Blogs help humanize companies, improve authenticity, create valuable feedback loops and may help drive significant traffic to your company website.
So it’s no wonder one of questions I’m most often asked is, “should my company consider blogging?”
After asking a few questions, I’m able to give a definitive “yes” or “no” answer, but I’ve never created a decision tree to help people answer that question for themselves.
Thankfully, Matt Dickman of the Techno//Marketer blog has.
Social media can be an incredible force for doing good.
I’ve spoken about it a bit lately, sharing some real world examples in the deck below:
Examples don’t necessarily explain how to do it, so here’s a simple, grassroots way I used social media to raise $1,250 for the Muscular Dystrophy Association just yesterday.
Here’s how I did it.
First, I created a blog post explaining what I was doing.
Then I used Twitter and Facebook to broadcast my requests, Brightkite to post photos (which in turn, post to Twitter), Ping.fm to send information across all my networks, and a ChipIn widget to collect and tally donations.
All of the services above are free.
This blog has been my aggregation point, and it’s basically free, too.
The only hard cost was from Paypal, my clearinghouse for payments, totaling about 3%, which my firm simply made up the difference.
There are options that don’t cost, such as the Causes application on Facebook and MySpace, but the MDA didn’t have a link set up there.
What’s the upside?
What will Outsource Marketing, The Responsible Marketing Blog and I gain from all this? Well, I had fun and it always feels good to do good.
Everyone at Outsource Marketing is here because we care about more than making a buck—we want to do some good too. While my colleagues enjoyed seeing me forcefully removed from the premises, they were genuinely glad our firm was involved. Efforts like this reinforce the culture we’re working to build.
Sure, you can’t spend goodwill, but keeping your team happy reduces turnover.
And lower turnover results in higher client satisfaction.
And higher client satisfaction results in less client churn.
And less churn makes for a more profitable company.
I’ll take all of the above, thank you.
You can help the MDA (or a nonprofit of your choice) too.
If you are ever asked to participate in the MDA Lock-Up in your community, do it. The MDA offers “Wanted” posters and plenty of ideas to promote it around your office.
It’s easy, it’s fun and it’s for a great cause.
Ping me and I’ll promote it here on The Responsible Marketing Blog.
Tomorrow, it’s back to strictly marketing posts. Although I never heard a peep saying as much, I assume a few of you were beginning to suffer from “fundraising fatigue.”
Rest assured, I’ll stay out of jail for at least another year.
So, what’s the most creative fundraiser you’ve ever seen?
Have you heard about the Members Project from American Express?
It’s a social good promotion built to encourage people to “come together to achieve something amazing.” Card members are invited to submit ideas for projects in the areas of arts and culture, community development, education, environment and wildlife, and health. Anyone, including non-cardmembers, can discuss, campaign for, and then vote on their favorite projects.
American Express will award $2.5 million dollars to the top five projects ($1.5 million for the winning project). Last year’s winning project helped provide two billion liters of clean drinking water for children, and the second, third and fourth place projects helped plant trees, restore national parks, create wind and solar powered generators and connect people with public schools to help out with classroom needs.
Currently, 427 projects have been submitted. The project in the lead, “Adopt a Classroom. Support America’s Teachers,” has 1,584 votes.
A win-win-win campaign for AMEX
Site visitors win because they get to do some good by nominating and/or voting for the causes they believe in.
The causes win whether they are one of the five finalists or not—this campaign is being supported by a significant ad campaign reaching millions of people. These causes will gain exposure they might not otherwise receive.
And of course, AMEX wins. This isn’t new territory for the company—they coined the phrase “cause marketing,” after all. But this campaign takes it to a whole new level. AMEX has used social media to create social good and engaged cardmembers and non-cardmembers alike.
What do you think of the Members Project? All good or all hype?
Whether you are ‘red’ or ‘blue,’ you have to be green with envy when watching Barack Obama’s marketing machine in action.
The candidate’s web presence and social media savvy have set a new standard for political candidates, and in some ways, everyone else in marketing.
This isn’t news. Obama’s marketing prowess has been covered again and again by bloggers and traditional media alike so I’ve tried to avoid joining the chorus of oohs and aahs.
Call it the tipping point, but today I received an email from David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, offering me the opportunity to “be the first to know,” about Obama’s VP selection—via SMS.
By texting the word “VP” to 62262 on a mobile phone, you can learn the news first too.
In Big ideas, tiny budgets, I shared some of the good work World Vision is doing using viral video to draw attention to their initiatives in the US and Australia.
Now, World Vision is back with a new video that builds upon their teenage affluenza theme:
Many thousands of unfortunate teenagers struggle everyday with Teenage Affluenza. But Erin and Red have decided to make a difference and find out what real sacrifice is all about.
Erin is doing the ‘can’t touch anything with her hands’ 40 Hour Famine. Red is doing the ‘can’t watch TV or use technology’ 40 Hour Famine.
It could be worse. 218 million children around the world are forced to work and are denied their basic freedoms.
At least you’re not one of them.
I’m impressed with World Vision, not just with what they are doing, but how they are doing it.
Let me explain.
Before this video was released, I was contacted by World Vision Australia and asked for my opinion regarding their new video.
Last week, I was interviewed by Jed Sundwall at NetSquared, a group of passionate social media advocates whose mission is to “spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations.”
The focus of the conversation was on what social benefit organizations are missing if they neglect social media, and of course, Responsible Marketing.
Last, special thanks to Eric Weaver from Edelman Digital who coordinated PodCamp, and to Guy Kawasaki and Chris Brogan, for using reaching out to their network to help me find great examples for this presentation.
So, who’s doing a great job in the social good space?
As I’ve been preparing my presentation for PodCamp Seattle regarding how social media can be used to help create social good, I decided to use social media to reach out and find some great examples.
First, I posted a request through Twitter (follow me) and received a couple of good ideas. Then I realized it might make sense to reach out two people that care and have a lot more Twitter followers than me: Guy Kawasaki (follow Guy) and Chris Brogan (follow Chris).
They were kind enough to post a request for ideas to thousands of their followers, and voila! I received a boat load of responses immediately—good stuff I’ll be able to use to make my presentation better.
I also made some new Twitter friends along the way, like Tan Siok Siok, an award-winning filmmaker and educator (follow Siok Siok).
Check out the trailer for her new documentary regarding the Beijing Olympics, Boomtown Beijing.
On her blog, I discovered the following video:
I was struck by its creative execution and simplicity—and surprised to learn it was created by a student. It has been viewed 1.2 million times in four months. Fascinating, and worth your time.
When I decided to look for examples for my speech using social media, I expected to get what I was looking for and move on. But I got more than that—I received goodwill, gained inspiration and made some new friends along the way.
And that, unto itself, is social good gained from social media.
Have you seen social media used to create social good?
