Donate your tweets
Yeah you heard right. Donate your tweets.
JustCoz have developed a tool which I’ve had daydreams about for ages but I haven’t had the time to do anything about. Put simply, it allows you to donate a tweet a day to your favourite cause.
Once you click the “Donate a Tweet a day” button on a cause page, you become a supporter for that cause. A non-profit can send messages through all their supporters. This means a message will be sent through your Twitter account with the content chosen by the cause.
I set up a Relationships Scotland page in about three minutes – http://justcoz.org/RelScot
For me this isn’t spam, twitterers get to pick a cause they believe in and if your supporters don’t like what you have to say then they simply ditch your messages with one click. I’m acutely aware that JustCoz won’t go down well with everyone though. I’d be really interested to hear what people think about it.
ooh sorry I don’t like this, Ross 🙁 For the same reason as my Twitter Lists are handcrafted, I prefer to tweet for charities in my own way, and when the inspiration or immediacy hits me. I certainly wouldn’t allow someone to tweet on my behalf at set intervals.I’m afraid for me, this takes a little bit more of the personal and authentic touch out of Twitter. I generally listen to friend’s tweets because they are idiosyncratic, droll, silly or poignant – and I kind of try to tweet in the same way from @whizzkidz. If I began to be an automaton about it, I think my followers would see through it and it would (unwittingly perhaps) deaden their impact. Just sayin’.
I agree with Ross on this one, JustCoz is a great tool for the toolbox, So far I have 180+ twitter users donating a tweet to BUK, personally I think "a tweet a day is a bit" OTT but it’s catchy which is the main thing. It’s a great way to choose when and how far a tweet spreads think of it as the twitter equivalent of a press release at the PA you embargo it until a time and then once that time passes news outlets write it up it then spreads across multiple channels both online and off.with JustCoz it’s a similar effect only focused on Twitter, you push that broadcast at a time of your choosing through people who have donated their account for the purpose (similar to journalist choosing to write up your release) with the broadcast live it can then spread. You have to go deeper than just the message also the power that all those accounts gives to your Real Time SEO and organic SEO results Just Coz delivers a hell of a lot for such a simple concept. Interestingly for the first week I did do a tweet a day, when i switched to one a week a number of tpeople asked why I wasn’t doing a tweet a day they were in some ways disappointed.I’m still debating if JustCoz should switch to a phased broadcast over say 1hr rather than the splurge in 30 seconds it does at the moment. On one hand its great for real time search on the downside it can look like a spam attack to anyone following multiple users.
Rob beat me to it!I’d certainly echo Rob’s concerns/thoughts. Personally, yes, great in terms of ‘another’ way to raise awareness. But is it the way I’d choose for @quarriers – no.Quarriers’ followers will re-tweet our tweets if they’re interesting, unusual, witty or anything else that makes them unique from the rest of the daily dredge of Twitter. That makes it a personal engagement between Quarriers and the follower who has decided to take it upon themselves to re-tweet.I could see our followers getting a bit fed up very quickly of Justcoz and something that infringes on their choice and time. Justcoz is the online version of a door-to-door salesperson asking ‘Would you please tweet this for charity?’.That said, good luck with it for Relationships Scotland. It’ll be interesting to see how your followers respond to it.
Some interesting thoughts there. Ross – I’d be interested in hearing how you get on with this.It’s the idea of spam that is putting me off more than anything. Pros and cons to it I guess. Is it just another American born thing that the UK culture has yet to take hold of? Maybe.
Oh no, John, really? I can’t think of anything worse than "the twitter equivalent of a press release" – it’s the wrong medium (for me). I tie up themes across platforms, sure – but I try and make that message suit each one. e.g. conversational for Twitter – like tying in topics that followers are already talking about (like when Gok Wan did the HTLGN episodes with disabled women, or the wheelchair-using character in Glee) and relating them to Whizz-Kidz’ work. I *react* to chatter, as opposed to broadcasting my messages at followers before I know they’re really *listening*.But I’m a bit of a hater on the press release now anyway. I prefer to send less releases out but make the ones I do really targeted by using journalisted.com to research my key journos (and increasingly bloggers). I’ve also built up reliable contacts in my trade press (like Paul Cockburn @ Able, Helen Barrett ex-Third Sector, Celina Ribeiro @ Civil Society FR, Howard Lake @ UKFundraising, and so on)…
Think your reading too much into the PR bit that was just me trying to liken it to something to help people understand it a bit better. at the end of the day each to their own I know that Just Coz works it’s up to each org to decide if its right for them and if they can make effective use of it. All im saying is look a little further than just what the tool appears to do on the surface theirs a lot more to Social media and the web in general than just the message.you both make valid points why it’s not right for your orgs or ethos each to their own as they say.
"I’m afraid for me, this takes a little bit more of the personal and authentic touch out of Twitter. I generally listen to friend’s tweets because they are idiosyncratic, droll, silly or poignant."Rob & Marc: I think you’re right, tweets should be personal and authentic but I feel, in a round about sort of way, that’s what JustCoz offers. People are choosing the cause that’s meaningful to them not just any old charity. I am, however, conscious that the quality of the tweets will have a huge impact on how campaigns pan out. Marc is right that general punters could perceive JustCoz tweet-donors as online chuggers. Although lets not forget just how successful chuggers are!"You have to go deeper than just the message also the power that all those accounts gives to your Real Time SEO and organic SEO results Just Coz delivers a hell of a lot for such a simple concept."John: This is something I hadn’t actually thought about when I wrote the post but you’re right, the JustCoz tweets could have a huge impact on SEO.