Is Twitter useful for nonprofits? It’s certainly been useful for Idealware. In this detailed case study, they show how they utilize Twitter and the results they’ve seen.

Reaching Out To a Wide Audience: A Twitter Case Study

Twitter has become a hot topic these days. Companies, nonprofits and government agencies are scrambling to put Twitter strategies in place, and businesses, consultants and bloggers alike are “tweeting out” updates on everything from marketing tips to the state of their children’s potty training.

Despite its popularity, it can be difficult for the uninitiated to understand how Twitter can be useful. OK, so you can send out 140-character messages to people who follow you. Isn’t that similar to what you can do with Facebook, or email, or a blog – with the extra difficulties of length restrictions? Well, yes. But the unique culture of Twitter, which revolves around passing resources on to others, makes it really quite useful as an outreach and communications channel.

It could be an effective addition to your nonprofit’s current communication mix. It certainly has been for Idealware. We weren’t really believers ourselves when we first started trying it out last summer, but it’s proven to be a useful outreach tool that takes less time than a lot of other social media tools. This article walks through what we do with Twitter, and the lessons we learned along the way.