Post by danc5311 on Oct 8, 2014 23:55:00 GMT -5
The American Red Cross is a non-profit organizations that currently has approximately 97 million members involved in order to help the overall health and happiness of the human race. This organization was founded in 1919 and is still growing to this day. I chose the American Red Cross because of their growing presence across social media and continued success.
While searching for the articles to do this assignment I found one from 2010 that stated that the American Red Cross has 202,000 likes on Facebook. At this point the Red Cross was putting a stronger emphasis on their use of social media and was just beginning to make it an important aspect of the fundraising process. They began to use social media in 2006 by using Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, and blogs shortly after the Chile and Haiti earthquakes. They believed that after these terrible disasters it would benefit the cause to spread the information as quickly as possible. Social media was their tool in which to do this. They created a procedure to get pictures of disaster struck areas and update people with information via the American Red Cross Facebook page.
The decision to play a larger part through social media was also inspired by the successful text message campaign the Red Cross used after the Haiti earthquake. People were able to text message donations of $10 or $5, that would be added to their monthly bill, and it would subsequently be given to a charity that provided relief in Haiti. This campaign spread throughout social media and especially on Facebook. In only three days the red cross was about to raise $8 million dollars and although it is not clear how much of this can be attributed to its discussion caused on Facebook it can be seen that it did play a role.
After doing some research through articles I decided to actually look at the Red Cross Facebook page and realized that they now have over 644,000 likes. Posts are updated very frequently with a new one popping up about every day or two. On it is much of what you would expect from a non-profit organization. There are pictures of volunteers and people receiving relief as well as ways in which to donate, different relief efforts, and updates on certain events. They used a smart strategy in order to raise more donations. The Red Cross used their good relations they have with the public to raise awareness for Haiti and in turn get people to visit their Facebook page. Their public relations strength was utilized to make this possible.
www.insidefacebook.com/2010/08/24/facebook-red-cross-fundraising-disaster-relief/
tcapushnpull.com/online-public-relations/red-cross-turns-twitter-mistake-into-social-media-success/
While searching for the articles to do this assignment I found one from 2010 that stated that the American Red Cross has 202,000 likes on Facebook. At this point the Red Cross was putting a stronger emphasis on their use of social media and was just beginning to make it an important aspect of the fundraising process. They began to use social media in 2006 by using Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, and blogs shortly after the Chile and Haiti earthquakes. They believed that after these terrible disasters it would benefit the cause to spread the information as quickly as possible. Social media was their tool in which to do this. They created a procedure to get pictures of disaster struck areas and update people with information via the American Red Cross Facebook page.
The decision to play a larger part through social media was also inspired by the successful text message campaign the Red Cross used after the Haiti earthquake. People were able to text message donations of $10 or $5, that would be added to their monthly bill, and it would subsequently be given to a charity that provided relief in Haiti. This campaign spread throughout social media and especially on Facebook. In only three days the red cross was about to raise $8 million dollars and although it is not clear how much of this can be attributed to its discussion caused on Facebook it can be seen that it did play a role.
After doing some research through articles I decided to actually look at the Red Cross Facebook page and realized that they now have over 644,000 likes. Posts are updated very frequently with a new one popping up about every day or two. On it is much of what you would expect from a non-profit organization. There are pictures of volunteers and people receiving relief as well as ways in which to donate, different relief efforts, and updates on certain events. They used a smart strategy in order to raise more donations. The Red Cross used their good relations they have with the public to raise awareness for Haiti and in turn get people to visit their Facebook page. Their public relations strength was utilized to make this possible.
www.insidefacebook.com/2010/08/24/facebook-red-cross-fundraising-disaster-relief/
tcapushnpull.com/online-public-relations/red-cross-turns-twitter-mistake-into-social-media-success/