Managing Multiple Twitter Accounts for Your Nonprofit

Last week I wrote a post called "8 Nonprofit CEOs Who Tweet" and the number quickly grew based on the responses in the comments.  It got me thinking about managing multiples: multiple twitter accounts, multiple people tweeting from one account, and how do you tweet a network of affiliates or a movement.   There are no official rules, although there is some great advice in the O'Reilly Twitter Book on this topic for corporate examples.

You'll need to decide who is doing the Tweeting for your organization.  Will you set up one flagship account and have one or more staff members tweet from that account?  Or will you have an organizational account but also encourage staff to Tweet as well?  Obviously, it is good idea to have just one organizational account because it does take work to maintain.  And, it is a good idea allow employees to have personal accounts just as long as they identify themselves with your organization.

Will having an personal Twitter account for your organization like having an organizational email account in the future?

Managing Multiple Twitter Staff Accounts For Work
Identifying Twitter Accounts, Linking to Web Site

A year ago, maybe it was just the marketing director who was on Twitter or some organizations had one general, branded account.   As Twitter has become more a common tool in the nonprofit toolbox, it can be useful beyond the marketing department.  Since Twitter can help put a "human face"  on the organizations, nonprofits may find themselves having multiple staff Twitter accounts for organizational use.  

The example above is from Lisa Goddard who is the marketing director at the Capital Area Food Bank.  There are multiple people from the organization on Twitter.  Each account is in the person's name, but they are clearly identified with the organization both in a customized Twitter profile image and in the 160 character bio.  Take for example their CEO David Davenport.  

It is also important to identify your staff twitter accounts on your organization's web site.  The whole team from the Capital Area Food Bank is identified on Web Site's newsroom.  Another way to approach is to include Twitter handles in staff profiles on the web site.   Take a look at Ellen Miller from the Sunlight Foundation as an example.

In looking at the Twitter streams of this team of organizational Twitters, they are re-tweeting each other or having conversation.  This helps expand the collective number of followers for the organization.

One thing is missing from these Twitter profiles, however.   They are not as findable as they should be.  That's because when you search "Find People on Twitter" it searches the name field.   So, it is important to include your organization's name in the name field - well, unless, the name of your staff person or CEO is well-identified.   Check out how Tony Hsieh the CEO of Zappos uses the name field.

Also, according to the Twitter Book, the name field is what Twitter uses to email someone when you follow them.   So, in the example of Lisa Goddard, that email would say Lisa Goddard.  If she edited the name field to read, "Lisa Goddard, Capital Area Food Bank," people she follows would know she is with the Food Bank.  

A Few Tools

There are many Twitter applications to manage multiple accounts.  (See 25 Twitter Apps to Manage Multiple Accounts.)

I discovered CoTweet and Hootsuite when I needed a Twitter application that did not have to be installed on the desktop.   The features I was looking for were:  scheduled tweets and URL shortners.  The power of these two useful application is the ability to post to multiple accounts and assign workflow.  Like TweetDeck and other clients, it makes it easier to re-tweet and dm.   These are great tools to support a team of twitters.

They have slightly different feature sets.   I love Hootsuite's "Hootlet" which goes on your browser and allows you tweet while you are browsing web sites and blogs.   If you share a lot of information from other sources via Twitter, this tool is a big time saver.   Hootsuite  lets you track stats of click thrus in a visual way.  Here's an example.   I just played with the next version of HootSuite and it has groups!

CoTweet has a beautiful interface, and while it lacks bookmarklet, it does offer the ability to do searches and all the features of Hootsuite.    At first, I missed the fact it tracked stats because the feature was embedded in the interface.  Stats can be accessed by clicking on the icon next to any bit.ly link.

I'm using them both, but I'm not managing a team.  I recommend test driving each application with a small group and deciding which one better meets your needs.  

One Account, Multiple People Twittering

Have different people Twitter from one account. It's simpler. This is a good way for a smaller organization to use Twitter.  It's a good model for live tweeting an event or a time specific event.    But how do you add the humanity?  Co-Tweet's Twitter account is an example.  Are there nonprofit examples?

