Can Twitter Help Your Cause Raise Money?

Can nonprofit groups really raise money on the social-networking site Twitter? The author and social-media consultant Beth Kanter has studied the history of fund-raising efforts on the site and answers with an unequivocal yes. Writing on Beth’s Blog, Ms. Kanter points to several examples of successful fund raising-efforts on Twitter. In one case, a heart surgeon in India raised more than $5,000 for his charity, the Heart Kids. The popular blog Mashable raised more than $3,500 using Twitter for Charity:Water, an organization that builds wells in Ethiopia. Ms. Kanter writes that charities need to make sure they build appropriate networks before they begin appealing for dollars. “I can’t stress the importance of community building or rather network building,” Ms. Kanter writes. “You don’t go into using a Twitter strategy without having built up a little social capital.” For more tips from Ms. Kanter on how to use social networks such as Twitter, check out the transcript of our recent live discussion with Ms. Kanter and Jonathan Colman of the Nature Conservancy in Washington. In addition, the Chronicle recently hosted a live discussion on Twitter for Nonprofit Groups.

Social Media Optimization : 11 Rules of SMO

1. Increase Your Linkability : Think blogs, content, aggregation & linkbait.

2. Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy : Include calls to action for users to tag, bookmark and Digg your stuff. I’d suggest the Sociable Plugin if you have a WordPress powered blog.

3. Reward Inbound Links : List blogs which link back to you via permalinks, trackbacks or recently linking blogs (like the Yahoo & Google blogs do).

4. Help Your Content Travel : Content diversification can lead to mobility of your content beyond the browser.

5. Encourage the Mashup : Let others use your content or tools to produce something a bit different or outside of the box with your stuff, even RSS.

6. Be a User Resource, Even if It Doesn’t Help You : Add value and outbound links, even if it doesn’t help in the short term, it will in the long.

7. Reward Helpful and Valuable Users : Give your contributors and readers the recognition they deserve.

8. Participate : Get in there and get involved in the discussions going on among the blogs and sites of others, and do it organically. Earn your rep on Digg.com, don’t try and force it.

9. Know How to Target : Understand your appeal and those people you wish to attract.

10. Create Content : A little bit of rules 1 & 4 here, but the underlying message is know the form of content working for you.

11. Be Real : Transparency pays off and no one likes a fake.