Twitter has quickly become one of the most effective ways of sharing with the world what you believe is important.
If you have a health condition or illness, Twitter can be an amazing tool to help spread the word about your cause.
Here are 16 steps toward planning your health awareness campaign using Twitter.
Setting up a successful Twitter account from the beginning:
[1] First, decide if you want to use your Twitter account to share more personal information (and for example, set up your user name with your actual name) or if you'd prefer to have your Twitter account be more generalized for your specific health awareness campaign. Many times people who are involved in the campaign may not be as interested in tweets about what you did last night, but instead, how the can increase awareness about the health cause. To ensure a growing number of followers, and hence, increase your influence, it's a good idea to design your Twitter account that accurately describes your causes and be sue to use your logo as your photo image icon.
[2] Set up a good, colorful, informative background page for your Twitter account (under Settings.) Nearly all of the Twitter pages I visit have the background hidden behind the Twitters. The best background image is 540 x 540 pixels and your information that you want seen should be on the left hand side in the first 124 pixels.
[3] When planning an event or cause, come up with an effective hashtag and don't be afraid to tell everyone to use it when referring to your specific event in their tweets. This way anyone can quickly search Twitter and find tweets specific to your cause. Remember, the shorter the better! In case you don't know, hashtags are the # symbol you see in front of words like #illness. The hashtag for National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week, for example, is #iiwk09. This is an annual event, so by adding the year onto the end of the tag, one can find information for any particular year.
[4] Come up with interesting Tweets that people will find compelling and want to pass on as a retweet (RT). These can include facts, statistics, links to articles or blogs, or lists (with one tweet a day.) A list may be for example, "How to" or "__ Steps To."
[5] Keep your tweets as short as possible despite the difficulty it can be to express yourself. Why? You want people to be able to retweet your posts without cutting them off. One should be able to type RT(space)@YOURNAME. Count those characters and find out what that equals for you. Also, be sure to leave room for a link and a hashtag.
[6] If you are posting a link in your tweet, use a link shortening service. It's also advised to put your link at the front of the message so it's not cut off when people retweet it.
Twitter etiquette you should know:
[7] Start following fellow nonprofits that have Twitter accounts set up. Find others who have the illness of your cause and follow them. But remember to engage in conversation. Don't just post and then ignore comments.
[8] Don't hold back in retweeting other people's tweets if you believe the information will be of interest to your audience. that will be of interest to your audience. If you are following interesting and influential people it won't be hard to discover nuggets of quality information to retweet.
[9] Get involved in Friday Follows, by posting people you admire and respect as recommended experts on your topic. When people add you as a Friday Follow recommendation or retweet your messages, remember to say thanks! Depending on the number of people who are retweeting your posts, say thanks as much as possible and tweet their twitter names in your post.
[10] There are many Twitter applications that can give you the ability to set up a direct message to automatically be sent to anyone who follows you. Take advantage of this by offering a link to a helpful article, a free download, or some other perk. Don't waste people's time by just saying, "Thanks for the follow."
How you can improve the worth of your twitter posts and increase the number of followers:
[11] Considering taking your best tweets and turning them into an article for your blog or article directories.
[12] There are free Twitter applications that can make sure that your tweets are posted to your blog automatically, You can also have your twitter account post a tweet whenever you write a blog post. This can encourage people who may follow your twitter to get to know you better by reading your blog.
[13] One idea is to post all of your tweets to a blog, so that if people miss a post and want to access them all quickly, they can just visit a blog. They can also choose what they would like to retweet to help the cause. The TweetMeme application can be installed on your blog so people can also view how many people are retweeting your content.
[14] Reward your loyal followers who retweet by offering prizes. Just ensure that the prize is not a blatant bribe to increase your followers who may have no interest in the topic. Use the giveaway as a "thank you gift."
[15] Make it a new habit to add your Twitter feed everywhere including other social networks: your blog, web site, Facebook profile, My Space, Plaxo, etc.
[16] Add your Twitter address everywhere now that you also post your email address or web address. It's one of the easiest ways for people to get to know you without having to get something as formal as a newsletter.
As everyone from news journals, talk show hosts, to even the president himself use Twitter, it is no secret that it's becoming one of the trendiest ways to communicate. If you aren't convinced to add this to your communication options yet, at least set up a twitter account with a user name reflective of your cause and start following some of the leaders in your cause. In time, you can choose how much you want to use this as part of your communication toolbox.
If you have a health condition or illness, Twitter can be an amazing tool to help spread the word about your cause.
