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Engaging Stakeholders through Twitter: How Nonprofit Organizations are Getting More Out of 140 Characters or Less
Kristen Lovejoy, Richard Waters, Gregory D. Saxton
TL;DR
Nonprofits can use Twitter’s communication tools to engage stakeholders beyond the platform’s character limit, but it remains unclear whether they do so effectively. An analysis of 73 large nonprofits found that most primarily used Twitter for one-way information dissemination rather than interaction.
Problem
The study asks whether nonprofits effectively use Twitter’s communication tools to communicate with and engage stakeholders.
Method
Researchers analyzed how 73 large nonprofit organizations used tweet frequency, following, hyperlinks, hashtags, public messages, retweets, and multimedia files.
Results
Most nonprofits primarily used Twitter to relay information through one-way communication rather than public replies or retweets that could support interaction.
Takeaways & Limitations
Twitter can support stakeholder engagement, but most large nonprofits did not proactively use its interactive features to create real dialogue.
Takeaways & Limitations
The sample excluded smaller, community-based nonprofits, and the study could not measure private direct messages.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
140 characters seems like too small a space for any meaningful information to be exchanged, but Twitter users have found creative ways to get the most out of each Tweet by using different communication tools. This paper looks into how 73 nonprofit organizations use Twitter to engage stakeholders not only through their tweets, but also through other various communication methods. Specifically, it looks into the organizations' utilization of tweet frequency, following behavior, hyperlinks, hashtags, public messages, retweets, and multimedia files. After analyzing 4,655 tweets, the study found that the nation's largest nonprofits are not using Twitter to maximize stakeholder involvement. Instead, they continue to use social media as a one-way communication channel, as less than 20% of their total tweets demonstrate conversations and roughly 16% demonstrate indirect connections to specific users.
INTRODUCTION
Twitter is a real-time micro-blogging service that enables rapid information dissemination and exchange through messages limited to 140 characters or less. Although this format makes information easily digestible, some question whether it permits meaningful information exchange.
- Twitter’s communication format: Twitter broadcasts real-time messages of 140 characters or less to the broader social media environment.Launched in October 2006, it is described as a short message service and micro-blogging application.
- Twitter’s communication format: Social networking sites support both rapid information dissemination and rapid information exchange.Twitter simplifies this exchange through real-time messaging and a limited message size.
- Motivation: Some observers question whether 140 characters is sufficient for meaningful information exchange and predict that Twitter’s popularity may fade.This skepticism is tied to the view that the tool may be useful only for limited communication.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Prior research finds that organizations often underutilize social networking and Twitter for stakeholder engagement. The literature identifies multiple Twitter communication tools and motivates examining whether nonprofits fully use them.
- Social Networking and Stakeholder Engagement: Organizational studies report substantial variation in social-networking use, with most organizations underutilizing the technology for stakeholder engagement.
- Social Networking and Stakeholder Engagement: Only 35% of Fortune 500 companies had active Twitter accounts in 2009, and organizations were not fully utilizing Twitter for customer relationship management.
- Communication Tools on Twitter: Twitter engagement extends beyond tweets through public messages, retweets, hashtags, hyperlinks, and multimedia tools that support dialogue, information sharing, and discoverability.
- Communication Tools on Twitter: Shortened URLs conserve space while bit.ly links enable researchers to track clicks and other information about link usage.
- Research Question: The literature motivates the research question of whether nonprofit organizations fully utilize Twitter’s available communication tools to communicate effectively.
RESULTS
Across 73 nonprofits, Twitter activity emphasized frequent information sharing through hyperlinks, while direct interaction and other engagement tools varied substantially. Overall, fewer than 20% of tweets demonstrated conversations or indirect connections to specific users.
- Following behavior: Organizations followed between 3 and 46,723 users, demonstrating substantial variation in friending behavior.Some organizations selectively followed users considered helpful or interesting, a strategy described as less conducive to organizational relationship building.
- Tweet activity: 4,655 tweets were posted over one month, averaging 66.23 tweets per organization.The organizations used Twitter consistently throughout the period.
- Information sharing: 3,170 tweets, or 68%, included hyperlinks to external information.This proportion exceeded the estimated 13%–25% usage among individual Twitter users.
- Direct engagement: 16.2% of tweets (n = 756) were public messages beginning with “@”, and 16 organizations received no public messages from other users.Public messages enabled organizations to send information to all followers or specific individuals.
- Retweets: 16.2% of tweets (n = 755) simply retweeted other users’ tweets, below the 27.8% estimate for individuals.Usage varied considerably: two organizations retweeted more than 50 times, while 15 never used the function.
- Hashtags: Nearly 30% of tweets (n = 1,394) included hashtags, but usage ranged from none among 11 organizations to more than 40 among 10.CARE, American Cancer Association, and World Vision used hashtags 120, 160, and 259 times, respectively.
DISCUSSION
Twitter can support detailed information, responsiveness, rapid information diffusion, and information communities despite its character limit. However, most nonprofit organizations continue using it primarily as a one-way information channel rather than for dialogue and relationship building.
- Communication capabilities: Twitter’s communication tools can overcome its character limit by enabling detailed information, public replies, rapid information diffusion, and information communities.These functions rely on hyperlinks, replies, retweets, and other interactive communication methods.
- Adoption and interactivity: Despite consultants’ advocacy, social media has produced little evidence of interactivity becoming central to public relations programming.Usage is increasing, but the passage characterizes the results as minimal and interactivity as limited.
- Relationship building: Twitter is becoming another hyped relationship-building outlet that practitioners do not fully use for engagement, much like Facebook and blogs.The cited comparison describes Facebook as failing to capitalize on engagement elements and blogs as predominantly one-way channels.
- Practitioner perspectives: Interactive social media features may be underused because practitioners do not view social media as a cure-all or associate public relations with customer service.The discussion connects interactive tools with customer-service situations and contrasts that role with public relations as a management counseling function.
- Observed organizational practice: Most sampled nonprofits still use Twitter to distribute information like traditional newsletters, media kits, and annual reports, although some create real dialogue.The discussion emphasizes that meaningful interaction is possible within 140 characters or less, but remains uncommon in the sample.
CONCLUSION
The conclusion emphasizes that Twitter’s effectiveness for stakeholder connection depends on practitioners’ strategic creativity, while noting limitations in the sample and method and proposing broader comparative research.
- Conclusion: Twitter’s stakeholder uses are limited primarily by public relations practitioners’ imaginations rather than by the platform’s 140-character format.The conclusion presents Twitter as offering more possibilities than its character limit may suggest.
- Limitations: The sample’s focus on the largest national nonprofits excludes smaller, community-based organizations and limits understanding of nonprofit Twitter use.The study selected nonprofits from an established list of the largest organizations in the United States.
- Limitations: Content analysis identifies how communication tools are used but does not measure practitioners’ underlying motivations or attitudes.Private messaging may also have addressed users’ questions or concerns and supported one-on-one relationship-building.
- Future Research: Future research should compare nonprofit, for-profit, and government Twitter communication and examine additional tools introduced since the study’s data collection.The conclusion specifically notes Twitter’s later addition of user-created lists as one example of changing communication tools.