. What we’ll cover today
• Where to start with Twitter
• The Twitter lingo
• Finding your feet
• What to tweet
• Potential issues
• Twitter tools

4. Where to start
• Use a simple or memorable user name, eg. @marcbowker
• No egg – upload a picture
• Complete your details
• Once you’ve done that, Twitter is simple (sort of) and the only
way to learn is to jump straight in and find your voice
• Follow people you know, look at who they’re following and
follow those you like

6. The Twitter lingo
@reply: a comment directed at somebody,
but beware it’s is public!

7. The Twitter lingo
DM: a direct message. A private message to
another user that only they will see.

8. The Twitter lingo
RT: a retweet. Essentially you like a post so
much that you have to share it with your
followers.

9. The Twitter lingo
Hash tags: words prefixed with a # which
help track conversations on a particular
topic like #begoodbesocial

10. Finding your feet
• Who do you want to talk to?
• Will you apply a casual and friendly approach?
• How often will you tweet?
• Make an effort to reply to all comments
• Don’t have auto-DMs for new follows
• You don’t need to follow everyone back

11. What to tweet
• Interesting content from your organisation
• photos
• videos
• blogs and news
• events
• campaign actions
• Ask questions and engage
• Knowledge share with other organisations

12. Potential issues
• Criticism, don’t take it personally
• Differing views, be accepting
• Slow responses
• Broadcasting
• Never sharing content
• Criticising others, don’t do it

14. Twitter tools
• Twitter.com
• Mobile apps such as Twitter and Tweetie
• Tweetdeck
• Hootsuite

17. Remember, your potential donors and supporters
are on Twitter. Start conversations and build a
Relationship with them today.

18. Now it’s your turn
• Split into groups of four
• Choose one of your organisations
• Plan a Twitter strategy for six months
• how will you encourage staff to tweet?
• how will you sustain this over time?
• how will you measure impact?
• will you create a social media policy?
• what tools will you use to monitor Twitter conversations?
• how often will you tweet?

19. My top tips
• Don’t just broadcast information about your
organisation, be human. Talk to people as you would face to face
• Always think before you tweet:
• can you provide a link
• can you include a photo/video
• what can you do to make the tweet really work hard for you?
• Be honest, tell people you’re new to Twitter
• Set follower targets: 100, 500, 1000
• Set up lists

20. Thank you for listening
Keep up with the conversation on Twitter #begoodbesocial
And on Facebook www.facebook.com/begoodbesocial
Need more help/guidance? You can find me here:
@marcbowker
www.about.me/marcbowker
marcbowker@gmail.com