Top 5 Strategies to Organize Your Group on Twitter

Our recent survey discovered groups find Twitter very useful to network with other groups, but did not know how to use it to organize their own group. The fact of the matter is that groups who communicate internally using Twitter tend to be better organized and grow faster than other groups.

To help crack the code, Groupable presents the five steps your group should take today to turn Twitter into an invaluable organizing tool.

1. Get Your Group Members to Register on Twitter.

At your next meeting, tell every member of your group to create a personal Twitter account and follow your group account (make sure to follow them back!) Most of your group has probably heard about Twitter by now, but many could use a helping hand to get them started. Explain to them how Twitter has been useful to network with other groups, and how you want to use Twitter to help organize your group going forward. Give them a quick rundown of the basics, and volunteer to answer any questions they may have along the way.

2. Set Up a List with All Your Group Members

As your group members enter the Twittersphere, create a list exclusively for members of your group. This will quickly become your definitive membership list to keep track of your members online. You’ll find it to be useful for messaging and capturing a snapshot of what your group is talking about. Additionally, if your group is seeking sponsorship, it helps prove your group’s authenticity and traction.

3. Post Your Twitter Feed on Your Group’s Website

One of the most useful features of Twitter is its ability to be shared on many sites. Groupable, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and most blogging software makes it easy to stream your group’s Twitter feed on your site. If you edit your website manually, Twitter has a simple script you can embed to stream your tweets. This will allow you to update all your sites simply by posting a single status update to Twitter.

4. Encourage Your Group to Sign Up for Text Message Updates

If you text “follow groupable” to 40404, you’ll receive a text message every time we update our Twitter account. Your group account can be followed by replacing groupable with your Twitter handle. Ask your group to sign up for instant status updates on their phone, so they can receive instant communication wherever they go.  They don’t even need a Twitter account to do this.

If you get your entire group to do this, you’ll make phone trees obsolete. Simply tweet “Tonight’s meeting changed to Mary’s house” and everybody will get the message.  Be careful not to use Twitter frivolously if you if you do this, or your group will resent getting text messages about what sandwich you ate for lunch!

5. Track your Influence Score

Groupable makes it easy to see if your Twitter strategy is working or not. Simply visit http://influence.groupable.com/ and register your Twitter handle. You can track your influence throughout the Twitter world and watch it rise as you continue to organize. You can also embed your score on your webpage to let the world know your group takes its mission seriously.

Groupable’s influence status — we’re still working our way up too.

Analysis of Group Twitter Usage

We recently conducted a survey to find out how groups were using Twitter. Did regular groups find it an indispensable tool? Or a meaningless distraction? The answer, not surprisingly, is “it depends.”

We started by asking groups to rate how useful they found Twitter for performing the most common group functions. They rated actions on a five point scale, with five being “most useful” and 1 being the “least useful.”

Groups gave Twitter high marks for its ability to network with other groups, but low marks as a tool for communicating within its own group. In essence, it’s more valuable for external communication than internal communication.

This is partially explained by the results to our question, “What percentage of your group actively uses Twitter.” On average, 14.8% of the membership of any given group use Twitter. With such a small percentage of rank and file group members on Twitter, it’s little surprise that Twitter is not yet often used for group organizing.

Usage Statistics

The popularity of Twitter services like CoTweet and HootSuite, which help many users maintain a single Twitter account, demonstrates that a single Twitter handle often has many drivers. We wanted to see how many sets of keys exist.

The majority of group twitter handles, 58%, are maintained by more than a single person. The average number of users lurking behind a single handle is 7.8, with a median of 3. About one in ten Twitter handles have an ownership in the double, or sometimes triple, digits.

Furthermore, these people are paying attention. The typical group member checked their group’s Twitter account 2.5 times a week, or about every other day.

Essentially, for every group you interact with on Twitter, you should assume the immediate audience is three to eight times higher. If your social media interaction is strong enough to trickle down to the 85.2% of the group who don’t use Twitter, your message will be amplified an additional sevenfold.

Groups are the gateway to building effective offline word-of-mouth. Contact Groupable today for best practices in targeted group engagement.