Be Bold & Wear One Glove

I have officially jumped on the Michael Jackson bandwagon. Additionally I have sealed my fate as a Non-Profit Technology geek. I had a pretty strong opinion about Michael Jackson, was pretty convinced at the very least he had been "indecent" with young people. But watching the memorial today I couldn't help but be moved by the work he had done to help, heal and inspire the world. Literally and lyrically to Heal The World.

It's not my fault I watched the memorial-I had no intention to do so but even Mashable was intoxicated by the Michael Jackson moonwalk all over the web.

So in true 2.0 fashion I watch a live feed, while tweeting and doin a bit of work. My little 17" screen fully supporting 4 fully functional windows of social media wonderment (including the project I was working on; I was working i promise.)




So as I am watching Brooke Shields comes on and says a very moving and illuminating piece. I can't help but feel sorry for the type of life they both led as child stars. I also can't help but be a little jealous of how good she looks and remember how badly I wanted bushy eyebrows and Calvin Klein jeans way back when, but I digress. She ends her beautiful speech about MJ with a passage from The Little Prince (one of my fav's) and the insight that Micheal's favorite song was not one of his stellar classics but rather the song SMILE originally penned by Charlie Chaplin and re worked millions of times in a million different movies and commercials.

Well....that made my brain switch immediately into marketer mode. After all, I help create smiles for a living. My daily mission is to inspire people to help Operation Smile perform free surgeries to children around the world. What a perfect tie in to our campaign to raise smiles through Twitter, and an amazing way to honor Michael Jackson. And as my wheels start turning, Jermain comes out with a tear laced rendition of the song. A perfect backdrop to my just crafted Tweet "Honor #MJ by helping a child smile www.140smiles.org". The rest of the ceremony continued to unfold opportunities to help our mission with "We are the World" and "Heal the World" sung while a sea of children graced the stage.

Now, some in the office thought this was in bad taste. Maybe, but my intentions were truly to honor Michael Jackson and to truly help children smile, something I really believe he would love. And why not offer a real time opportunity for those tweeting and Facebook-ing about his life and contributions to help in a real, tangible way. We increased traffic to our sites and I have only received positive responses and tweets in response to my efforts.

So this is a brings me to re-iterating some of my favorite Social Media lessons:

-PAY ATTENTION; opportunity abounds, especially through Twitter so keep up with whats going on, pay attention to what people are saying and how it can effect or be effected by you

-BE FEARLESS; Things go away as quickly as they come with Social Media, so don't be afraid to test something or try something. If it was a bad idea, it will be quickly forgotten and is easily replaced by a good one.

-Have a POV; I was only able to tweet because we have a relevant and easily expressed story and happen to have a Twitter campaign to direct folks to. So it may behoove you to think of your point of view, your hook or engagement piece.
-Is it a story about your brand?
-Is it a special landing page that shows how cool your product or org.is?
-Is it something people can relate to and dissect quickly.?
-Do you have a fast and easy way for folks to give/buy?

Social Media moves fast-those folks who penned "Get it while it's Hot" had NO IDEA!So be prepared, be bold and most importantly BE THERE!