Do Good with Your Social Media Marketing

This week’s exciting news that Facebook was opening up a portion of its platform to fund and operate an organ donor program took many by surprise and is yielding almost immediate results. The San Jose Mercury News reported that in California alone, organ donor organizations were seeing a large increase in organ donor registrations. It wrote:

“Facebook announced the organ donor update to Facebook on “Good Morning America” Tuesday, allowing people to mark the date they became a registered donor on their Facebook Timeline, and offering a link to organizations such as Donate Life California where people who are not already donors can sign up.”

With its 900 million or so users worldwide, Facebook is doing the right thing by adopting more socially conscious policies in its corporate makeup. It’s good from a user standpoint, a PR point of view and a goodwill gesture. The announcement comes just days ahead of its IPO roadshow, starting next week, with a planned IPO on May 18th.

In its quest to do good and echo Google’s oft-repeated informal corporate mantra “Don’t Be Evil”, Facebook is using its social media platform to bring about a change in the way humans interact, and re-adjust the view of what social media can do. It’s not just about sharing cat videos, kiddies.

Mint Social has done a lot of work behind the scenes to help promote one of our favorite charities. The Society of St. Vincent De Paul is a national charity with its largest chapter in Phoenix, Arizona, designed to aid in helping the homeless and working poor in various areas around the world. We’ve worked with their team to help build its online awareness with volunteers and donors, and share their message where it will be heard more clearly. In our own small way, we’re trying to raise that human level of social media awareness that Facebook really exemplified this week.

How CAN you shift your own social media marketing to do good? Many of us already try to do that, helping friends with our information or insights we share by passing along worthy links, and helping clients with tips for business. But are there bigger aims, bigger goals you can shoot for?

Think about doing good with your social media this week. Help an organization, promote a cause, foster a relationship. Rise above the noise and make a difference. If you need help in planning a campaign, contact us at Mint Social. We’d be happy to help you chart a course.