Photo courtesy of jeffisageek.
Guest blogger Brannon Cullum is a graduate intern at the Case Foundation, working on a Masters in Communication, Culture and Technology at Georgetown University.
If you regularly tweet or follow users on Twitter, you may have noticed a particular hashtag popping up frequently over the past week. No, not #balloonboy, but #BeatCancer. The #BeatCancer campaign was one of the first successful efforts using a hashtag in an effort to raise money for a worthy cause.
As you may know, hashtags are keywords used to organize tweets around particular issues and makes searches easier. #BeatCancer was a social media experiment spearheaded by Everywhere, a social media marketing and content development company. The goal of their campaign was to raise money for non-profit cancer organizations. Over a 24 hour period (from October 16 to October 17), people were encouraged to use the hashtag #BeatCancer in Twitter posts, Facebook status updates, and blogs. For every posting that included the hashtag, Ebay/Paypal and MillerCoors Brewing Co. agreed to donate a penny. It helped that the campaign was launched at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo, where influential bloggers and social media users were congregating.
The campaign was judged a success from many standpoints, most notably by setting a Guinness World Record for the most widespread social network message in 24 hours, with the #BeatCancer hashtag included in 209,771 mentions over the 24-hour period. It also raised upwards of $70,000 for cancer research. This is quite a feat, since the launch of the campaign wasn’t covered by any traditional media outlets.
While the campaigns leaders and supporters can celebrate its success, what do we know about the thousands of people who retweeted the message? The skeptic in me wonders how many of them were actually aware of the purpose behind using the hashtag. A quick search of hashtag statistics shows that many people are still tweeting with #BeatCancer today, not realizing that the actual campaign ended days ago. This leads me to believe that these users aren’t exactly clear about the meaning and goals behind the campaign.
At the same time, even if a user retweeting a hashtag isn’t completely informed, he or she could be at a starting off place for learning more about an issue.Jocelyn Harmon recently wrote about using social media tools for advocacy and notes: It's true, there may never be a better substitute for in-person organizing. Face-to-face meetings fulfill a basic human need for connection and will always be central to helping us come together to learn about and care for one other. But newer online tools may be just the complement we need to rebuild and galvanize our American spirit of advocacy, volunteerism and giving.
The challenge of leveraging this new type of advocacy campaign is that hashtags could soon become the new online petition or email forward. How often do you get a request from a friend to sign a petition for a cause they support, but you have no genuine or invested interest in it? In both cases, the cause is something you don't have to know much about, but simply participate in with a click. This runs the chance of becoming another example of "slacktivism." Evgeny Morovoz, a fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, cautions, "People go a little bit too far and they start campaigning on issues before actually thinking them through and verifying that the problem actually exists." (For more on slacktivism, see our previous posts here and here).
If using hashtags is the next wave of campaigning, should we brace for a deluge of hashtags for any and all causes? With too many filling up Twitter feeds already, hashtags that are part of legitimate campaigns like #BeatCancer run the risk of being crowded out by silly and meaningless tags like #balloonboy. (#balloonboy, by the way, was tweeted over 48,000 times on October 15 alone and is still a Twitter trending topic.)
To successfully integrate the use of a hashtag into a campaign, it appears to work best if the message being retweeted also includes information about the meaning behind the hashtag. Instead of just tweeting, "#BeatCancer," a more effective tweet would be, "#BeatCancer Read more about it on beatcancereverywhere.com" or "Everybody use the #BeatCancer hashtag today. eBay/Paypal & MillerCoors are donating $0.01 every time you tweet it." Mihaela Lica, senior partner at Pamil Vision PR, shared some lessons she has gleaned after monitoring this campaign, including the need for greater transparency and clearer communications. Twitter has also begun defining "trending topics," the most popular topics users are tweeting about, on its platform. When you click on a trending topic, a brief statement appears that clarifies the significance of the topic. This is a step in the right direction. Whatthetrend.com also highlights current trending topics and the stories behind them.
What do you see as the pros and cons of hashtag campaigns? Did you participate in #BeatCancer?