Social Media For A Good Cause, Is It Possible?

By Amaya Marichal

We’ve all witness how social media is excellent for business. It helps build a brand, drives traffic and awareness, creates communities, allows you to know what’s been said about your products, and helps you sale more.

You can also get direct feedback from your clients and get some ideas for a new launching. And the best part is that you can do all that without having to spend millions of dollars.

However, what we’ve also seen is social media bringing together people to give their time (and money) to important causes on local and global levels. By using the sites we like (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Tumblr, YouTube) we could get involved by publishing good causes and actually doing something good.

I’ve seen many stories about people trying to raise funds. The cause? You name it. There are thousands of them. But let me tell you my story…

I’ve got cancer. I thought I had finished with it but it came back stronger. I have cancer in the pelvis, femurs, ribs, spine, sternum, sacrum and lungs.

And here’s what surprises me: At the very minute I wrote in Twitter about my problem, friends and strangers started to organize several events to raise funds to help me pay my treatment. It was amazing! I just couldn’t believe it. Everybody was helping: from selling cookies and t-shirts to planning parties.

The truth is that most of the people who are helping me knew about my cancer through social media and I’m very thankful. I’ve received many messages from people I don’t even know telling me their own stories, giving me advice or just saying they are there for me.

Maybe my friends could have done the same thing without social media, but with the help from online communities this process was easier, and the results were nearly instantaneous.

I guess my story illustrates the power that a small group of individuals and their networks can have to instantly and effectively change the life of a single individual in need.