Event Launch Strategies

Social Traffic Earth Day Birthday Campaign:

For over two months now, the social traffic evangelists have been promoting the EarthDay Birthday events. A lot of people raised their hands to say that they will save $10 from their lives to donate to a global cause this Earth Day. Many of them even made videos for Youtube to tell the world how they are saving money in such economic times – it’s a small amount, but it is something – some were sacrificing junk food, haircuts, drinks, others were saving on trips and gas refills. It was interesting to see how people who are motivated act. There always needs to be a cause behind it – something greater than themselves. Without a cause even seemingly good deeds are difficult to do.

We made a group on Facebook that has the names of the donators and the names of the people they refer to next to them. It’s a growing list that is evolving as people add their lists of 10 to it. I mentioned our intentions from this campaign in the previous post. It’s just so powerful to have 10 people who have influence of 10 friends each. This seemingly small divide (2 degrees of separation) results in a group of 100 in the blink of an eye. Next of each of those 100 people have influence on 10 friends as well, then we have a group of 1000. Now if we just go down to 5 levels of separation which is NOT AT ALL impossible, we’d have a group of 100,000 people. Ask each of these 100,000 people to donate just $10 to a cause that they select, and we’d have 1 million dollars worth of donations. Imagine how powerful this model is. Imagine how powerful Social Traffic Inc can get if it could demonstrate this simple theory in real life. It is important for all of you to understand this concept completely in order to become a part of it. The difference between 100 committed Social Traffic members donating $10 this Earth day and 100 Social Traffic members having a network of 10 people who not only donate 10 dollars, but who have also built a network of ten people who will do the same each year $999,999.00. Please, we have two days to run this year. Now is as good a time as any. Start working on building your network of ten people.If not for this year. For next.

Donation option:

It’s time to select a cause to donate to. When we see all of this activity it becomes even more important to select a cause which everyone unanimously votes for. I’ll talk about one donation idea today, you can leave more ideas in the comments.

Instead of blindly donating to a charity organization, why don’t we all pitch in for something much bigger and tangible. Why don’t we find an organization which is so passionate about its cause that we would have no shred of doubt about our money going in the rights hands.

I keep thinking about ideas, but somehow I keep coming back to the thought of being able to buy deforested rain forests and allow someone to give it life again. It serves so many purposes from wild life preservation, atmospheric temperature control, maintenance of environmental balance, all the way to adjusted carbon levels.

Not only that, but it’s a firm statement against brute consumerism, it’s a stand against destroying natural balances, it’s a stand against global oppression for personal benefits. Why do we need to deforest masses of land anyway? So that we can eat, consume, wear a little more? So that we can continue consuming products which we don’t even need, as if there is nothing wrong with it.

One organization that stands apart from a lot of other ones is the Willie Smits foundation.

Here’s what Ode Magazine has to say about him:

“Willie Smits’s accomplishment is the perfect example of finding a best-of-all-worlds solution. Smits did not “merely” create a rainforest in a barren, fire-prone plot of land. He has also involved local people and created 3,000 jobs. He gave people a rainforest and economic incentives to preserve the forest. His meticulously engineered and implemented plan refused to make trade off between his passion for conservation the need of locals for a sustainable lifestyle.”

His motivation to save rainforests began with the plight of the orangutans. According to TED:

“Smits believes that to rebuild orangutan populations, we must first rebuild their forest habitat which means helping local people find options other than the short-term fix of harvesting forests to survive. His Masarang Foundation raises money and awareness to restore habitat forests around the world and to empower local people. In 2007, Masarang opened a palm-sugar factory that uses thermal energy to turn sugar palms (fast-growing trees that thrive in degraded soils) into sugar and even ethanol, returning cash and power to the community and, with luck, starting the cycle toward a better future for people, trees and orangs.”

Lastly, here’s an official appeal from Dr. Willie Smits - Sponsors Needed.

Recommending a charity or foundation of your choice:

For those of you promoting Earth Day Birthday, we can also choose from any other event that you have created a page for on Eventslisted.com. This is your chance to make a difference for a cause that you feel will benefit those involved - if you have other ideas for where the donation should go, we’re all ears. Please make your recommendations today. Present your case in the comments. Right now, this is completely your prerogative - I only ask that it should be unanimously agreed so that everyone is comfortable with where their money goes.

Recommend a charity of your preference and include the charities PayPal ID - so that we can create a page for it. If you are recommending a new cause, please qualify the charity to ensure its is genuine using http://www.charitynavigator.org.

How it works:

Of all the charity recommendations that you add to comments, the charities that are mentioned with their charitynavigator.com rating + PayPal email address will be added to the Social Traffic Earth day donation page on our website.

We will add widgets on the STi blog. You will be asked to send your 10 people to a page on the Social Traffic blog this April 22nd. It will have a few of these widgets for people to donate directly into the charity’s PayPal accounts to make the process completely seamless.

It’s Earth day 2009! If our generation doesn’t act now, our kids, kids may not have a choice - Act Now, Click Here

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

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