How to make Twitter more effective for your charity

At the end of last month I posted a piece on how charities seemed stuck on broadcast mode when it came to Twitter.

Click through and you'll see I tweeted that I was thinking of giving to a few charities but didn't get much response from those I mentioned.

But I did receive this example of how Wheat Thins (an American cereal product) is responding to the people that tweet about them.

They are probably doing 'slightly' more than needed, but It's not a bad approach to making people feel special (OK, I know it's fake, but you can see what they are up to).

It's not necessarily something that I'd recommend for charities, but keeping an eye on what people are saying about your charity on social media (perhaps using samepoint.com) and responding when they raise questions or voice complaints might be a relatively good starting point to making Twitter a more effective medium.

Thanks to Felix for the heads up on the video and @RobmDyson for the samepoint.com recommendation.

Comments

[twitter.com/howardlake]

Very good, and funny. Yes, something like that could work for quite a few charities.

What is clever is that Wheat Thins only needed to thank one person in this way, provided they videoed it and shared it on YouTube. The implication of course is that they do this all the time to lots of Twitterers. It doesn't matter if they don't - this one example is funny enough, and has already been watched over 19,000 times.

[mark phillips]

You're absolutely right Howard.

You might also be interested to hear that when I linked to the video at midday today it only had about 3,300 views. It seems to be working pretty well.

Thanks for reading

Mark

[Gary]

Brilliant! Love it.
Indeed, why not for charities? Possibly inappropriate use of charitable funds?

A charity partner like Weetabix might well consider covering the cost of a similar stunt for BHF supporters for example.
Brands 'win-win', supporter magic created, consumer excitement, and message about healthy eating (charity objective) taken to a new wider audience. win-win-win-win!

[Tara Lepp]

That is hilarious! I love it! I think the point is that charities need to listen to their donors and critics and respond accordingly. They also need to show appreciation for their donors and their fans. If donors are treated well, they will tell their friends and they'll tell their friends....