Engaging Stakeholders through Twitter: How Nonprofit Organizations are Getting More Out of 140 Characters or Less

TL;DR

This study examines how 73 nonprofit organizations utilize Twitter for stakeholder engagement, revealing that most use it primarily for one-way communication rather than fostering interactive conversations.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of Twitter usage patterns among nonprofits, highlighting gaps in engagement strategies and suggesting areas for improvement.

Findings

Less than 20% of tweets are conversational.

Approximately 16% of tweets connect indirectly to users.

Most nonprofits do not fully leverage Twitter for stakeholder involvement.

Abstract

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.