Experiences of a non-Twitterati and how the New Zealand Resuscitation Council has used Twitter to reach audiences and promote its cause.

Home page @NZResusCouncil

Along the top:
Tweets
Following
Followers
Likes (used to be 'Favourites')
Lists

#Hashtags are most effective way to group conversations

You can search hashtags and every Tweet that has used the hashtag will come up in this thread.

Hashtags are particularly useful for events - and NFPs could use a tool like storify to help tell its story. The more often a hashtag is used, the more often it will "Trend" on Twitter.

People who can't be at your event in person can still participate through the use of hashtags. This is an opportunity for you to increase your audience - and the number of people who will be interested in your event next time.

There are plenty of tools to help 'Save your Search' or pull out tweets from an embedded search. You may want to embed the Twitter widget on your own NFP's website.

For an event you could use a tool (e.g. Twubs) to showcase live tweets.

Or perhaps you want to use an analytical tool to tell your NFP's story using a tool like Storify.

Use Lists to help group the people you want to hear from, and find out what they're tweeting about. Think of them as a way of segmenting your audience, where the same user may belong to one or more interest groups.

Create lists of your own - you can make them private or public.

Other Twitter users may include you on their lists too. These are the lists that you will be a "member of". For example, the New Zealand Resuscitation Council is a member of FOAMed - a worldwide movement promoting Free Open Access Medical Education.

Not all your audiences will be on Twitter.

BUT there may be audiences out there who previously you've been unable to reach. They may be different audiences to those who respond to other channels - newsletters, Facebook, direct mail or other.

If you can reach opinion leaders and opinion informers, that's' major. This enables others to help your NFP to carry out its mission.

Reach one person, reach thousands more... ultimately the "Go viral" effect.

Think about the wider context in which you operate. Which platforms are other organisations like yours using?

Example: At the New Zealand Resuscitation Council, lots of other country's resuscitation councils have Twitter accounts - but less so for other social media accounts.

Sharing information between these organisations is easier through Twitter - particularly with the use of hashtags and lists.

Twitter is an easy way to give something back to your audiences.

Tweet about things you find interesting - research articles, images and photos.

Can you create some useful lists that you can make public to share with your audience?

Can you give your cause a hashtag?

Share tweets where people are using this hashtag to enable the conversation.