“Engaging stakeholders through Twitter: How nonprofit organizations are getting more out of 140 characters or less”
How can organizations effectively utilize social media? To find out, I read an academic journal article this week for my public relations class. I chose the following article:
Lovejoy, Kristen; Waters, Waters; Saxton, Gregory (2012). Engaging stakeholders through Twitter: How nonprofit organizations are getting more out of 140 characters or less. Public Relations Review, 38(2012), 313-318.
doi: 10.1016/j.pubrev.2012.01.005
Topic
The article talks about how powerful Twitter is becoming in terms of social media and how it is being used more by nonprofits to engage stakeholders through tweets and communications methods specific to Twitter such as hyperlinks, hashtags, public messages and retweets.
Method
- November 8, 2009 to December 7, 2009
- 100 largest non-university affiliated nonprofits in the United States
- 73 were featured in the sample
- 4,655 tweets were double checked against the Twitter for 10 of the organizations
- Five percent of the 4,655 sampled tweets were hand coded to verify computer accuracy
- 37 percent operate in the field of public benefit
- 26 percent were healthcare organizations
- 18 percent were human service (non-health care) organizations
- 15 percent were from the arts and humanities sector
- Two organizations were non-university educational groups
- One organization was a religious groups.
The results of the analysis were based on
- Who the organization was following on Twitter
- The organization’s tweets
- Its hyperlinks
- Its public messages
- Its retweets
- Its hashtags
What is the issue?
Similar to the way that Facebook failed to use the engagement elements of the site , Twitter is proving to be another social media outlet made for relationship-building efforts that public relations professionals do not completely understand. Instead of using public messages to respond to other Twitter users or connecting to others by retweeting helpful messages, nonprofits are using the site to convey information using one-way communication.