Networks of Affiliates

I recently got a sneak peek at the private Wiki that the United Way is using with its affiliates to aggregate and share best practices on social media use.   They have a section on Twitter which links to tools and best practices.   Here's what they're recommending:

One account per local United Way is recommended. Multiple organization accounts create confusion. It’s OK for employees of an organization to have their own personal account as long as employees are being transparent of who they are and who they work for. Through Hoot Suite, or other twitter tools, you can enable individual employees/volunteers tweeting about united way to post their UW tweets to the main account, which could capitalize on their individual followers while keeping a consistent UW account. Employees can and should provide the Twitter handle (username) of the organization’s main Twitter profile on their own profiles (cross linking is important for consistency and unification). 

They also have some specific examples about how to present the branding for the United Way on Twitter and have incorporated Twitter into their social media policy guidelines.  (See these examples of policy for more details on that)  However as Iavor Ivanov, Director, Web Experience, observes:

We can't lay down the twitter law (guidelines) for local United Ways -- we can just point out the pros and cons and ask them to decide if that type of engagement makes sense in their online communities. I know of about 30 chapters that have adopted it, but haven't heard any amazing success stories ... yet.

With a network, using #hashtags can potentially have great impact.  The United Way suggests a set of hashtags in its social media guidelines:

#LiveUnited
#UnitedWay
#UWIllinois

What is your organization's approach to multiples on Twitter? 

Comments

[Jay Moonah from Wild Apricot]

Some great ideas here Beth! FYI another multi-tweeting service I know of is http://splitweet.com/

I haven't played with it too much myself but I do know the folks at the mesh conference here in Toronto were using it to tweet to multiple accounts during the event -- you can learn great things at a conference like that by peaking over people's shoulders! ;-)

[Jason Inman]

Beth,

Currently we have one central account on Twitter that will post content generated by multiple team members. We have also created a social media best practices along with policy that encourages educated use of twitter and social media in general. At times we plan to RT what some of these teammembers might be saying, for instance someone on the field responding to disaster. We are still in the learning and listening stage but we are potentially getting ready to launch a presence on youtube, facebook (pages), and twitter. The focus will be on facebook and twitter with youtube as a support tool.

A question for you: there is concern in that the level of interactivity and virality on facebook and twitter could be a threat to our organization. We are a $40 million International relief organization. What would you say to someone that was worried about negative or inappropriate content being posted on tools like facebook and twitter?

Thanks!

[Email Marketing Guru]

Twitter is like a breath of fresh air on the Social Media scene. I have been on it for just a few weeks now and I have met several interesting people. It is a platform to network with people you would like to meet in real life.

KZ

[John Haydon]

Beth,

Great post - very comprehensive!

CoTweet also allows users to save groups based on keywords within the search function. For example, a non-profit can search #cancer and keep up with conversations tagged with that hashtag.

The downside of Hootsuite is that it posts a bar similar to the DiggBar, which a lot of SEO folks don't like (it gives Hootesuite SEO credit instead of giving credit to the link originally posted).

Finally, I wrote a couple of posts that might be useful to folks managing multiple accounts:

Combining Broadcaster And Connector Twitter Accounts - http://www.blogforprofit.com/social-media/combining-broadcaster-and-connector-twitter-accounts/

How To Be Useful On Twitter Without Going Crazy - http://www.twitip.com/how-to-be-useful-on-twitter-without-going-crazy/

and finally:

Resource Superlist for Twitter Folks - http://johnhaydon.com/resources-twitter-folks/

Take care!

John

[Tresha Thorsen]

Thank you muchly.....great suggestions, ideas, and tools. Helpful always to give examples of organizations already working out this question productively and genuinely. Grateful for the post and the comments. I've valued ur use of scheduled tweets for campaigns, announcements, and reminders of upcoming deadlines. All super helpful.
Thanks Beth for being alert and thinking ahead what can help all of us more....

[Maryann Devine]

Beth, thanks for the suggestions, especially on managing multiple accounts for one organization -- I think this is going to be an increasingly common challenge for nonprofits.

I played around with Hootsuite myself, and I liked the fact that I could preschedule tweets, and track click throughs.

What I didn't like was that, when I linked a tweet to a blog post of mine, Hootsuite got the traffic, because of the way the ow.ly shortener works. That meant that I had to sort of combine Hootsuite click-through stats with Google Analytics stats, since those visitors saw my content, but didn't actually visit my site. Too much work.

