To Tweet or Not to Tweet: TechSoup Talks Twitter

To Tweet or Not to Tweet--that is the question posed by Michaela G. Hackner in TechSoup's online event: TechSoup Talks Twitter. Michaela, along with Marshall Kirkpatrick, hosted the free, all-day, asynchronous online event in the TechSoup Emerging Technologies forum. The forums event followed up TechSoup's webinar the day before and dove deeper into the uses of Twitter and the benefits and value that Twitter has to offer individuals and nonprofits alike.

TechSoup's Sarah Washburn captured a picture of her busy computer screen during the webinar (and posted it to Flickr, of course), while I did some "live tweeting" (live updates to the TechSoup Twitter account) during the webinar and periodically during the forums event. You can see all the event-related Tweets with the #tstweet tag here.

We talked about the ways that Twitter can be used to market your organization and discussed what mix of personal and professional updates you should have to effectively engage (and keep) a group of followers. Some attendees bemoaned the recent persistent downtime with Twitter and wondered whether other similar applications will capture Twitter's user base. We also chatted about using Twitter via mobile phones and how nonprofits have been using Twitter for international development and activism efforts.

Michaela posted a recap of the day's discussions, that summarized several key points:

1. Give Tweeting a Chance: If your organization has the resources available and the audience need, chances are, Twitter might be a great choice for some of your communications needs. From using Twitter in the developing world to coordinate disaster relief to helping colleagues share knowledge across the world, Twitter is such an open and flexible platform, the possibilities are endless.
2. Use Twitter to Promote Your Cause: From advertising links to press releases, to asking for followers to support your cause, Twitter is a GREAT tool to market your organization. You can post these shout-outs to your organization manually to make a connection with your audience, or you can even use an RSS/Twitter tool to automatically send blog updates to your organization’s Twitter account.
3. Tweeters have personalities!: Creating an “organizational” face for your Tweeting persona may be ultimately less successful than if your organization chooses a few individuals to speak on their behalf. For the most part, people agree that they like to know there’s a real person out there communicating with them, not a group of folks following predetermined guidelines acting as the voice of an organization. This strategy might not work in all cases, but a review of your audience and possibly some focus groups might be very telling about the direction your organization should choose.
4. Mix It Up: Everyone has different opinions about what mix of professional and personal tweeting makes the best use of the tool, however, at the end of the day, most people agree that the lines are blurring quickly, and the lines between our professional and personal relationships are becoming seamless. At the end of the day its up to the individual to determine what their best use of the tool is, but it seems as though a little bit of both go a long way in building your Twitter karma and solidifying the “weak ties” you make in the Twitterverse.
5. Twitter has the users: Should you leave Twitter for FriendFeed or Plurk, given Twitter's recent downtime due to the large number of updates? Maybe, but Twitter still has the critical mass of users, and that counts for something. There are lots of financial and reputation-based incentives that Twitter has to get things back on track, so it could be worthwhile to be patient for now. In the meantime, TweetLater and Twiddict will help you post your tweets as soon as the service gets back on track.

It's not too late to join in the conversation. You can visit the Twitter event forum discussions, check out the event Tweets, and listen to a recording of the webinar. And of course, you can follow TechSoup on Twitter!