Hey everyone! Welcome back to my blog. Hope everyone had a great weekend and for you that are Bills Fans….my heart breaks with out #camedowntoacointoss. Just like how people enjoy watching their favorite sports teams and routing for them, people also have causes that are close to their heart and make us want to do stuff to help these causes. That’s why we are eager to share cyberactivism in order to build our networked community and get people to join. People in general like to do the right thing, and if the request is a simple ask to push a like button or share a simple status, most people don’t mind doing so. For example, how many have seen on their Facebook pages from their friends asking to donate or contribute to this charity or that organization, but how many of us actually participate or do anything with those request from our friends and family? Probably not many of you right? That’s why the use of cyberactivism is a great way to spread a cause quickly and social media practitioners want to be sure that these media messages encourage behavior change and get people to participate.
October Breast Cancer Awareness month
So the real questions is does this method of cyberactisim really work? Well the answer to that is yes!!! Each October, we celebrate National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Like many people in the world, most of us know someone who has had or even ourselves have battled breast cancer. Since most people know someone that has had breast cancer, most individuals don’t mind taking the time and participating and sharing post on their social media pages. By individuals doing this it helps spread awareness of their cause.
Now in order to spread the cause and get people to pay attention and get it to catch on, you have to be creative and do something that makes people want to do it and at the same time make people wonder what it means as well. Each year Breast cancer awareness month creates viral memes to help spread the message. The one year they did a private message asking females to change their Facebook Status to the location where they like to put their purse. Some of these status updates read things like “I like it on the floor”, I like it on the counter”, and ” I like it behind the couch”. Of course without knowing what these status mean or just because it’s fun these statuses made this meme get very sexualized, which made more people pay attention and made it fun for more and more people to post to leave people wondering who didn’t know (aka men).
But wait it couldn’t stop there. No way it was getting to fun to keep the men guessing. So they asked for yet another post for women to put on their Facebook. This time they wanted them to put how long it takes to do their hair followed by inches. This message because it was just fun (I myself participated in it) was done so many times that it actually made NATIONAL NEWS!! SAY WHAT!!! Each update that was done reminded everyone why we’re doing this and help raise awareness. The biggest instructions was DO NOT TELL THE BOYS and copy and paste. Cause why would we tell them it makes it more fun for the men in our lives to ask us what the heck was your status about and not tell them haha!! But the best part about all this was that each year the females try to out do themselves and make a bigger fuss then they did the year before to raise awareness.
Is it really working?
Now while these memes are fun and get many people to jump on bored with them, are they really working? Now, while people who participated in these fun message fell good about what they did by spreading breast cancer awareness, it raises a question whether cyberactivism is actually activism at all and are these sexual dirty messages really going to mobile real-life action to help cure breast cancer or is it just something fun to get people talking?
Now after each one of these fun awareness cyberactiism, Susan G Komen Foundation reported an increase in interest and donations that followed the popular viral memes. However….since these memes are going around during the opening days of Breast Awareness months, its hard to link the cause and these memes to the donations and if they actually are the reason people donated more. Now while it was a successful, some people thought that sexualizing breast cancer, was wrong and problematic, while others wished there was a link to additional breast cancer materials or donation options, instead of the top secret private messages that people were getting.
Problem with these campaigns
Again, while these are fun and it’s fun to keep the men guessing, the problem with these types of diffusion centric campaigns is that they aren’t really linked up to real life action. Meaning, people are willing to put their efforts into a vague Facebook status instead of actually using stuff that would be more useful towards the cause. For example, the Centers of Disease control states that “one of the biggest misunderstandings is that women are the only ones who get breast cancer. This is however false, because 2000 men were diagnosed and over 400 men died from breast cancer in the United States in 2012. Some people think that its counter intuitive to brand awareness campaigns with color pink or even go as far as purposefully keep awareness messages out of the hands of the males, like the where do you put it and how long and inches. These messages were meant to confuse men and not bring awareness to them as well.
Before we create
So when it comes time to create a social media mobilization, it is important to ask yourself whether lack of awareness is the bigger challenge in the cause. In most cases the biggest challenge is that people don’t know that you exist, or are not aware of the services. Most cases, lack of awareness is a huge issue.
Regardless, the breast cancer campaigns do little to actually spread information regarding information regarding the initiatives goals, even though each one of these viral campaigns put great effort into disseminating prevention and self-check information to the general public. In general every organization would benefit more from messages that could be tied to real life vs fun memes. Some of these messages could include volunteering, donating money, signing a petition, or even writing a letter (yes typing or hand written). Most of the time these can be accomplished with just a click of a button. Think about it, if you spent the afternoon helping out at a chemotherapy treatment center for men or women who have breast cancer and posting on your social media pictures and how your experience was. Wouldn’t this type of post be more powerful and spread the cause better than these top secret Facebook posts about our bra color? This is especially true for not only breast cancer survivors, but any cause. If you use more action oriented mobilization approaches, the message that you are trying to transform to your audience will make it so you are able to make it more interesting, knowledgeable, and get people vested in your cause.
Lets Sum this up!!!
Stop and think a second, what were some of your most influential moments in your life, how did these experiences shaped the person you are today and what stories do you get to tell over and over again. Chances are these experiences are things that really happened in your life land not things that happened on tv or something you found on a website. So if your goal as a social media marketer is to have a product or service become an intricate part of our lives you have to be able to provide opportunities for your followers and customers to experience this themselves.
Lastly, in order to utilize social media to prompt users to gain experience with your product, you must also use it as a space to create and share. UGC is critical to the transformation of users into message advocates. By doing this message diffusion allows your users to comply with a request. People like to feel a part of something and be able to give their feedback and discuss, so by giving the community a space to ask questions or post feedback will allow users to willingly and permanently have a voice in your campaign or cause.
Now that we understand the most important functions of social media, it is time to take what we learned and turn our attention to the users and messages that are involved. How was social media transformed audiences into active users for behavior change? How does social media encourage more active engagement than traditional media? And what tools can help generate user participation? These are things that we have to think of when we are thinking about creating a cause and getting people to participate and spreading the right life action lessons.
Lexington Co-op 