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How to create a big Twitter header image
Producer: John Haydon
September 2012
Tutorial: Twitter profiles now have a space for a header image. Twitter header images have much more visibility than Twitter background images simply because they’re viewable on mobile devices. Here are some of creative and useful ideas for your Twitter header.
How to prune and improve your Twitter following
By Chris Abraham
June 2012
Tutorial: This tutorial will teach you the different tools needed to strategically prune and improve your following on Twitter.
How to create a Twitter background
By Julie Katz, Socialbrite
June 2012
Tutorial: With about 150 million active Twitter users making their impact 140 characters at a time, you need to find a way to stand out from the crowd. Before people will read your tweets (for your nonprofit, organization or yourself), they’ll form a first impression. Make your tweets look better and read better using any of these tools.
45 hashtags for social change
By Kim Bale, Socialbrite
December 2011
Tutorial: A hashtag is a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. Similar to tags on Flickr, you add them in-line to your Twitter posts by prefixing a word with a hash symbol (or # sign). Print out this cheat sheet to keep tabs on the top tags.
10 great get-down-to-business Twitter apps for nonprofits
By Lindsay Oberst, Socialbrite
October 2011
Tutorial: Twitter has become an increasingly vital tool for businesses and nonprofits of all sizes. Now that you’ve had a chance to get more familiar with the social media platform, build up your following and even measure your level of influence against other organizations, it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty of using Twitter. There are hundreds of Twitter apps ou there, and rather than weed through them by trial and error, we’ve compiled a list of 10 apps we recommend to help nonprofits get serious about getting results with social media.
Best Twitter dashboards for nonprofits
By Lindsay Oberst, Socialbrite
October 2011
Tutorial: As Twitter becomes part of your routine — and especially if you manage multiple accounts — it’s easy to feel as if you’re floundering in the incessant flood of information. But a good Twitter dashboard (sometimes called an application or client) gives you access to your accounts in one place and can help you stay afloat by making it easier to monitor, plan and track updates and conversations. Here we compare our top seven Twitter dashboards, as well as list others that may work best for you and your organization.
7 top tools to measure performance & influence on Twitter
By Kyria Abrahams, Socialbrite
October 2011
Tutorial: After you’ve used Twitter for a time, you’ll want to measure your influence on Twitter as well as your performance from month to month. Unless you want to hire someone to spend the day counting and analyzing your retweets, take a look at these free tools (some may have paid premium versions) and put them to use on behalf of your nonprofit, social enterprise, business — or your own brand.
How to use Twitter to monitor your brand
By Lindsay Oberst, Socialbrite
October 2011
Tutorial: People are talking about your nonprofit, especially on Twitter. Research shows that one out of three Twitter users talk about brands in their tweets. You don’t have the time to monitor your organization’s Twitter stream all day long. Thankfully, you can save time by setting up the right tools for your Twitter account. Here you’ll find plenty of options for monitoring mentions and tracking keywords so that you can respond to supporters promptly and analyze your results for success.
24 best practices for nonprofits using Twitter
By Kyria Abrahams and J.D. Lasica, Socialbrite staff
October 2011
Tutorial: Twitter is especially suited to nonprofits because it allows your organization the freedom to spotlight a broad range of issues and newsworthy items that relate to your cause. Here are 24 basic best practices with Twitter that every nonprofit should know.
12-step guide on how to live-tweet an event
Guest post by Susannah Vila
Movements.org
September 2011
Tutorial: Twitter can help you to expand an event’s reach, grow your organization’s audience and connect with potential collaborators or partners. One effective technique is to take advantage of Twitter’s viral power during an event or conference — your own or someone else’s. Here’s a 12-step guide on how to live-tweet an event.
8 nonprofit Twitter superstars
By Kyria Abrahams, Socialbrite
September 2011
Tutorial: We’re kicking off our new series on how nonprofits can make the best use of Twitter with a roundup of organizations that showcase a strong voice in the community. Following are eight popular nonprofits on Twitter today as well as an overview of their varying styles and strategies.
10 rules for how nonprofits should use Twitter
Guest post by Robin Stephenson
Bread for the World
April 2011
Tutorial: As a community organizer, Twitter makes a lot of sense. Organizing is about building relationships and mobilizing people around a cause. Twitter does exactly that. I created the following list of rules for my own organization to help the decision makers understand a little clearer how to be more than a town crier getting lost in the traffic noise and make Twitter work better for us, our time investment, and our cause.
