Continuing Education

Twitter

About 1 in 4 online adults are on Twitter. While the concept of writing in 140-character snippets may seem a bit unusual, the format forces you to condense details into bite-sized chunks. Check out 4 easy steps to writing pithy tweets that ultimately drive traffic to your landing page.

1. Create a Twitter account.

This is of course the first step, if you haven’t already established your nonprofit’s Twitter presence.

You’ll want to select a Twitter “handle” (or username), profile image and cover image that reflect the rest of your organization’s graphics and branding. Your Tweets should also be set to “public” so anyone can view the information, whether or not they are following you on Twitter or even have an account.

2. Get concise – channel your inner Hemingway.

It can be tricky to convey an entire idea in one succinct sentence. However, keep in mind you’re able to include links without eating into your character count. So you can write a quick snippet – “New auction item announcement: Trip to Ireland!” – then link to your landing page, online auction, catalog and more. Twitter will automatically shorten the URL.

3. Utilize hashtags.

While Facebook events rely on personalized invitations to gain traction, Twitter hashtags (on public tweets) allow you to reach anyone in the world. Simply put, the hashtag or pound symbol makes any following word or phrase searchable. People can use the Twitter search function to find tweets containing keywords like #charityauctions or #napavalley, for example.

Create a special hashtag for your event, such as #HopeGala2016, and include in all your marketing materials: print flyers, wrist bands, bid cards, the landing page, a photo booth background… anything from your event with high amounts of visibility. Then encourage attendees to use the hashtag when posting pics before and during your event.

4. Attach photos and videos.

Just like a Facebook post, visual content is king on Twitter.

This is how a text-only Tweet appears in people’s feeds:

This otherwise exciting, premium item (the Churchill Downs VIP Experience) looks kind of bare, right?

Now add a picture and suddenly you’re transported right into the action:

Again we don’t recommend including a link directly to our Winspire packages. Instead, download one of the beautiful hi-res images that comes with each package reservation, then attach to your tweet.

An effective advertisement combines both text and visuals to make a bold and memorable statement.

Finally, a huge advantage to virtually all social media networks is that posts are mobile responsive. Studies show 80 percent of social media time is now spent on mobile devices. So if you upload or post from a computer, rest assured your text and photos on Facebook and Twitter will automatically resize and look great to donors on mobile.

We hope this post has given you concrete examples for promoting your auction items on the two biggest social outlets today. In upcoming posts we’ll look at utilizing the other big networks, including LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram.