1. Follow relevant Twitter accounts.
What does “relevant” mean, you ask? Once you define the niche for your brand (for example, “nonprofit”), a simple search on Twitter with the relevant keywords will bring up several recent tweets that mention that keyword. You can sift through these accounts and see which accounts could be relevant to your brand.

Once you find a few key Twitter accounts to follow, the rest of the process is quite organic. You can look through the followers of these accounts and see which ones are relevant to you, or even search through their lists if they have got any set up and do the same.

Following relevant accounts usually prompts people to follow you back. This is not to say however, that you should follow every Twitter account imaginable. Notice the phrase “relevant accounts” — why would someone follow you back if they are not interested in what you have to say? Make sure you keep everything, from your tweets to your tweeps, relevant, and the rest will follow.

2. Use hashtags.
People search for hashtags on Twitter all the time. By adding hashtags to the end of your tweets, you can bet that someone will stumble upon it and decide to follow you. One simple hashtag might be #nonprofit.

3. Engage in conversations.
One thing your Twitter should not do is to simply promote yourself. Nobody wants to follow a Twitter account that is simply an RSS feed of their blog posts or news.

To capture the attention of others, and to remain personable and personal, it’s important to engage in real conversations with others. The simplest way to do this is to @ reply – either answering questions that have been posed, asking a question, commenting on something they have posted, and so on. But as always, don’t simply do these actions to do them – be sincere in your every interaction and you will see better results.

Retweeting is another way to engage and to distribute ideas or links that you believe are valuable to your audience. For more info on retweeting, take a look at Twitter’s own guide.

4. Add value.
Simply tweeting about your day is not going to be particularly interesting to your audience, so you should keep in mind this golden rule: add value.

Whether it’s releasing a nugget of information from your organisation, or tweeting about something you just read on the internet (with a link, of course) – whatever you post should be relevant and valuable to your reader. “Content is king” not only for blogs but for Twitter accounts as well.

5. Stay relevant.
If you are running a Twitter account for a nonprofit organisation, keep it relevant to nonprofits or what your organisation is doing. Unfortunately, no one really wants to read about what you had for lunch!

Alisha is a third year student at Harvard University who has bravely crossed the pond and has joined Bright One. She will be based at Bold Creative, an award winning creative agency that Bright One works with, as a digital communications and PR intern.

“During my eight week internship, I’m hoping to gain an insightful and exciting experience in the world of digital media and public relations,” Alisha said. “At school, I study History and Sociology, but in my “free” time, I enjoy blogging, navigating through social media, graphic design, and generally poking around the internet. I’m looking forward to many adventures while exploring London, although it may take some time for me to look right instead of left when attempting to safely cross the street!”

While at Bold, Alisha will be working on two projects specifically. The first is called Tag Map, an interactive, geo-tagging networking site for sharing ideas and opinions. The second is a website called Forest Flava, which has been designed and developed by Bold in collaboration with young people from Waltham Forest. When she’s not working on these projects, Alisha will be turning her skills to Bright One projects.

You can also check out Alisha’s blog, Bows and Ivy, or follow her on Twitter – @alishalisha

Welcome aboard, Alisha, and best of luck with your internship!