Using Twitter & LinkedIn to promote your event
Guest post by Tamara Mendelsohn
February 2011
Tutorial: Social media is becoming an indispensable means of promoting any event these days. Think about what are the best channels to reach your target audience: blog, Twitter, Facebook or something else. In part 1 we covered five guiding principles on promoting events, from choosing the proper platform and defining success metrics to inviting friends and stakeholders. This tutorial will give you five more tips that will make your event a success.
Video tour of the new, improved Twitter
Producer: John Haydon
October 2010
Tutorial: Twitter recently launched a new version of its website that makes it much more user friendly. Don’t be afraid to opt into the new interface — you can always go back to the old version. This 5-minute video will walk you through the major enhancements of Twitter.
Paper.li: Create your own Twitter newspaper
By Jessica Haswell, Socialbrite staff
September 2010
Tutorial: Paper.li is a fresh new take on Twitter that organizes not just the tweets but the content from the links. The free service assembles the heart of the Twitter content you care about into one graphically pleasing magazine-style layout. Here’s our tutorial on how to create a paper.li in under a minute.
Set up a social media dashboard with HootSuite
Producer: John Haydon
August 2010
Tutorial: This screencast helps nonprofits take advantage of HootSuite’s new capabilities. This short tutorial is one tool to manage your organization’s presence across a wide range of social networks.
How to auto-follow people on Twitter
Producer: John Haydon
June 2010
Tutorial: A simple tactic for new Twitter users is to follow users who are already conversing about topics related to their cause. The theory is that if half of Twitter followers auto-follow in return, you would get 50 new followers simply by following 100 users.
How to get supporters to retweet content
Producer: John Haydon
February 2010
Tutorial: How do you get people to share your content? Here are five essential tips on sharing.
3 Twitter shortcuts: SocialOomph, Twitterfeed, CoTweet
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: A few automated Twitter techniques to auto-follow back the people who follow you on Twitter, to promote other people’s blog post, and to post a tweet later instead of right now
13 ways to get your blog posts retweeted
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: Strategies for getting retweeted as a way to measure engagement and assess relevance in the community.
How to get more followers on Twitter
Producer: John Haydon
September 2009
Tutorial: 3 reasons why getting more followers is good business:
• Follower numbers are social proof of what you offer on Twitter. It’s not the only reason people choose to click follow, but it is a check box.
• Increasing your followers spreads your message. Remember the last time you met a group of completely new people? Maybe at a party, or an event? Seeds were planted, pigeons were launched.
• Increasing your followers is good for current followers. They want to meet new people too, right?
When you’re ready to increase your followers, you want to do it in a way that builds trust and self respect.
How nonprofits can use Twitter hashtags
Producer: Beth Kanter
August 2009
Tutorial: What is a #hashtag? A hashtag is the symbol: #. (See the definition in Socialbrite’s glossary.) It is also a Twitter term that describes a keyword, prefixed by that symbol, that helps people track conversations on Twitter. In this post, Beth Kanter gives you tips on how to facilitate conversation around a tag.
How to automatically tweet your Flickr photos
Producer: John Haydon
July 2009
This video tutorial explains how to simply add your new Flickr photos to your Twitter feed.
How to use Seesmic Desktop
Producer: John Haydon
June 2009
You’ve started using Twitter to find new supporters. But now you’re having a tough time managing the “stream.” Seesmic is a good way to help you organize your followers and conversations on Twitter. Here are three videos I created for folks who want to learn how to use Seesmic Desktop:
1. Why it’s useful: Manage multiple accounts, organize a Twitter stream into columns, very fast and easy to use
2: Getting started: Adding accounts, creating groups, navigating replies and DMs
3. Deeper functionality: User avatars, shrinking urls, posting images, shrinking text
Why Twitter Lists are huge for your nonprofit
Producer: John Haydon
November 2009
Twitter Lists are guaranteed to be the next huge development on Twitter. This short video covers how to use Lists and why.
6 simple stats you need to measure on Twitter
Producer: John Haydon
January 2010
Tutorial: How to set a baseline so you can measure the impact and growth of your presence on Twitter over the next several months.
Using hashtags to enhance community
Producer: John Haydon
December 2009
Tutorial: Hashtags are a way to funnel specific discussions about a topic into a coherent thread, sort of like using Twitter to tune into specific radio frequencies. But not everyone knows how to create successful chat sessions. In this screencast, we outline the basics of managing a hashtag chat on Twitter.
