October isn’t just recognized for the Halloween candy or the colorful costumes. The spooky month is also known as National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. NBCAM began in 1983 to increase awareness of the disease and raise funds for research. Today, one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. This past October, PBHS offered and participated in a Going Pink for October Facebook campaign to help support those affected by the threatening disease.
The PBHS team worked together to develop inspiring and captive campaign for their clients’ Facebook pages. Graphics decorated client accounts with pink cover photos and various status updates informing their audience of their participation in the campaign.
The campaign raised awareness and funds for future research. For every page “Like” on a client’s Facebook account, one dollar would be donated to the National Breast Cancer Foundation by that office. The results were fantastic. PBHS helped increase their page “likes” by an average of 47%! Some practices even received up to 600 likes on a single post associated with the campaign.
Furthermore, new likes weren’t the only results. One of the most exciting metrics of this campaign was the number of “shares”. Many of the status updates had more than 20 “shares”. With each Facebook user having an average of 130 friends, a huge audience saw these messages. For example, if you had 150 facebook fans who all shared your message, you could reach 19,500 connections (150 fans X 130 average friends= 19,500). This is a perfect example of how to use social media to create messages and ideas that your existing fans will share for you – a true revolution in word-of-mouth marketing.
Various Facebook followers commented on the pink images displaying their gratitude and appreciation for the practice’s participation. Others mentioned their own personal experiences with breast cancer. This was obviously a great opportunity for each of the participating practices to show their audience that they cared about the same causes and strive to help the community in meaningful ways.
“Pink for October” not only brought activity to Facebook accounts, but in some cases, directly to the office. One of the participating offices told us a story that took place during their campaign. A patient showed up at Richmond Oral & Cosmetic Surgeons to personally thank the office for participating in such an important cause and wrote them a generous check of $100 to support the campaign.
Prior to the popularization of social media, you would have to hire a public relations professional to get this type of exposure. However, with today’s current social media tools they do the publicity for you!
The “Pink for October” campaign may have been the first charity campaign we have offered for our clients, but it surly won’t be the last. PBHS is proud to share this successful social media campaign with our clients to give them a glimpse of what its like to work with our social media team and harness the power of this new medium.