Charity and social networks

Have you ever donated money to charity? Have you ever done it  through social networks?

Earlier in my blog  I viewed  the topic of  using social networks for businesses, today I want to draw your attention to a delicate issue - charity.

 

 

The  reality is  that to the child, who needs  an urgent surgery, or  poor people who needs food  we need to collect money, almost by the whole world. In this case, social networks help a lot. 

You can often see posts with calls for help on their pages. The purpose of charitable organizations in social networks is to bring people together in order to help those who find themselves in a difficult situation, because life has presented them not with a pleasant surprise. All independent volunteers and charitable foundations are active in social networks. On their pages they report about the following:

• How the work plan has been implemented 
•What kind of events were held recently, and other information.

Basically, they submit information about the help provided.

  

 

 

 

 

  

But there are more charity ways  online.

Everyone remembers  Ice Bucket Challenge charity flash mob that blew up the Internet. 

Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world poured ice water itself, the whole process was recoded on camera and then uploaded to the Internet calling others friends to do the same. This way they tried to draw the world's attention to ALS, which is a terminal illness. Driven by the viral effect and the participation of Hollywood stars and Silicon Valley, donations have reached almost 80 million dollars during the first few weeks. Number of references of this flash mob on Twitter is correlated with the amount of donations made to the ALS fund. Ice Bucket Challenge reached its highest when Justin Timberlake did it. A few days later, Mark Zuckerberg did it too and started a chain reaction that lasted for a few days.

 

Another example

 Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder has launched a new project  in  UK  a social network "TPO". The purpose of the project is to help people to make donations to charities and elsewhere they want to.

As Jimmy Wales noted in an interview with Business Insider «It looks more  like Twitter, than Facebook». Here you can see how  the interface page  like at the  example of his profile. 

 

On TPO, as on any other social network, you can send personal statuses, follow your friends, send private messages, create groups, but besides that TPO gives an opportunity to send money directly to a particular fund or charity. However, unlike other well-known similar projects, such as Kickstarter, TPO does not have any transaction fees.

And, of course, I really like the next example

The first charitable social network in Russia. 

 The open version of an  application, allowing users  to donate money to charities through posting photos,  is now  available in AppStore. The project  called Mainpeople  has been  tested for three months. It is a charitable social network, that operates on the principle of Instagram: users can post pictures, like and comment on their  friends' post.

The publication of each new picture is a donation of 1$ and the account’s owner chooses the charitable foundation the money goes to. The mechanism is that if other users like the picture, they click «I'm with you» and thus  donate $ 1 to the selected organization. The number of clicks per person is unlimited and the amount of donations can  increase endlessly.

"We believe that you don't need to be rich and famous to do good. You also don't need to focus on other people's problems and get to the heart of their situations every day of your life. There are people who do it professionally. We can help them doing our daily routines. For example, uploading photos of a trip or discussing today's traffic", the creators of the project say

 

And I want us to say:

Let us think not only about business!

Let us try to make the time spent on social    networks benefit the world we live in!

And the world will become a little kinder!

 

As corny as it may sound....

    

 

 

 

 

 

Social Network as Currency or hotel’s know-how in energizing its customers

 

  Stockholm has a reputation of having a costly and heavy in demand accommodation issue. But what if I would tell you that there is a way to live for free in one of the best hotels of Stockholm
 

 

 

 

 

  We will come back to Stockholm a little bit later.

 

   Do you remember a few years back when Jimmy Kimmel started encouraging  people to delete their surplus Facebook friends? Because, let's face it, none of those 3,567 people you 'friended' are actually your friends.

 

 

 Turns out, doing that might have cost you a pretty cool freebie.

  It's a good time to be a popular person on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, as hotels have started to offer 'freebies' in exchange for recognition on social media.

 

  After I've read Groundswell , I realized that I want to find out how hotels energize their customers.

  Hotels are opening up to the commercial opportunities when tourists post rave reviews on social media channels, so thousands of hotels' followers can see them, and share their experience with their friends.

  Many hotels are more than willing to offer healthy perks and discounts, so long as payment is offered in the form of positive reviews online, plenty of companies are looking to reward users and gain publicity for their brands.

  Brands do make offers to their customers, creating additional value for them and motivating them for a long-term relationship relying on "[...] the power of word of mouth by connection with, and turning on, your most committed customers". (131 Groundswell).

  Here is an example of an outstanding using of energizing method in a hotel.

  As the  Mirror  says, a hotel in Sweden is offering discounted accommodation to those with a high number of Facebook friends and Instagram followers.

  The Nordic Light Hotel in Stockholm launched a 'Social Network as Currency' promotion giving travelers anywhere from 10 per cent off the price of a room to a free one-night stay
that usually costs £230.

Anyone with 100,000 followers on Instagram, 2,000 private Facebook friends or 100,000 on a fan page, will be gifted seven nights per year at the hotel free.

