Using Social Media to Beat Cancer
We’ve been seeing a lot of campaigns to promote breast cancer awareness this month, but here’s a fairly new one . . . #beatcancer. Today, the hashtag has hit the top trends on Twitter, with everyone tweeting about cancer, breast cancer being the obvious focal point for some.
The campaign was instigated by Beat Cancer Everywhere, a site that works to raise money for breast cancer research. They intend to set a Guiness World Record for the distribution of the largest mass message through social media within 24 hours. At the time of this writing there are still just over 12 hours left in the campaign and they have already hit 101,020 mentions.
For each mention of the hashtag, eBay/PayPal and MillerCoors will donate one cent to breast cancer research. People can tweet it, add it to their Facebook status, or blog about it . . . it all counts. And it would seem that thousands of people are more than willing to be part of this impressive, hopefully record breaking social media blast!
Even if you don’t actually want to participate in the tweeting, you can still donate. The Beat Cancer Everywhere website has four cancer foundations that you can donate directly to. Each one is dedicated to a specific area of cancer and allow visitors to the site to donate through Paypal. Here are the foundations listed as beneficiaries (you can see how much has been directly donated above each one on the Beat Cancer site).
Stand Up to Cancer is an organization dedicated to increasing the rapidity with which new groundbreaking treatments are tested so more people can be saved faster.
Bright Pink supports young women who are high risk for ovarian and breast cancer. They also help educate women on these diseases.
Alex’s Lemonade Stand helps promote the raising of funds for childhood cancer research and awareness. They encourage people, kids in particular, to host their own lemonade stands to raise money for the cause.
Spirit Jump offers hope and comfort to anyone battling cancer, whether man, woman or child.
Of these four organizations, Alex’s Lemonade stand seems to be a clear leader in popularity with nearly twice as much money donated than any of the other three charities.
While social media has been used extensively to promote disease awareness and encourage fundraising, this time we’re seeing it on a whole new level. It will be interesting to see just how it plays out and whether or not Beat Cancer Everywhere will actually make their world record by the deadline.
