Have you mastered the art of creating Twitter lists? This recently added, buzzworthy feature can help social entrepreneurs and nonprofits raise awareness, connect supporters to each other, cultivate donors and monitor trends. While there are lots of innovative ways to use these lists, here are five ideas to get nonprofits and social entrepreneurs thinking:
1. Recognize supporters. Create a list of your volunteers, corporate partners, advocates and supporters. Not only will this help you keep tabs on what they’re saying, but inclusion in the list will enable your supporters to easily connect with each other.
2. Identify staff. If you have a number of employees on Twitter, create a “staff” list to help followers easily connect with the brains of your operation.
3. Be a resource. If your issues deals with homelessness, put together a list of thought-leading tweeters helping to eradicate this problem. Similarly, if you’re passionate about AIDS in Africa, assemble a list of people making a difference in this area.
4. Create event-attendee lists. As people pre-register for upcoming events, ask them to share their Twitter handle. Before the event, share a list of expected attendees to help people connect before meeting in real life. Also, consider including sponsors or speakers in this group. In addition to facilitating pre-event connections, this kind of list will provide a live snapshot of the event for those unable to make an appearance.
5. Connect with other activists. Assemble all-star lists of social entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, researchers or consultants. Monitor what they’re tweeting about. Think of this as a tool to monitor best practices and to develop relationships with like-minded people.
To start exploring social change lists, check out these collections: Mashable’s nonprofits list, Alyssa Milano’s philanthropy list, as well as Charity PR and For A Better World. This is by no means meant to be a comprehensive list of ideas. Get creative. What other ideas do you have to help nonprofits get the most out of Twitter lists?
[…] a PRTini article, “5 Ways Nonprofits can use Twitter Lists,” Heather Whaling suggests twitter lists as a successful way of raising awareness, connecting […]