 

  The catch is that, in return, the hotel expects social media publicity. As a visitor, you must share a post when making the reservation, then again at check-in and one at check-out. The post must mention the hotel's website and Facebook page.

  More examples? 

 The 'Instagram hotel' 

The unique boutique 1888 Hotel in Sydney, Australia encourages guests to take photographs of the furniture, rooms and views and post them on Instagram.Instagram users with at least 30,000 followers are eligible to receive a free one-night stay. Those who have fewer followers can share their snaps of the hotel on Instagram for a chance to win a free night.

Of course, there is a 'Twitter hotel' too.

  The Sol Wave House hotel in Mallorca has Twitter-themed rooms decked out in blue and white, iconic color scheme. When guests check-in they are given access to an exclusive Twitter app, only available on the hotel's wifi.

    Guests at Sol Wave can then tweet each other, share photos, send private messages, see who's online using the #SocialWavetag.

    Anyone who stays in the suite gets 20 per cent discount on all bars and restaurants, VIP hammocks and customized mini bars.

 

  It is clear that all of these are the benefits for the customers. What about the benefits for the hotels?

 

  You can see the result of Nordic Light Hotel's promotion  on the picture bellow.

    In general, consumers  fulfill the role of  advertising media. They are willing to recommend the brand in social networks and among their friends (“power of word of mouth” (131 Groundswell), spread the words about offers and engage other consumers in the communication.
   All this is great! But then I thought, what about the future? At what point does social media as currency will stop being a bonus and become a necessity? Will my loaf of bread one day cost me more if I don't have 50,000 followers? What do you think about it?

 

The story about the cat or a tale about how to make your owner famous and rich through social network

 

  I know Victoria Virta personally. Everyone in Russia, who is interested in promoting their company using SMM, is familiar with her name as a co-owner of the SMM studio Funaction.

  Victoria has been promoting a variety of companies on social networks for a long time, but  she became well-known thanks to her cat Nicky.

 

 

He was the very character that made her famous and wealthy. And now, with her work-shop "How to make SMM delicious and squeeze the juices from social networks", she holds work-shops allover Russia.

  When Victoria started to promote Nicky on Instagram, she noticed that, although, some subscribers have started to complain about the excess of cat photos on their timeline, in fact, all of her performances as a speaker, even during business meetings, always end up with a discussion of her cat Nicky.

        How it started.

  Victoria Virta bought Nicky at a pet store three years ago. She noticed him when he was sitting in his favorite human like position. The animal quickly settled into his new home, and besides the talent to sit like a human, and even to fall asleep in this position, he has mastered another exercise - get up on his hind paws. He has unique wealth of facial expressions. All emotions are reflected on his face, which is unusual for cats and is more common for dogs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fame.

“One day a completely crazy idea arose in my head - to create the most popular cat of the Runet (Russian Internet).  I took my cat Nicky as a prototype and made an Instagram account for him. It was just an experiment, however, competent work with the content did the job: in a week 300 people were following @FamousNiki. Suddenly we discovered that people like his pictures, they began to subscribe to Nicky's account," says Victoria.  "A year ago, British newspaper Daily Mail wrote about us , as well as Daily Mirror , Klonblog  and others. Since then, a barrage of publications began, a TV show and world fame," she added.

Creating a celebrity.

 Then we made sure we have constant support of cat's  account, he got his own secretary and different brands began to turn to him for advertising. Last year @FamousNiki advertised Microsoft products and Nespresso  on Instagram, this year he became the face of online accounting company.

 

Now @FamousNiki has 130,000 Instagram followers and 30,000 Facebook friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Cat has become a brand, and his accounts are now media assets of FunAction studio. Nicky gets payed for advertisements. Besides that Victoria makes T-shirts and sweatshirts with his image for sale.

  Viktoria's tips: Observe your pet, maybe it can do something interesting. If it can not do anything at all then we need to think what to do with it. For example, you can create comics with a cat being the main character. And, most importantly, content should invite positive emotions and make people laugh. Then you need to select a channel for the content: Instagram, Facebook, and so on.

  Each social network has its own technology of getting to the top, and  it is necessary for you to study it. For example, Nicky's goal on Instagram is to reach the audience of a million people. When you start getting a lot of followers and continue getting new ones, you can start earning money.

  In November, Victoria will launch new promo-page for Nicky and next year she plans to launch a mobile game and two books about her pet for kids and adults. "Now my goal is to make the brand of Russian cat famous all over the world ," says Viktoria.

  In her workshop Viktoria gives the example of Nikki's promotion and pays special attention   on getting to know the target audience for each specific social network.   Interesting, but I caught myself thinking how much Victoria's idea, that I heard at her last seminar, is similar to the ideas of the groundswell, into which I am gladly dipping today. As the authors of the Groundswell say,  there is no going back (75 Groundswell).   

You have to tap the groundswell and you will see that SMM works! But you need to deal with it properly.

 

PS: I have already written to Victoria and  recommended her to read Groundswell book.

Have you ever had an ideas of promoting your pets through Internet? And what do think about it?