Since Twitter first launched their Lists feature a week or so ago, we’ve been watching carefully how it is being used, and thinking about how it can benefit Charities and Not For Profits.

It’s a simple fact that most of us love lists. Shopping lists, things to do lists, guest lists…so it’s obvious to see that this is an idea that’s bound to catch on. The premise is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, we can create lists of the funniest Twitter accounts, our closest friends, favourite artists, or those relating to various sectors such as charity.

So how can NFPs and charities use this new feature to their advantage?

Well for starters, because other Twitter users can see your ‘public’ lists, these lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts. Lists is effectively another way of rating people, of giving their accounts credibility. They also provide an effective way of segmenting your Twitter audiences.

By the same token, Lists enables you to quickly follow valuable new people, get followed by people you will appreciate and allow your followers to do the same. As a charity, your donors, supporters and beneficiaries will be able to communicate and connect with each other via your lists.

This fast, transparent, organised way of networking is good for nfps and is about to take off in a big way on Twitter. It gives you a unique opportunity to monitor the social commentary on your brand and get an insight into how other people see you. It’s certainly interesting to see what lists you’ve been included on.

Furthermore, if your charity is organsing a sponsored run, bake-off, swimathon etc. you can use Lists to organise the followers who are involved in the event – helping you contact them quickly and enabling them to follow each other.

Another idea is to create ‘List of the Week’ whereby you list some of your new followers, best donors, most prolific re-tweeters etc. by way of a ‘thank you’ to them.

Aside from the fact that they take a little while to compile, Lists appears to be a valuable addition to Twitter, and provides another mechanism to quickly follow, reach and communicate with new and existing audiences. And that seems like a good idea to us.

Tags: Charity, Lists, NFP, Twitter

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Charity News, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.