Here are 16 steps toward planning your health awareness campaign using Twitter.
Setting up a successful Twitter account from the beginning:
[1] First, decide if you want to use your Twitter account to share more personal information (and for example, set up your user name with your actual name) or if you'd prefer to have your Twitter account be more generalized for your specific health awareness campaign. Many times people who are involved in the campaign may not be as interested in tweets about what you did last night, but instead, how the can increase awareness about the health cause. To ensure a growing number of followers, and hence, increase your influence, it's a good idea to design your Twitter account that accurately describes your causes and be sue to use your logo as your photo image icon.
[2] Set up a good, colorful, informative background page for your Twitter account (under Settings.) Nearly all of the Twitter pages I visit have the background hidden behind the Twitters. The best background image is 540 x 540 pixels and your information that you want seen should be on the left hand side in the first 124 pixels.
[3] When planning an event or cause, come up with an effective hashtag and don't be afraid to tell everyone to use it when referring to your specific event in their tweets. This way anyone can quickly search Twitter and find tweets specific to your cause. Remember, the shorter the better! In case you don't know, hashtags are the # symbol you see in front of words like #illness. The hashtag for National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week, for example, is #iiwk09. This is an annual event, so by adding the year onto the end of the tag, one can find information for any particular year.
[4] Come up with interesting Tweets that people will find compelling and want to pass on as a retweet (RT). These can include facts, statistics, links to articles or blogs, or lists (with one tweet a day.) A list may be for example, "How to" or "__ Steps To."
[5] Keep your tweets as short as possible despite the difficulty it can be to express yourself. Why? You want people to be able to retweet your posts without cutting them off. One should be able to type RT(space)@YOURNAME. Count those characters and find out what that equals for you. Also, be sure to leave room for a link and a hashtag.
[6] If you are posting a link in your tweet, use a link shortening service. It's also advised to put your link at the front of the message so it's not cut off when people retweet it.
Twitter etiquette you should know:
[7] Start following fellow nonprofits that have Twitter accounts set up. Find others who have the illness of your cause and follow them. But remember to engage in conversation. Don't just post and then ignore comments.
[8] Don't hold back in retweeting other people's tweets if you believe the information will be of interest to your audience. that will be of interest to your audience. If you are following interesting and influential people it won't be hard to discover nuggets of quality information to retweet.
[9] Get involved in Friday Follows, by posting people you admire and respect as recommended experts on your topic. When people add you as a Friday Follow recommendation or retweet your messages, remember to say thanks! Depending on the number of people who are retweeting your posts, say thanks as much as possible and tweet their twitter names in your post.
[10] There are many Twitter applications that can give you the ability to set up a direct message to automatically be sent to anyone who follows you. Take advantage of this by offering a link to a helpful article, a free download, or some other perk. Don't waste people's time by just saying, "Thanks for the follow."
How you can improve the worth of your twitter posts and increase the number of followers:
[11] Considering taking your best tweets and turning them into an article for your blog or article directories.
[12] There are free Twitter applications that can make sure that your tweets are posted to your blog automatically, You can also have your twitter account post a tweet whenever you write a blog post. This can encourage people who may follow your twitter to get to know you better by reading your blog.
[13] One idea is to post all of your tweets to a blog, so that if people miss a post and want to access them all quickly, they can just visit a blog. They can also choose what they would like to retweet to help the cause. The TweetMeme application can be installed on your blog so people can also view how many people are retweeting your content.
[14] Reward your loyal followers who retweet by offering prizes. Just ensure that the prize is not a blatant bribe to increase your followers who may have no interest in the topic. Use the giveaway as a "thank you gift."
[15] Make it a new habit to add your Twitter feed everywhere including other social networks: your blog, web site, Facebook profile, My Space, Plaxo, etc.
[16] Add your Twitter address everywhere now that you also post your email address or web address. It's one of the easiest ways for people to get to know you without having to get something as formal as a newsletter.
As everyone from news journals, talk show hosts, to even the president himself use Twitter, it is no secret that it's becoming one of the trendiest ways to communicate. If you aren't convinced to add this to your communication options yet, at least set up a twitter account with a user name reflective of your cause and start following some of the leaders in your cause. In time, you can choose how much you want to use this as part of your communication toolbox.
About the Author:
Lisa Copen is the founder of National Invisible Illness Awareness Week and author of the amazing little book that is changing one life at a time, Beyond Casseroles: 505 Ways to Encourage a Chronically Ill Friend.
No comments:
Post a Comment