Over the last several days, my Twitter has flooded with people asking me to help them vote up their worthwhile charity on the Chase Community Giving campaign project on Facebook. In every case, the charity is something that deserves support (at least the ones I’ve seen). In every case, they’re great people doing worthwhile things.
The problems with using social channels heavily for things like vote-raising events like this is that it floods one’s channel with that kind of promotion. That’s problem 1.
The secondary problem is that if you’re someone with a larger following, you have to manage how many of these competitions you’re going to promote, because one begets another begets misgivings about which charities one supports and which charities one doesn’t.
By pushing a heavy campaign through something like Twitter to get votes for one’s Facebook, there’s a problem with muddying that particular stream. Everyone thinks “it’s just one tweet,” but they don’t see the other side of all the requests, and/or the companies pushing these types of vote-grabbing campaigns don’t realize the digital littering this kind of method gets.
I wish every vote cost $5, and that the $5 went into a pool for the winners. Hell, I wish every tweet requesting votes came with some kind of donation aspect to it. Then we’d raise money on the way to raising money.
I love using social media for nonprofit work. I do it all the time. But I try to be very responsible in how I use my channels and I try not to create digital litter campaigns. I’ve learned from past experiences that no one appreciates the fallout.
Thoughts? Disagreements?
Find a sponsor for your web site. Get paid for your great content. shareasale.com.
Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR.
Cleaning out my in box and saw your reply. Definitely not worth pissing off the community. That was the point of my comment — or at lest that’s what I was trying to convey. It’s always a balancing act with these things. You need to pick the right ones, engage thoughtfully but somewhat aggressively (after all you want to win right?)
Like I said, when I look at our twitter stream I want to see engagement, conversation and information sharing — links, lots of links — and mostly not to our own content. We want to prove ourselves as a resource for the environmental community and if people like us, they’ll come to our site and join us.
Facebook is a different animal altogether. There we’re having discussions with members, supporters, and even some detractors/skeptics. We’re posting content that exemplifies what the Conservancy does, sparking conversations and answering questions and concerns and engaging in debate.
With both of these channels, fundraising is not a primary goal (although we have a facebook causes section for people who do want to engage in that way). The goal is to engage, listen and share. To help people build an affinity with the Conservancy that we can then, hopefully, cultivate into a donor relationship.