From noon today, the National Trust for Scotland will be using Twitter in an interesting new way.

Already as part of the celebrations surrounding the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, snippets of his poetry have been posted on Twitter under the account ayrshirebard. Now the account will be the home of a drive to raise funds to build the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum.

NTS is looking to raise £4 million over the weekend. The fundraising drive coincides with the 25th of January, beginning when the first part of the globe celebrates the birth of Burns at noon today and ending on Monday evening.

This looks like it is very much an experiment for the time being. Although Twitter has been used as a fundraising tool in the USA, but NTS reckon this is the first time it’s been done in the UK. It will be very interesting to see how successful it is.

There is more information at Craig McGill’s website and you can follow Robert Burns and the fundraising efforts on the Twitter account ayrshirebard.