Good and Bad Tweet Types for Nonprofits

From NonProfitTech.Org

Five Types of Nonprofit Tweets Guaranteed to Get Retweeted:

1. Powerful stats that speak to your mission and programs.
2. Quotes that inspire social good.
3. Well-formatted, easy to read factual tweets.
4. Position statements spoken with clarity and conviction.
5. Tweets that tap into the #BreakingNews cycle.

Five Types of Tweets Nonprofits Should Never Post on Twitter

1. Truncated automated tweets from Facebook.
2. Automated tweets announcing new photos posted on Facebook.
3. Tweets with too many (more than two) hashtags.
4. Poorly formatted tweets.
5. Tweets with semicolons.

Social Media Cheet Sheet

Which social media network to use, why? Those are some frequent questions association communicators ask these days.

BrandLoveLLC shared this infographic:

Here’s how SDL SM2 ranked the Top 9 Social Networks for Small and Medium-sized Businesses based on the following criteria:

• Reach: How Many Members
• Time Investment Required
• Quality of Interaction (from a business perspective)
• Fun (our highly-scientific and proprietary research)

Get Your Social Media Graphics JUST Right

What's the right size for the banner on your Twitter page? How about a video on Facebook?

The good folks at LunaMetrics have composed a very useful and useable infographic they call "The Ultimate Complete Final Social Media Sizing Cheat Sheet."

So, without further ado, here it is – the ultimate, complete, final social media sizing cheat sheet. As before, you can find a simple text list of the pixel dimensions at the bottom. Save this sucker on your hard drive and never Google ‘Facebook cover photo size’ again.
 

I Don't Have TIME for Social Media

Ten good suggestions for associations staffers from Shannon Otto at Member Clicks on how to "create meaningful content when you’re totally pressed for time."

It's probably pretty annoying to have people constantly telling you you need to be tweeting, Facebooking and blogging on top of everything else you’re responsible for - especially as a small staff association professional. It’s probably extremely frustrating when there are barely enough hours in the day for you to juggle your everyday tasks, let alone add social networking to the mix.

Yet, it’s important for your association to be viewed as an expert in the field. For one thing, members will appreciate it. And those members can create positive word-of-mouth marketing for the organization.

From the Government -- and Helpful!

If the government can do it, so can you. Check out the CDC's Health Care Communicator's Social Media Toolkit for 1) some guidance on your own work, and 2) a possible template of a social media toolkit you can produce for your members.

This toolkit was developed by the Electronic Media Branch, Division of News and Electronic Media, Office of the Associate Director of Communication at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It was designed to provide guidance and to the share lessons learned in more than three years of integrating social media into CDC health communication campaigns, activities and emergency response efforts. In this guide, you will find information to help you get started using social media—from developing governance to determining which channels best meet your communication objectives to creating a social media strategy. You will also learn about popular channels you can incorporate into your plan, such as blogs, video-sharing sites, mobile applications and RSS feeds. This toolkit is intended for a beginner audience, although some viewers with an intermediate level may find parts of the toolkit useful.

Topics include the basics, tools, campaign examples, and strategy and evaluation worksheets you can download.

Five Types of Nonprofit Tweets Guaranteed to Get Retweeted

Good post, full of examples, from Nonprofit Tech 2.0 Blog :: A Social Media Guide for Nonprofits

The list:

1. Powerful stats that speak to your mission and programs.
2. Quotes that inspire social good. (I'm personally not so sure how useful these tweets are.)
3. Well-formatted, easy-to-read, factual tweets.
4. Position statements spoken with clarity and conviction
5. Tweets that tap into the #BreakingNews cycle.

Social Media Posting Guide

Worried about using social media to your best advantage without making stupid mistakes that undercut your effectiveness?

Check out the Social Media Posting Guide from Top Nonprofits for some great advice ranging from "Know your audience," to "best retweeting time is noon to 4 pm."

See graphic below or download a full-size PDF for closer study.