I finished reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky and dug what he had to say about groups being able to form through social networks because of the new tools made available from the Internet.

3 stories:

#1 The bank HSBC recruited students by promising checking accounts that carried no penalty for overdrafts. Then, HSBC decided to revoke the policy, giving the students only a few weeks notice about the change. But they didn’t expect students to create and join a group on Facebook called “Stop the Great HSBC Rip-Off!” Shortly afterwords HSBC caved in and reversed the policy.

#2 Flight 1348 was grounded in Dallas due to bad weather and sat on the ground for eight hours before passengers were let off. On passenger on that flight formed a group to represent the rights of passengers called The Airline Passenger’s Bill of Rights. She started this group by commenting on an article on the web which attracted more of the passengers and together they made an online petition with 2,000 names. The bill ended up at the Senate.

#3 A girl in New York looses her Sidekick cell phone in a cab and discovers that her phone ended up with a girl in Queens. She found this out by seeing photos taken by the thief with her old phone that were transferred to her new one. She asked for the phone back but the girl in Queens refused. So they created a website with pictures and a description of the events. Soon, thanks to sites like Digg, they were getting ten emails a minuet from people offering encouragement and help. After dozens of complaints to the NYPD, the cops were sent out, the thief arrested, and the phone returned.

What do these stories have in common?:

These groups were successful because of a cause that all the participants believed in. The saying goes: people will work for money but they will die for a cause. For your social media marketing to be successful you have to make it a cause people will die for.

Creating a Facebook page that consists of your business name will not attract anyone, let alone inspire them to recruit others. instead of “yourbusinessesnamehere Facebook Fan Page”, try a cause in your business industry: (if you’re a restaurant) “The Coalition to Stop Bad BBQ!”, or (if you’re a salon) “1 Million People Against Faux Hawks!”.  You get the idea…