Max Gladwell

Charity-driven social media platform recruits bloggers in an effort to raise awareness and donations for Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C).

We’ve been working with SocialVibe over the past couple months (that’s a disclosure, in case you missed it), specifically on its marketing and social media strategies. Prior to this, we blogged about SocialVibe here and here. Regardless of the fact that we’re now on the take, the following is something we most certainly would be blogging about.

We’ve all heard the saying, “It’s serious as cancer.” The expression is used in many ways. It’s become cliché. But there’s a reason why clichés are formed. Like the universal feeling of being stuck between a rock and a hard place, there’s a deeper truth. “Serious as cancer” achieves cliché status because cancer presides over all things serious. It is the king and queen of seriousness. And while cancer deserves this respect, it is our duty to end its tyrannical reign. To render cancer less serious and eventually not serious at all. That’s essentially what Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) is all about.

Stand Up To Cancer is an initiative aimed at rallying the public around the goal of ending cancer’s reign as a leading cause of death. The initiative brings together an unprecedented collaboration that unites the major television networks, entertainment industry executives, celebrities and prominent leaders in cancer research and patient advocacy. ABC, CBS and NBC will donate one hour of simultaneous commercial-free primetime for a nationally televised fundraising event to air on September 5, 2008 (8 pm EDT and PDT). If you’ve not seen the PSA, it’s nothing short of inspiring:

SocialVibe is supporting SU2C in a number of ways. SU2C is one of the featured causes that users can choose to support by adding the brand-cause badge to your profile pages, such as MySpace and Facebook. These earn points for impressions which translate into cash donations. Anyone who has a profile page, personal website, or blog can post the embed code, complete with a third-party sponsor, like so:

For bloggers, however, SocialVibe is inviting all of us to raise straight cash by directing readers to this specific link: SocialVibe.com/SU2C. Which is a unique portal for signing up and becoming a SocialVibe member. For each successful sign-up through this page (that means you), SocialVibe donates $1 to SU2C. When all is said and done, SocialVibe will list the bloggers and their donation tally on its blog, The Vibe, together with a press release that will feature the top bloggers. As a blogger, you don’t have to actually sign up in order to direct readers to sign up. You’ll still generate $1 for every person who does, though the tracking may not be that accurate. Alternatively or in addition to this, bloggers can contact SocialVibe (su2c [at] socialvibe.com) to have a custom, co-branded badge designed for their blog, which guarantees tracking.

As Howard Greenstein writes in his related post on Social Media Club, “I’m making a call to action for all my social media connected friends: please be a part of this effort, raise visibility and help find the cure. I ask that you suggest other things we can do as a community to increase awareness. I think this is a ‘case study’ for how SMC can help bring about change via social media.”

As we’ve said before, it’s no coincidence that social media and social good share the same first name. In fact, blogs serve a social good in and of themselves. Jeremiah Owyang dipped his toe into these waters when he rallied bloggers and social media devotees around earthquake relief in China, despite being well outside the scope of his web strategy blog. Even Perez Hilton writes frequent posts in support of worthwhile causes. It’s just part of the blogger DNA, and we’re honored to be a part of it.

Lest we forget, you can also make a straight cash donation to SU2C. That is still allowed.

For more information, SocialVibe has set up this How-to Page to guide bloggers through signing up and provide more information about its platform. There is a blog post template there in HTML format that you can easily copy, paste, and edit as you see fit. It’s open source, free to use, and was written in WordPress (fyi).

As a final note, we spoke with the PR firm that’s handling the SU2C campaign yesterday. This initiative is quite the phenomenon. There’s little in the way of central management and control. Sure, there is a main website. And there’s been plenty of PSA advertising on TV. There will be plenty of press. But it’s really got a life of its own. It will be aired through the most mainstream of mainstream media channels, which is great. But we’re eager to see if we, in the new-media world, can demonstrate our power and reach and stand toe-to-toe with Big Media in supporting this supremely worthy cause.

Looking forward to your comments…

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