Conviction, a goal, and a lesson in community.
A little something isn’t always little.
The woman to the left is a Realtor® from Delaware (which by the way, I have a terrible tendency to spell Del-E-ware). Her name is Maya and I know her through Twitter and some common acquaintances and friends. I know a lot of agents across the country and occasionally, I really get to know them. Maya is one of them. Over the course of the last few weeks, Maya was on a quest. Maya’s the kind of person that tweets while she sleeps, when on the phone with two bags of groceries as she fumbles for her keys, and while scuba diving along the Great Barrier Reef (I made that last one up). Recently, Maya went silent on Twitter.
The idea was formed with some friends while talking about a way to raise money for Mothers Fighting For Others, an organization that I have written about before. The result of these talks? 50kfor50k (you can see all the Twitter activity by searching for “#50kfor50k”). To put it simply, Maya was heading towards her 50,000 tweet and she put her Twitter account on the line in order to raise $50,000 for MFFO. When she reached 49,999 tweets she would go silent unless MFFO could raise $50,000. The goal wasn’t reached and Maya went silent.
Silence comes to Twitter.
Money was raised, but not $50,000. People tweeted, shared blog posts on Facebook, and talked about it non-stop. Somehow, the money didn’t meet the goal. Was $50,000 too ambitious? I don’t think it was. I think it was a lofty goal…and a worthy one. Some people may have mistakenly thought this was about Maya (something she commented about in some back and forth) and I was a bit disheartened by this. This was about 34 orphaned girls in Kenya and an organization’s conviction to help them.
As Maya went silent, her and I began communicating through email and started to talk more than we did on Twitter. I discovered a lot of new things about Maya and we shared a lot of common thoughts on social media and community. The more we talked, the more I realized there was a lot more to her than she revealed on Twitter at times. For lack of a better way to put it, we became friends.
It takes a village…
In becoming friends and with all that was going on with her now silent Twitter account, I found a new appreciation for community while talking with Maya. As real estate agents, we love social media, but it became apparent to me that maybe that love wasn’t enough. Maybe we were thinking the right things, but not doing them. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of great things being done with social media, just that perhaps we could do more. Not to get too philosophical, but there are opportunities with social media – we just need to create them in this “new world.”
First, there was the concept of charity. Charity has excelled at things like Facebook and Twitter. Everyday, I see something about a charity or fund-raiser for a good cause. I was never a huge charity supporter until I got into real estate. I gave to the SPCA and Goodwill once in awhile, but I never really felt I was all that charitable.
Since becoming a RE/MAX agent, I have been giving a portion of every commission to Children’s Miracle Network. I have found myself giving more to charities and causes I believe in, even when I don’t have more to give. I found that I enjoyed that sense of helping and giving to others. Not only was I helping out someone, I was feeling good about myself in exchange.
One of the things I noted to Maya one day was that I found people were always willing to spread the word, but not always willing to open their wallet. I wondered out loud if perhaps the ability to tell hundreds of thousands of people at once about a given cause was helping make us feel as if we had done our part? Without giving a dollar, we could easily feel satisfied that we were helping, because we were spreading the word. Social media is truly powerful for that reason alone. One small idea, heard by a seemingly endless number of people. Is that enough? I don’t believe it is.
The power to spread ideas is amazing, but what if no one reacts to the ideas and just continues to spread them. Without the reaction, the ideas become just another bandwidth hog. They don’t go from idea to action. They become nothing more than small talk at the water cooler. They live on in printed form on the internet, but they die a quick death in our minds.
Taking action is the part that we need to focus on. Without it, we become talking parrots – repeating the words, but incapable of taking the actions. Our group mind mentality of social media is great for getting the word out, but we need to build a stronger base of single-minded reaction in order to make any real use out of it.
Challenge
When it comes to charity, I challenge each and every one of you to stop before you put that next post on your site, send your next tweet, or update your Facebook status. Spread the message by becoming a part of the solution. Donate, give your time, volunteer your services – the tiniest gifts are some of the best for these charities. Everyone says “just one dollar will help” – and they’re right, but that dollar needs to come from every single person. The dollars don’t add up for how many times you mention something, they add up when you donate. Spreading the word will mean nothing if no one gives.
Next time you see something of a charitable nature you want to share, stop. Share your time, money, or expertise with the charity first… then share the message. Make it personal to your social networks. Tell them why this matters to you. If you can’t spare a single penny and you “would but you can’t right now,” stop and evaluate your position in life. Most of us would agree that we can spare a dollar. Many of us have that much circulating in the couch cushions and our cars. Probably even more.
We can create change in the world with just the change in our pockets.
The photo used in this post is from @mayaREguru and her blog. I took it without her permission, but I’ll work today on convincing her it’s a good thing.
PS There’s more coming on this subject, including my own personal thoughts on how I use social media, so stay tuned.
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Comments
Matt,
Fabulous, wonderful, enlightening, and you hit on points I wish I had in my great ramblings. So wonderful to spend some QT via email and text. Look forward to finally meeting you at Mid-Years!! And thanks for your support… I know you dug deep and gave. You Rock, truly!
Maya =)
killer post! i love Maya too and have also been so impressed with this campaing. Thanks for writing about it
.-= Nanette Labastida´s last blog ..Ethan Azarian – Folk artist, musician & now muralist =-.
Maya – Seriously, no Gravatar? You better get to it! I’m glad you enjoyed it, since you were the one who caused the post to be written. As I told you, I think what you did was very admirable and I know MFFO appreciated it – but there were also bigger issues at work. I do worry that we are becoming great at talking about (and passing on) things like charity, but with that ability our interest in participating can decline quickly. Spread the word, but keep the wallet shut – retweets and posts on Facebook give us the illusion that we’ve done our part. That’s not to say that we all have to give to every charitable cause that crosses our computer screen, but we can rethink how we respond to those charities that we truly care about.
On another note, so good to see you back. I love that it became somewhat of a social experiment for you. The results are excellent in my opinion and have spurred my own results as well (this post and the few that will be following).
Nanette – I thought it was bold which is why I loved it so much. Definitely a great example of giving something up to help others – usually we do it with a latte, but this was unconventional, but had a lot of meaning behind it.
.-= rerockstar´s last blog ..Fiesta San Antonio – Sunday April 18, 2010 Events =-.
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