Posted: November 7th, 2009, 12:47 pm
Social network updates a friend to charities
Benny Evangelista, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, October 26, 2009
twitter不仅仅是一个社会性网络工具，它也可以被利用来作为商业推广利器，然而目前越来越多的非营利机构或慈善活动也开始关注这类社会性网络的巨大作用。由对#BeatCancer的介绍开篇，文章作者还例举了其它几个成功的善因营销(cause-related marketing)案例，简单分析了社会性网络在该方面应用成功的原因和应避免的问题。
Got a tweet to spare? It could help the charity of your choice.
A week ago, a record number of status updates on Twitter and Facebook using the phrase "#BeatCancer" helped raise $70,000 for four non-profit cancer organizations.
Meanwhile, sales of a virtual crop for the popular Facebook game FarmVille raised nearly a half-million real dollars to feed poor children in Haiti. And a group called TwitCause used tweets to promote organic foods and a walk to benefit diabetes research.
These are just a few of many recent examples of how social networks have quickly become a powerful yet inexpensive tool to raise money and awareness for charities, even at a time when the economy has reduced overall donations to nonprofit groups.
"The economy is terrible, there's not that much money around to share, but there are all these opportunities as long as you are authentic and you have a message that you believe in and you are passionate about," said Meaghan Edelstein, founder of Spirit Jump, a Florida-based group that sends cards and inspirational gifts to people battling cancer. It is one of the organizations that will benefit from the #BeatCancer promotion.
For that campaign, Twitter and Facebook users were asked to post that phrase as their status update during a 24-hour period starting Oct. 16. Three sponsors - eBay Inc. of San Jose, the MillerCoors Brewing Co. and nutrition chain Genesis Today - originally pledged to donate 1 cent for each post, although they ended up donating much more.
Spurred on by posts from popular Twitter celebrities like Perez Hilton and Kim Kardashian, #BeatCancer was posted 209,771 times, which Guinness proclaimed a new world record.
Meanwhile, Zynga Inc., a fast-growing San Francisco social video game company, has raised more than $490,000 this month selling virtual sweet potato plant seeds on FarmVille, a simulated farm game played by 56 million Facebook members each month.
Zynga has donated 50 percent of the nearly $1 million grossed so far from sales of "Sweet Seeds for Haiti" to non-profit organizations Fatem.org and Fonkoze.org. The funds raised have bought a day's worth of meals for 500 children for one year, said Zynga spokeswoman Shernaz Daver.
Zynga tested the concept earlier this year by selling virtual dogs and cats on YoVille, another social game that has 19.8 million monthly players. Proceeds from the total $20,000 raised went to the San Francisco SPCA.
"If you can empower people to impact the world directly, they would do it," Daver said.
Also within the past two weeks:
-- YouTube asked viewers to donate to the U.N. World Food Program for World Food Day on Oct. 16. YouTube said the "billion for a billion" promotion (for the number of videos seen daily and the estimated number of the world's people who go hungry) raised enough in one day to feed 140,000 children a school lunch.
-- Twitter teamed with Room to Read, a nonprofit group that establishes schools and libraries for children in Asia and Africa, to raise money by selling custom wines from Crushpad, another San Francisco firm.
-- Palo Alto's Facebook last week enhanced its Facebook Gift Shop so its 300 million members can buy virtual gifts that benefit nonprofit groups such as the World Wildlife Fund.
-- The makers of Haagen-Dazs ice cream will join in an online drive organized by San Francisco's TwitCause, which picks one charity a week to spotlight through Twitter messages.
Haagen-Dazs, a division of Oakland's Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, is pledging to donate $1 for every "#HelpHoneyBees" tweet sent between Nov. 5 and Nov. 11, up to $500 per day, for research at UC Davis to help stop the collapse of honeybee colonies worldwide.
The company hopes to use the Twitter campaign to raise awareness of the bee problem while simultaneously gathering information about how to use social networking for marketing.
"It's an easy thing to do, and they don't have to buy anything or send a letter to anyone," said Tonya Iles, interactive manager for Haagen-Dazs.
TwitCause.com was launched in August by San Francisco's ExperienceProject.com, an online venue where people share various stories about their lives. Experience Project founder Armen Berjikly said TwitCause was intended to channel "the emotional content and passion we were seeing on our site."
The first week, TwitCause helped raise $24,000 for the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Each week, TwitCause, which has 305,000 Twitter followers, highlights a different charity selected by its members. Those who vote on their favorite cause tend to be more passionate about it and willing to use Twitter and other social networking tools to spread the word to others who might feel the same way, Berjikly said.
However, the use of social media overall is still evolving. And for nonprofits, it has to be used creatively because people are already "over messaged" with advertising on traditional sources like television and radio, said Tamara Knechtel, managing partner at Everywhere, an Atlanta social media marketing firm.
Knechtel, also a cancer survivor, came up with the #BeatCancer idea and launched it days later. She said it succeeded because it focused on a specific cause and gave "immediate gratification" to participants.
"There's something very powerful in the lessons we learned," Knechtel said. "Now we have to see what is the next opportunity to turn this into something more powerful."
