I was lucky enough to be part of a volunteer task force, created to implement a viral campaign for MS Awareness Week, and I found it both interesting and enlightening that the focus was on using social media to spread the word.  Our discussions and meetings were filled with terms like social media, networking, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  The very things that the average computer user spends doing every day.  For anyone interested in helping to find a cure for MS (or any other cause for that matter), these tools provide a valuable way of spreading information in a fun, engaging way.

Eventually, our task force decided on a video contest for this special event.  We saw how popular YouTube videos could become and how easy it was to spread the video, the content and the message.  Many great videos were submitted and are now displayed on our MS3Things.org web site.  During this part of the process, we used many traditional means to meet, share, distribute information and collect submissions.  Email, phone conferencing, simple web pages, online forms, of course YouTube and even Google Wave all played part in creating the MS3Things.org site.

Visit the MS3Things.org Site to Vote

What Next

The next step is voting and that is where the use of social media/networking will truly come into play.  So, the question now becomes “how do we get people involved and spread the word?”  How do we get people to visit the web site and vote on the video that best promotes awareness for MS?  Here is what we have so far:

Facebook

Using Facebook was a given.  People spend more time on Facebook than any other web site in the world.  The trick here was to catch people’s attention.  How do compete against funny pictures, updates about a Farmville barn raising and Mafia wars?

• Profile Picture: I started by changing my standard profile picture.  Using the MS logo (bright orange) makes my posts stand out and I guarantee people are looking, if at least for a second.
• Status Updates: This week I changed my focus and will be posting mostly about the MS Awareness week event.
• Photos: I haven’t done it yet, but I will be posting some photos from the MS Society web site to catch the eye.
• Videos: I could post some of the actual contest videos, but that would keep people from visiting the voting site.  Maybe a screen shot of the videos will do the trick.
  

Using Facebook to Spread Awareness

Twitter

Twitter will be a little more tricky.  Frequency is the only real key I can think of.  I can also change my profile picture there for the week.  As far as message content, here were a few suggestions that we used when trying to get video submissions.  I can change them up slightly for the voting portion.

• Musketeers, wise men and tenors: Good things come in threes.  Check out www.MS3Things.org for your chance to raise awareness and win (and that’s a good thing).
• It takes just three little things to be the next video sensation.  Have you got what it takes?  Check out www.MS3Things.org and show us what you’ve got.

Blog

Of course, this blog will serve as a bit of advertising for our cause and the event.  I plan on posting it on several blogging sites and asking for feedback and ideas.

Your Help

Have you got any ideas?  We need to spread the word and you might have a unique idea that we didn’t think of.  Of course, we don’t have unlimited resources or time, so we need quick and easy ways to promote MS Awareness week.  Please comment below if you have any ideas at all.  Thanks in advance for your help.

Computers have really changed since the days of the apple IIe.  No longer are they giant beige boxes with floppy disc drives.  Today, computers come in all shapes and sizes and it seems like you can’t turn on a device without connecting it to the internet.  Phones, cameras and even game systems make it possible for anyone with the ability to punch a button to post material to sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr…. the list goes on and on.  Yet, there are no warnings of the potential dangers associated with your behavior behind that keyboard and mouse.  So how do we educate the children and teens of today to prepare themselves for the world ahead?

Education is key!  This slogan is used for every movement under the sun, from drug use to sexually transmitted diseases.  Why, because it is true and it helps.  So how do we educate and inform?  My opinion is that we use the very medium in question (social networking) to convey the message.  Kids are drawn to televisions and computers.  Just look at Sesame Street, which has been a great educational tool for decades.  So how about a video?

One of my very favorite companies is CommonCraft.  They design educational videos for just about any topic in the world, but seem to focus on computers, software and technology.  According to their motto their “product is explanation” and they do a fantastic job as just that.  They explain things in using short, easy to understand videos and it just so happens that they have a video titled “Protecting Reputations Online in Plain English.”   The video is only available from their web site currently, but we have provided the link below:

http://www.commoncraft.com/protecting-reputations-video

“Aimed at young or inexperienced Web users, this video explains the long term risks of sharing inappropriate information online.”  The video is not free for distribution, but CommonCraft does offer licensing options for individuals and sites.  Wouldn’t this make a great tool for a classroom?

Although this movement was originated in Europe, and now encompasses 500 events in 60 countries all over the world, it doesn’t seem to have caught on in the US. I’m not sure why, but I know that this is something we definitely need to start teaching our children, teens and well…. everyone.  New technologies, like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, cell phone cameras, Flip video cameras, etc. have turned us all into publishers of information.  Thanks to these technologies, a photo or video can be taken, posted and shared to hundreds, even thousands of people, in minutes.  More recent technologies, like “tagging,” make it even easier to find and share photos of friends and family.

As we mentioned in our Social Media Credit Score articles, these photos and videos might remain posted for the duration of one’s life.  How will this media affect the life of a young man or woman as they attend college, search for a job/career, date, etc?  Could a photo or video, taken by a friend at a party, have an impact on a young man years later?  Just look at the lives of those who have already been affected, like Michael Phelps.  He lost the respect of others, endorsements, time, and millions of dollars because of one photo.

Tips

• Use the privacy settings offered by social networking services!

• Select friends online that you can trust!

• Publish your own photos after thinking carefully about the potential consequences!

• Don’t publish pictures of your friends without their permission!

Resources

Official Web Site of Safer Internet Day 2010

List of all events planned across the world (PDF) – sadly, there were no events in the US mentioned

Use this article, and the rest of the day, to make friends and family aware of this great movement.  Share the information on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or in any other venue that you think it might be helpful.  Together, we can educate those who are not aware of the consequences of their actions.