It seems like a lot of what we’ve heard over the past six months about social media pertains to Facebook. Will more big companies halt their Facebook advertising? Are they handling privacy well enough? Is their stock over-valued? Is Mark Zuckerberg a capable CEO? With Facebook surrounded by many questions, it’s always nice to shift your focus away from the negatives and toward the positives of social media.
On July 20, James Holmes went on a shooting spree in a Aurora, Colorado movie theater that resulted in 12 deaths. It was a terrible tragedy that shook our entire country. On top of the 12 deaths there were 58 injured. Unfortunately, some of these people do not have health insurance.
One such victim, Farrah, has a donation page online, and as of last Thursday morning she had reached only $37K of the likely $100K she needed to raise for her hospital stay, multiple surgeries, recovery, etc. Then the story of this young girl was posted on The Chive.
If you’re not familiar with The Chive, it is a very popular website (10 million unique visitors per month) that posts articles that usually involve funny photos & videos or scantily clad women. However, in this case, they posted the story of this young girl and the money that she needed to raise.
Within one hour donations totaled $74K, and in an hour and a half the donations surpassed $100K! By the end of the day there was over $140K total donations, and $100K can be directly related to The Chive posting this story and encouraging people to donate. If you’d like to donate to Farrah, click here.
This is the real power of social media. Bringing people together to help someone in need. If you have any similar stories about a cause or charity that has benefited from the word-of-mouth visibility of social media, we’d love to hear about it.
About The Author: Tom Sullivan is the senior account executive at Turbo Social Media. He has managed accounts for a wide variety of businesses, from small “Mom and Pop” businesses to multi-million dollar corporations. His success in business stems from his entrepreneurial drive and his desire to do “whatever it takes” for his clients to be successful.
Tom received his BA in Business Management Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is a former collegiate rugby player and he enjoys playing softball, golfing, camping, and snowboarding in his spare time. 
