Twitip

by Maddie Grant of SocialFishing… and Diary Of A Reluctant Blogger. Follow her @maddiegrant.

Twitter can be a great space for building community around your membership-based organization, whether you work for a professional society, trade association or a cause-related nonprofit.

Here’s a quick eight-step rundown of how to set up a Twitter account for your “.org”. This isn’t the only way, of course. But if you are starting from scratch, this is what we’re finding works the best.

1. Set up a main “umbrella” account for the organization – e.g. @ORGtweets or just @ORG (“ORG” being whatever your acronym is).

Why? So people can find you easily. In the description, put in a nutshell what the organization does. A mission statement in under 140 characters, for example. (Be pithy – people like that. There are lots of other places you can be boring). For the website link field of the profile, create a Twitter landing page on your website which says, “Welcome to the Twitter page for [ORG]! We’re glad you’re here. Here’s what we’re all about. Here are some of the things we tweet about. And here are our team members, should you be interested in following them too.” Then list your staff on Twitter as per #2.

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In this guest post Dan Hollings (@dhollings) takes a look at 6 Questions that are often asked about Twitter and gives a comprehensive introduction to how to use Twitter effectively. Grab a coffee, sit back and enjoy.

How to light a candle under your Twitterings for both Newbies and those that think they are Pros…

How silly! I’m preparing to share some powerfully useful and advanced Twitter tips, yet I start with a warped variant of a well known children’s nursery rhyme. What’s up with that? It’s simple…

At the core of Twitter is a concept so simple, even a child can do it. Yet almost every newbie who arrives at the Twitter site is overwhelmed with a variation of the following thought:

“What the…?”

My interpretation of this flummoxing phenomena suggests that most folks (newbies or not) are really asking:

1. Why should I Twitter?
2. How do I Twitter?
3. What do I Twitter?
4. How do I get followers?
5. Can I make or raise money with Twitter?
6. and… OK, I’m ready to start, what’s next?

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This post on TwellowHood, a tool to find local twitter users is by Billy Nab from South Platte Web Design (follow him at @southplatte.)

Have you ever wondered who is using Twitter that is close by? Looking to connect to people in your city? TwellowHood is a new service launched this month by the folks over at WebProNews, which allows Twitter users to do just that. Think of it as a way to find your neighbor on Twitter.

The initial page is very simple, consisting of a few ad links across the very top, the nifty Twellow and TwellowHood logos. Those are followed by a map of the United States and Canada. Sorry for users of other countries, at this time only the US and Canada based Twitter users are listed, though the site does note they are working to provide access for users in other countries. It should be noted the parent service Twellow does list international users.

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