Saturday, September 11, 2010

Using Social Media to AbolishCancer

What an awesome day.

That’s really all I can say as it relates to Friday, September 10 when Twitter, Facebook and a national TV audience were buzzing to raise $ & awareness to abolish cancer.

The @SU2C event last night was inspiring, moving and a wonderful watch. Couple that with the big push on Facebook for @Oprah to do a show on #ChildhoodCancer and our own Twitterthon with @delprado, @DinaManzo and @ProjectLadyBug, a perfect storm was created.

Our Twitterthon with @Delprado was amazing. John Gallagher, the CEO of Mapa Imports, (@Delprado) once again opened up his heart and his wallet by being our sponsor again. Join was willing to donate up to $10,000 for the day. This was John’s 5th sponsorship of @abolishcancer and has contributed a total of $20,133 for various cancer charities. It’s even more amazing that John has his own charity (click here http://www.mapaimports.com/charity.html) that he supports on a regular basis with his company. John, and @delprado, epitomize the notion of social responsibility and “giving back”.

Our cancer charity for the day was @ProjectLadyBug, created by former Housewives star Dina Manzo. Dina created this organization to support children and families of kids who have severe illnesses. It’s a create cause and we applaud Dina for doing so much to help children. http://www.projectladybug.org/

It was a crazy day of Tweeting that started at 6a.m. eastern time (U.S.) and ended around midnight. @abolishcancer had 20,520 followers at the start of the day and by the time the midnight bell rang, we had 10,000 more- 30,500+ which meant @delprado would donate $10,000 to the ladybug fund.

While the money is quite impressive, the amount of tweeting that occurred was unbelievable. Hundreds of people sent thousands of tweets encouraging a “follow” of @abolishcancer throughout the entire day. We were so inspired to see people we don’t even know relentlessly “pound the pavement” to get more followers. This relentless pursuit landed many retweets and follows from influential people such as @DeniseRichards, @BillytheKid, @JillZarin, @SophiaBush, @NancySinatra, @TodayShow, @JessicaJoy, @OfficialKimora, @Teresa_Giudice, @JohnnyMarines, @TheStevenWeber, @AubreyODay and many, many, many more.

It was truly a viral explosion on Twitter. We are so honored and proud to be part of the platform that raises this awareness with the absolute intention of eliminating cancer once and for all.

Lastly, we must put a plug in for our quest to raise awareness on a higher platform by getting @Oprah to do a show on #ChildhoodCancer. There is a swell of support on Facebook, over 11,000 strong in just one week, to get Oprah to see how important this is for our children and our future. We highly encourage you to click on the Facebook page http://bit.ly/d2Byb0 and “like” to join the cause.

Once again, so many thanks to give out for yesterday with the understanding that we are NOT done yet. We will continue to fight until one day our Twitter account will be shut down and we will all rejoice in the abolishing of cancer. Boy what a party that will be.

Over $27,500 raised so far on @abolishcancer ALL BY TWEETING. Using social media with a purpose- to connect a global community of cancer fighters.

If not us then who, if not now then when?

---Darah

bonham.darah@gmail.com

No comments:

Post a Comment