Subject: Increasing our followers on twitter
We are a small volunteer-led campaing organisation based in Essex, with no office space and lack of funding. We would like to engage with local BME people and opinion formers, as well as servcie providers, on issues of liocal concerns affecting the lives of BME communities. We would like to utilise social media such as twitter to increase civic and democratic voice, and inform people of what is going on across all sectors of mainstream community. We feel this is the most cost-effective way of doing this. How do we engage more effectively and build our twitter following?
show that you are interactive on Twitter - so retweet things of interest, follow people back who follow you (we always give them a welcome "thanks for following is" post), when we have announcements with post them with the request "please retweet" or "Plz RT" depending on character spaces available in the post.
Thank you @southdevonplayers. We do a lot of re-tweets of local affairs, issues and events. We will try the 'please retweet' requests. Other ways of increasing interests and followers of a small community group still welcomed!
There's also the 20/80 rule.
One observation I put forward, which was backed up by a client, and may make for an interesting debate, is that Twitter and Facebook followers tend to differ. It's undeniable that the total number of people on Twitter is less than Facebook, although you're likely to have more Twitter followers than Facebook followers. Due to the lower number of users, many of your would-be members simply might not be on there.
What Twitter is good for, is reaching a global audience. Twitter followers tend to be more transient than Facebook followers. They often pick up on one tweet they found relevant, follow for a while on that basis, then unfollow again.
Facebook followers, on the other hand, tend to have more of a vested interest in the work of your organisation, tend to be more local, and tend to have experience of your organisation or services.
Twitter and Facebook need to work in tandem. They're both good, but for different reasons. Because of the nature of Twitter, just because you have more followers, doesn't necessarily mean you're reaching more potential members. With Facebook, you probably are.
Also, when monitoring, don't just monitor how many followers you have each month. Monitor how many followers you have this month, minus the number of followers last month. This will show you the rate of new followers you're getting on a monthly basis, rather than just the total number of followers you have - which doesn't really tell you a lot.
And, yes, Twitter may be cost effective - being free - but given the effect
of social media on productivity...is it really? 
Oh - and give FutureTweets or something similar a whirl. The key with tweeting is to be consistent. This allows you to line up your tweets, and put them on repeat, so you don't constantly have to log in and do them manually.
thanks for that ConsultantMGW, we will look at that too. Most of our tweets are fresh news, but there may be times this proves most handy nevertheless.
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