Embedded tweets: one more way to spread fundraising with Twitter further
Howard Lake | 10 May 2010 | Blogs
Messages sent via Twitter have, until now, been very easy to share via Twitter itself (of course) and via email, but reproducing them on web pages or elsewhere online has been hard. You needed to take a screen shot, save the image, and then insert it into your web page.
Developments in the past week though mean that now we can embed tweets into web pages. The benefit of this is that some messages are going to be spread even further by being ‘quoted’ in this way on blogs and websites. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, all links in tweets are preserved, whether full URLs, short URLs like those produced by the likes of bit.ly, or hashtags linking to related content or Twitter searches.
So, fundraisers using Twitter should hope that not only will their messages be retweeted but that they will also be embedded by supporters and other online publishers.
An improvement on the original Twitter code has been created by Publitweet. Their Blackbird bookmarklet speeds up the creation of an embedded tweet, converting a tweet into HTML. It is also, I understand, better coded than the original Twitter code.
Even better, Publitweet have created an additional function which brings tweets to similar levels as the embeddable videos of YouTube and Vimeo. Their Blackbird script [link removed 13/04/2013] now enables embedded tweets to be themselves embedded. The facility for people to cut and paste tweets into their own site should boost considerably the number of people quoting and using tweets.
This new script has another benefit: people who will embed the tweet from your site will see that it comes from there as a source.
So, all fundraisers have to do now is ensure they continue to write compelling tweets that people not only want to retweet but also quote and display on their blogs and web pages.
One thing lacking at this stage though is statistics. It would be very handy to know how many people have embedded one of your tweets, and how many further embedded tweets that has generated.
You want to see this in action to understand it? Fair enough. Here are some very nice comments on a recent presentation I gave to local businesses in Essex at Saint Francis Hospice.
The free business seminar today with @HowardLake was brilliant http://bit.ly/ar3kQz
St Francis Hospice
SFHUK
@estherwakeman hi Esther. A great presentation today which I thoroughly enjoyed. Thanks to all at @SFHUK and of course @howardlake
Scott Griffiths
scottgriffiths
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The free business seminar today with @HowardLake was brilliant http://bit.ly/ar3kQz (via @SFHUK)
Decoder
decoder_design
RT @scottgriffiths: A great presentation today which I thoroughly enjoyed. Thanks to all at @SFHUK and of course @howardlakeSt Francis Hospice
SFHUK
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.