(I only used it on tweets linking to my own content -- I know that some people are really opposed to how Hootsuite frames their content, so I just didn't go there.)

Maryann

[Matt Koltermann]

I posted a detailed comment to your entry, "What are your nonprofit's super power listening tips for using Twitter?" yesterday and touched on some of this, too.

At Cross-Cultural Solutions, we use a combination of both Hootsuite and CoTweet to manage @volunteerabroad.

We use Hootsuite because it's a web app, allows for multiple admins, and has a great scheduling interface. We don't use their ow.ly URL shortener, though, because the ow.ly bar is just too intrusive! So, we use tr.im for all of our shortening and measuring needs, and we're pretty satisfied with that. Happy to hear the next version has a grouping tool!

However, I also use CoTweet because its monitoring and tweet assignment workflow works really well for me. I mentioned in my other comment, though, that I'm reluctant to roll it out to other staff at this time because its posting tool frequently has problems connecting with the Twitter API, which makes it too unreliable to use as a be-all tool. Maybe someday :)

I've tried a ton of desktop Twitter apps, but I don't use any of them consistently because web apps are so much better suited to a multi-computer and multi-admin environment.

[John Haydon]

Beth,

Here's another post I wrote on using Twitterfeed to mash together multiple accounts into one Twitter account:

How To Selectively Integrate Your Personal And Corporate Twitter Accounts Using RSS And A Hashtag

John

[Therese]

This is great information! I am going to check out the sites you have above where you manage multiple twitter accounts, this has been something I have been thinking on as of late.

[Peggy Hoffman]

Just in the nick of time - thanks!

[Jeffrey, EPA]

Thanks very much, Beth! This'll really come in handy as we consider how to manage multiple accounts at EPA.

[Sue Waters]

While my situation is slightly different as I work for a company as opposed to non-profit organisation -- the same principles help both. Sorry for long comment :(

We have twitter accounts for our different companies and where possible I include the twitter names of the people who tweet from the accounts within the bio. That way our users can decide if they want to connect with us via the company account or with individuals. For example, here is Edublogs twitter account. I've also tried to make our bio sound more friendly as less corporate.

When I tweet from any of these company accounts I normally will say Sue here - so that people know who is tweeting and they can relate to the real person. Unless off course it is an update that doesn't matter who is sending.

Most of my support for our communities is out of my personal account; as I personally think most people prefer to feel they are dealing with a person as opposed to a faceless organisation. My emails from our support account includes links to my blog, and both twitter accounts. Users (and potential clients) use these links to add me to their twitter account, and check out my blog. I've had potential clients email me saying checking out my blog now means they can connect the person with the emails (which all helps).

I monitor mentions of our companies names on twitters. If users are having trouble I will offer assistance from my personal account if they are following me, if not I will talk to them via the company account. With people who are talking about our company, it is important to make a decision of when it is and isn't appropriate to engage in conversations. Once again I will make decision of which account based on whether they are following me.

In terms of managing the accounts. With my personal account already following too many people I prefer to monitor the other accounts using Twitterfox in different web browsers. I run 3 web browsers any way so it isn't an issue. While my personal account uses Twhirl. On my iphone I use Tweetie which is excellent for managing multiple accounts.

[Megan Keane]

Great post & I'm learning a lot from the comments too! I recently started playing around with Seesmic for managing multiple Twitter accounts (you can also update Facebook from Seesmic, but no other services yet). Love the UI, easy to separate groups of users and searches (similar to TweetDeck), desktop client on Adobe Air for Mac or PC. There's supposedly a mobile application in the works. In the meantime, I use Twitterfon on my iphone (the $5 paid version supports multiple account & integrates with Instapaper).

An interesting tip I learned at the Online Community Unconference for orgs. having multiple people tweet under a single account: have each user "sign" their post w/ their name. This would be particularly good for companies/orgs. providing tech support via Twitter.

[Tema Frank]

Any suggestions for tools that help you mange not just Twitter accounts, but the dozens of other social media accounts you might also have? Ping.fm is good for outbound, but what about following what's coming in on all of them?