For more information on organizations mentioned in this story, go to:
-- TwitCause.com
-- SpiritJump.org
-- BeatCancerEverywhere.com
-- HelpTheHoneyBees.com
-- Fatem.org
-- Fonkoze.org
source: <a href='http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 1A8VHN.DTL' target='_blank'>http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... VHN.DTL</a>
This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Benny Evangelista, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, October 26, 2009
twitter不仅仅是一个社会性网络工具，它也可以被利用来作为商业推广利器，然而目前越来越多的非营利机构或慈善活动也开始关注这类社会性网络的巨大作用。由对#BeatCancer的介绍开篇，文章作者还例举了其它几个成功的善因营销(cause-related marketing)案例，简单分析了社会性网络在该方面应用成功的原因和应避免的问题。
Got a tweet to spare? It could help the charity of your choice.
A week ago, a record number of status updates on Twitter and Facebook using the phrase "#BeatCancer" helped raise $70,000 for four non-profit cancer organizations.
Meanwhile, sales of a virtual crop for the popular Facebook game FarmVille raised nearly a half-million real dollars to feed poor children in Haiti. And a group called TwitCause used tweets to promote organic foods and a walk to benefit diabetes research.
These are just a few of many recent examples of how social networks have quickly become a powerful yet inexpensive tool to raise money and awareness for charities, even at a time when the economy has reduced overall donations to nonprofit groups.
"The economy is terrible, there's not that much money around to share, but there are all these opportunities as long as you are authentic and you have a message that you believe in and you are passionate about," said Meaghan Edelstein, founder of Spirit Jump, a Florida-based group that sends cards and inspirational gifts to people battling cancer. It is one of the organizations that will benefit from the #BeatCancer promotion.
For that campaign, Twitter and Facebook users were asked to post that phrase as their status update during a 24-hour period starting Oct. 16. Three sponsors - eBay Inc. of San Jose, the MillerCoors Brewing Co. and nutrition chain Genesis Today - originally pledged to donate 1 cent for each post, although they ended up donating much more.
Spurred on by posts from popular Twitter celebrities like Perez Hilton and Kim Kardashian, #BeatCancer was posted 209,771 times, which Guinness proclaimed a new world record.
Meanwhile, Zynga Inc., a fast-growing San Francisco social video game company, has raised more than $490,000 this month selling virtual sweet potato plant seeds on FarmVille, a simulated farm game played by 56 million Facebook members each month.
Zynga has donated 50 percent of the nearly $1 million grossed so far from sales of "Sweet Seeds for Haiti" to non-profit organizations Fatem.org and Fonkoze.org. The funds raised have bought a day's worth of meals for 500 children for one year, said Zynga spokeswoman Shernaz Daver.
Zynga tested the concept earlier this year by selling virtual dogs and cats on YoVille, another social game that has 19.8 million monthly players. Proceeds from the total $20,000 raised went to the San Francisco SPCA.
"If you can empower people to impact the world directly, they would do it," Daver said.
Also within the past two weeks:
-- YouTube asked viewers to donate to the U.N. World Food Program for World Food Day on Oct. 16. YouTube said the "billion for a billion" promotion (for the number of videos seen daily and the estimated number of the world's people who go hungry) raised enough in one day to feed 140,000 children a school lunch.
-- Twitter teamed with Room to Read, a nonprofit group that establishes schools and libraries for children in Asia and Africa, to raise money by selling custom wines from Crushpad, another San Francisco firm.
-- Palo Alto's Facebook last week enhanced its Facebook Gift Shop so its 300 million members can buy virtual gifts that benefit nonprofit groups such as the World Wildlife Fund.
-- The makers of Haagen-Dazs ice cream will join in an online drive organized by San Francisco's TwitCause, which picks one charity a week to spotlight through Twitter messages.
Haagen-Dazs, a division of Oakland's Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, is pledging to donate $1 for every "#HelpHoneyBees" tweet sent between Nov. 5 and Nov. 11, up to $500 per day, for research at UC Davis to help stop the collapse of honeybee colonies worldwide.
The company hopes to use the Twitter campaign to raise awareness of the bee problem while simultaneously gathering information about how to use social networking for marketing.
"It's an easy thing to do, and they don't have to buy anything or send a letter to anyone," said Tonya Iles, interactive manager for Haagen-Dazs.
TwitCause.com was launched in August by San Francisco's ExperienceProject.com, an online venue where people share various stories about their lives. Experience Project founder Armen Berjikly said TwitCause was intended to channel "the emotional content and passion we were seeing on our site."
The first week, TwitCause helped raise $24,000 for the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Each week, TwitCause, which has 305,000 Twitter followers, highlights a different charity selected by its members. Those who vote on their favorite cause tend to be more passionate about it and willing to use Twitter and other social networking tools to spread the word to others who might feel the same way, Berjikly said.
However, the use of social media overall is still evolving. And for nonprofits, it has to be used creatively because people are already "over messaged" with advertising on traditional sources like television and radio, said Tamara Knechtel, managing partner at Everywhere, an Atlanta social media marketing firm.
Knechtel, also a cancer survivor, came up with the #BeatCancer idea and launched it days later. She said it succeeded because it focused on a specific cause and gave "immediate gratification" to participants.
"There's something very powerful in the lessons we learned," Knechtel said. "Now we have to see what is the next opportunity to turn this into something more powerful."
For more information on organizations mentioned in this story, go to:
-- TwitCause.com
-- SpiritJump.org
-- BeatCancerEverywhere.com
-- HelpTheHoneyBees.com
-- Fatem.org
-- Fonkoze.org
source: <a href='http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 1A8VHN.DTL' target='_blank'>http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... VHN.DTL</a>
This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle