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Amazing Graciousness
By Justin Goldsborough | November 2nd, 2009
Do you remember the first time you were amazed by the people you’ve met via social media?
I’m not talking about the first time you saw bloggers, journalists and PR professionals come together to hash things out during #journchat (although @prsarahevans‘ brainchild has done a lot for all of us). Or the first time you realized you could bring your customer service issue to a company via their Facebook fan page or Twitter handle…and they would actually listen and talk back (Thanks, @comcastcares).
Even though those are great examples of people who’ve made social media what it is today, and I can think of several others, I was surprised that when I started thinking about the answer to my own question, a specific set of moments came to mind.
The first one involved a blogger you may know — Dave Armano (@Armano). I vividly remember the day I logged onto Tweetdeck last January and saw these tweets:
“Daniela’s family” was Daniela and her three kids, who left their home and everything they had to get away from an abusive husband/father. Dave told her story in the post from his tweet above:
With Evelyn, her youngest having Down’s Syndrome and Daniela herself being a Romanian immigrant with very little family support she literally has no one to turn to. Except us (all of us).
The Armano’s took the family in and Dave asked his readers to help out. What followed is the stuff storybook endings are made of. Dave hoped to raise $5,000 in a month. Instead his blog community came up with almost $17,000, exceeding the goal by 337 percent! The social media “help gene” on display in full force.
About the same time I met Danny Brown (@dannybrown). If you’ve met Danny before you know all the work he does to bring awareness to causes and people. He’s truly one-of-a-kind, as evidenced by #12for12k, his year-long attempt to “change the world through social media” by helping those less fortunate.
The concept is rather simple –raise $12,000 for 12 charities highlighting one cause each month of the year. But the work that goes in to organizing an initiative like this is far from easy, at least for one person. However, thanks to social media, Danny has hardly been alone in his efforts.
Search #12for12k on Twitter and you’ll see dozens of avatars promoting the cause. Check out the 12for12k Web site and you’ll see several blog partners supporting it. Danny even has a team of PR volunteers who donate their time and services free of charge to share the 12for12k story and organize events like tweet-a-thons to raise money for the different charities such as Stop the Silence, UNICEF and War Child.
What’s amazing to me about #12for12k is while it obviously started as an idea Danny himself had to help others, thanks to social media the effort has grown into a community of people — many who I’m guessing have never met in person — working together because they believe in a cause and want to help those less fortunate.
Social media has changed the world for many of us, at least when it comes to how we communicate. But there is something bigger going on out there. And people like Dave and Danny are two of the amazing people leading the charge to “change the world” through social media.
How have you seen social media put to work in amazing ways?
National Blog Posting Month 30 Causes in 30 Days
- Apartment Fund for Daniela’s Family (@davearmano)
- 12for12k (@dannybrown)
November 3rd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post
This post was mentioned on Twitter by markvanbaale: How have you seen social media put to work in amazing ways? Read a few stories on @JGoldborough’s blog: http://bit.ly/3eDKTF
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:31 pm
And that wonderful community includes you, my friend - thank you for all YOU do, it’s truly appreciated
November 4th, 2009 at 9:29 am
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