Twitter, JustGiving and fundraising – an introduction

Twitter. It’s the website everyone’s talking about at the moment, with mass media falling over themselves to feature it, explain what it is and jump to be part of it.

Sky News have even appointed a Twitter correspondent, and the Queen is apparently going to be ‘tweeting‘ (as they call it).

According to Hitwise, Twitter has recently entered the top 100 most popular websites in the UK and its traffic is growing exponentially.

But what about fundraising on the site, and how are Twitter users using JustGiving?

First off, what is Twitter?

At its simplest, Twitter is a way of sharing short messages (of up to 140characters) with anyone who wants to hear what you say, and following people(or brands) you’re interested in and read what they say.

There are literally millions of articles on the web if you want to find out more.

Here’s how it works

If you search for mentions of JustGiving on Twitter (using Twitter search) you can see there are a loads of people sharing their fundraising pages.

Plus, it’s not just individuals using the site, as more and more charities are using Twitter all the time.

Here’s just one fantastic example of how a charity can use Twitter and JustGiving, which we noticed from CIWF :

Why is it important?

It lets you communicate with your Twitter supporters 24 hours a day, and it allows you top spread stories about your charities work incredibly quickly and efficiently.

More and more organisations, brands and importantly charities are discovering the power of Twitter.

Things to do

Sign your charity up to Twitter

Tell your supporters you’ve joined Twitter, lots of them will already be on there,and ask them to tweet you their fundraising stories

Follow JustGiving on Twitter twitter.com/justgiving

Put a ‘follow us on Twitter’ logo on your website