Today, YouTube announced that every single YouTube channel now comes equipped with a moderator feature. It’s an incredibly exciting step to see YouTube becoming fully social. The moderator feature allows any channel to ask for ideas, questions, or suggestions from the community..right from your YouTube channel. Users may vote the crowdsourced ideas up or down. By integrating Google moderator, YouTube has brought real time engagement features into play and made it 100% more engaging.

Here is how it works: Every YouTube channel incorporates Google Moderator. All you have to do is enable moderator on the channel, and ask a question of your users. Here are some screen shots of how to enable moderator on your channel. First, click on the Modules tab of your channel.

After you’ve checked “Moderator,” a drop-down menu appears, as seen in this screen shot:

And here is an example of the feature at work on the Foodwishes channel. Foodwishes is running a contest asking users to submit a summer recipe they want to see to prepared on the channel. The recipe with the highest number of votes will be the chosen.

Basically, YouTube is giving its users the power to crowdsource ideas and suggestions, and use the wisdom of the crowd to vote for the top ideas. I think the voting feature is fantastic. This could be a very economical way for a nonprofit organization to run a contest, promotion, or campaign.

I also think that YouTube is giving Facebook a run for its money with this new feature. It’s always been difficult for Facebook Page administrators to crowdsource ideas using Facebook: if you ask for ideas using a wall post, then the ideas will come in over time, and aren’t collected in one place. If you want to run a crowdsourced contest or special offer on Facebook, you must create a custom landing tab and application.

Look out Facebook…here comes YouTube

If you are already using video, today’s announcement should encourage you to think about using YouTube as the new address to crowdsource for engagement and answers instead of Facebook.

Video is a personal medium. Involving someone through a personal request on video is much more compelling than writing a blog post about a need or creating a Cause. I can envision charity:water inviting stakeholders to ask questions when they drill for wells using YouTube’s moderator function, or Epic Change encouraging YouTube users to “nominate a favorite Mama” using this feature. Combine the moderator feature with the YouTube Nonprofit Program, and perhaps YouTube will become the favored action center instead of Facebook Causes.

I’ll wager that the YouTube moderator feature is a game changer. It will bring more nonprofit organizations into YouTube, enable organizations to reach and engage with new stakeholders, and become a platform to create interesting and exciting new social media campaigns. It’s simple, immediate (real time voting and interaction), personal, and most of all, engaging. It brings the bottom up and the stakeholders in.

Now, it’s up to you. How will you integrate this feature into your overall social media strategy?