How nonprofits can get Twitter right

I’ll just say it: Most nonprofit Twitter accounts are really awful. Boring. Self-referential. Unimportant. Are these organizations that are changing the world? You wouldn’t know from what they’re tweeting.

Here’s some help: Twitter Best Practices for Nonprofit Organizations at DIOSA Communications. Here are most of them (each one has more detail at the original post):

• Authenticity before marketing. Have personality. Build community.
  
• Be nice. Be thankful. Reply and Retweet!
  
• Follow everyone who follows you if your goal is to have lots of followers.
  
• Don’t tweet about your coffee (unless it is fair trade), the weather, or how tired you are.
  
• Don’t only Tweet your own content.
  
• Send messages, but not via auto-responders.
  
• Limit your Tweets to 5 per day, and no more than 6!
  
• Poll your followers to increase participation.
  
• Tweet powerful stats related to your organization’s mission.
  
• Register your organization’s Twitter account with TweetMeme.
  
• Favorite Tweets to build partnerships and organize Twitter profiles.
  
• Tweet inspirational quotes.
  
• Repeat your most popular Tweets.
  

Thanks to @joannefritz for the tip.