Nonprofit fundraising technology tips – Twitter to launch photo and video sharing

I’m always seeing how innovations in social media can assist professional fundraising services so the newest upgrade from Twitter is an exciting step up. The use of social media to help connect with potential donors amongst nonprofit organizations has grown exponentially over the last few years. In fact social media has become one of the most cost effective ways to supplement a professional fundraising venture and build relationships with those who use social media on a regular basis. I’ve been intrigued by the growth and application of Twitter in recent years and while less than 10% of all adults use the tool, those numbers are much highers within demographics that include businesses, organizations and nonprofits. Once viewed as being limited by it’s famous restriction of 140 characters the number of tools that support Twitter have seen it arrive as great source of news, information and targeted networking. For nonprofits it is especially versatile as you can track what topics are hot and build lists and follow those who tweet most about the topics that matter to your organization.

Going back to the restrictions of Twitter though, in addition to the 140 character limitation one other major complaint in recent years is that a third party application has always needed to be used to tweet links to photographs or video. While there are strong and popular free applications on the market to serve this purpose it seemed long overdue for Twitter to launch their own tool to accomplish the same task. When that character limit doesn’t always allow you to convery a great message for your nonprofit followers sometimes a photo or a video will be perfect.

At long last Twitter have rolled out their own product that will duplicate the services currently provided by leaders such as Yfrog and Twitpic. I’ve a strong feeling that because it is Twitter’s own product the adoption rate will be phenomenal and starting this month you can even search #(hastags) for images with videos soon to follow too.

Photo and video sharing on Twitter will help you connect with donors in new ways

Twitter are calling it a ‘native photosharing experience’ and it will be available to all Twitter users in the next few weeks. As a result it means that users can directly connect any chosen photos or videos to tweets. Why is this a good thing? At long last you’ll be able to view images and videos without leaving the Twitter.com website, something that some are reluctant to do and other just find it cumbersome. Twitter will also track what is trending the same way you can currently see trends for hashtags, a new section of the user homepage will allow you to see the most popular videos and photos with search functionality to follow.

For a nonprofit it can mean recently taken photos or video of special fundraising events, news or ceremonies can be added to your tweets in real time, tagged appropriately and immediately available to your audience. It will add another dynamic dimension to your followers and as it all stays ‘in house’ on Twitter I think it will be more trusted than 3rd party apps often are. Mobile versions of Twitter will also be able to upload photo/video tweets later this month. Twitter have partnered with Photobucket to launch this project.Expect to see it added to your Twitter desktop within the next few weeks. For more information please visit the Twitter blog or see the video below.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmB15ER3LUQ&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Video about the new Twitter upgrade