Is Twitter the 'most important' platform for nonprofits to focus on for Giving Tuesday?
Author’s Note: This story is one of a set of three viewpoints about the ‘most important’ social media network for nonprofits on Giving Tuesday.
#GivingTuesday is upon us, and after an exhausting long weekend of holiday spending, millions of donors will be looking to social media for worthy causes to support.
Without question, Twitter will be the best place to start that search.
All weekend long, the hashtag #GivingTuesday has been filled with thousands of Tweets from nonprofits and supporters alike, each using up to 280 characters to share the reason why viewers should support their cause.
Twitter, of course, serves as a great jumping-off point to discover other content—perhaps you’ve discovered this article on Twitter—and casual users who are perusing the #GivingTuesday hashtag throughout the day will be invited to click links to your Facebook page, your Instagram account, your YouTube channel or even directly to your website.
But this isn’t your grandmother’s Twitter dot com. Nope—these days, Twitter is also ripe with native video, usually (but not always) less than 2 minutes, 20 seconds. The popular #GivingTuesday hashtag gives every nonprofit, large and small, an equal opportunity to have its best videos seen by the masses.
On #GivingTuesday, reach is particularly important, and according to the Global NGO Technology Report, nonprofits from each responding region—Africa; Asia; Australia and New Zealand; Europe; Latin America and the Caribbean; and United States and Canada—averaged around twice as many followers on Twitter as they have on Instagram.
Conversation around the hashtag #GivingTuesday has reached astronomical levels, but if you need a more quantifiable estimation, Giving Tuesday itself offers a 20-page breakdown. And while we know last year’s worldwide conversation exceeded 14 billion impressions, Twitter is without question the platform that provides the most measurable data.
In the U.S. and Canada, where 64% nonprofits reported being on Twitter—ahem, higher than the 56% that use Instagram—organizations claimed an average of over 15,000 Twitter followers. And we know those followers will look to our content today—#GivingTuesday is one of the most reliable trends of the year on Twitter. According to The Guardian, #GivingTuesday trended for 11 hours—in 2014!
In fact, there’s so much content marked with #GivingTuesday that many users will likely want a more localized solution. #GivingTuesday isn’t just a broad-brush global campaign—with more than 200 local Giving Tuesday movements, millions of users will be able to find hyper-local content through hashtags like #ILGive in Illinois, #GivingTuesdayCLT in Charlotte, N.C. and #BethelGives in Alaska.
While localized content isn’t necessarily unique to Twitter—personalized real-time responses might be the platform’s best differentiator. Savvy nonprofits can take advantage of Twitter’s conversational nature to dive right into users’ notifications, to personalize gratitude for support, or individualize invitations to join a movement.
And, on Twitter more than any other platform, you never know when your story might get immediate, massive amplification—just ask Jakhil Jackson, whose “blessing bags” received a shout-out—and 46,000+ subsequent retweets—from former President Barack Obama.
Twitter provides a democratized platform where organizations large and small can be part of a worldwide conversation about the #GivingTuesday movement, 280 characters—and/or 2 minutes and 20 seconds of video—at a time. Twitter offers the most measurable data to demonstrate depth and reach. And Twitter offers every organization the chance to publicly personalize responses—immediately strengthening the bonds with donors and supporters.
For these reasons, Twitter is clearly the top platform for nonprofits to focus on for #GivingTuesday 2019.
This article is part of a three-part series about the most important platform for nonprofits to focus on for #GivingTuesday. Read the case for Facebook and Instagram.
