Networking for a Cause

One of the classes I am taking this semester is a Communication Practicum. The class teaches not only how to put a public relations campaign together, but also, how to put it into action!

After learning about organ and tissue donation from our local procurement agency,  the Center of Donation and Transplant of New York (CDTNY), my class set the goals of getting 1,000 of our peers to register to be organ tissue donors, and educating 4,000 of our peers on campus.

Once we learned about the budget given to us by CDTNY and the different components of running a successful campaign, we broke up into seven different teams. The teams include: the logo/theme development committee, marketing materials/giveaways committee, special events committee, tabling and outreach committee, media/visibility committee, classroom presentations committee, and the web development/viral marketing committee.

Since April is Donate Life Month, our campaign will not be kicking off until then. In the meantime, the teams are planning what they are going to do and presenting their ideas to the class.

Yesterday, the web development/viral marketing committee, presented their ideas to the class. The three members of this group told us about the e-mail account they set up, the Facebook “person” they created, and the Twitter account they put together. They spent a good deal of time talking about the Twitter account for two reasons. The first reason is that this is the first time, in the history of this Communication Practicum, that the class has set up a Twitter account. The second reason why the three committee members spent a lot of time discussing the Twitter account was to stress the importance of us using it.

Our class wants to get our message out to as many people as possible. One of the ways we intend on doing this is through a “mass media attack.” The web development/viral marketing committee explained to our class that one of the best ways to do this is by using one of the newest, as well as one of the most widely used social networking websites: Twitter. They explained that by using Twitter and “following” our friends, friends of friends, and celebrities, and by “retweeting” our tweets, our campaign message will get out to hundreds, maybe even thousands of people!

Talk about viral marketing!

For example, one of the people our class is following on Twitter, is Ellen Degeneres. If we retweet our tweets, more people will see them because of the large amount of people following her. Our message will hit more people this way.

I wonder if our class continues to follow celebrities and retweet our tweets, if we can gain national recognition or, more importantly, help get as many of the 106,282 people on the organ transplant list, off of the waiting list.