Let the Christmas spirit go on…

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Christmas Cheer 2008

I wanted to take some time out this Christmas for everyone who matters to me. I am out on a holiday with my beloved family – a nice little break from work (although, I have to admit I brought my laptop along – can’t stay disconnected from the online world). There are other special people who matter to me a lot as well, and this note is dedicated to all of you.

Until just a few years ago, I would never have imagined considering people (that I have never met) to be part of my inner circle of trust. Today, I realize that you guys have given so much of your time to me, and we have shared so much value and insight together that I cannot close my eyes to the fact you are a huge part of my life now.

The Christmas spirit has to go on:

Vicki said the other day: “There are a lot of lost souls, and struggling families in this economic Tsunami we have been hit with. I try and lend assistance each and every day. Christmas 365/24/7”

This really got me thinking hard about the things happening around us. The economic condition is actually a blessing for us in many ways. It is a time for us to sit back and reconsider our policies, a time to rehash our marketing strategies to focus more on cost-effective guerilla techniques, a time for us to value the things that we used to take for granted, a time for us to expand our networks across the globe, a time for us to give a caring hand to those who are knee-deep in trouble or debts, a time for us to take time out for those who matter to us, a time for us to start those ventures we never got around to, a time for us to discover our inner potentials.

The whole world is open to new idea’s, we have been cured of the blind faith we once placed in our major financial institutions and every ones mind is set to explore new possibilities, new ways of valuing our relationships (with customers), a new emphasis on valuing and servicing what we have, without the distraction of looking for more. The economic downturn has cured us of this mind set.This is the only period in my life time where the entire world is open to new ways of thinking about everything. What an exciting period to be in business this next 18 months is going to be. Don’t let anyone talk you into seeing it any other way.

I have come across people who have taken a serious stand on not spending money on shopping this Christmas. “What’s Christmas got to do with shopping?” they ask. Shopping and gifts became a way to celebrate Christmas joy, and for generations we have been following it with a blindfold on. Sure if you can afford it, get gifts for the family – but not to an ostentatious extent. Give that money to people who need it instead, or save it for some important family trips in the year ahead.

What makes a campaign a success? Food for thought:

The Christmas campaign has caught on so fast, that it’s an amazing illustration of the power of social media. Here’s how I perceive the underlying reason why a campaign like this spreads so quickly:

If you have the right cause people back it –- if enough people support a cause, a group of evangelists will always lead the tribe or community in it’s drive –- if these evangelists are natural born leaders the message behind a cause will travel across social media very quickly -– if the message is heard by enough people and told by people they respect, more and more people join in becoming evangelists of the cause –- if enough people join in a short enough period of time, the cause becomes validated as something everyone is participating in –- as any cause becomes validated by the masses, the individuals bound by the cause become stronger and tighter -– the tighter a community becomes, the more people want to join it, the more people who want to join a community, the more influential a community becomes.

This FB Christmas campaign has given testament to that fact – the cause that brought our Facebook community together was Christmas, the message was to spread Christmas cheer throughout an existing community and this message spread like wild fire, the cause influenced tens of thousands of people to act in changing our profile pictures to one that represented Christmas cheer. This pulled sections of our Facebook community tighter.

Christmas will pass soon and with its passing the community of people who have shared this campaign will loosen again and with this loosening so to will our ability to influence others into acting diminish. I want everyone in the Social Traffic group to remember how easy this Christmas Cheer campaign happened. Please keep it in mind because this can be extrapolated for other, bigger or smaller campaigns,.. where ever the leadership, fundamentals and motives are right. In fact this will be extrapolated in a much, much bigger way over the coming months by the Social Traffic group.

As many of you know, the Social Traffic group is taking on a massive Social Media campaign this April. Since the coming weeks will be a little lighter on everyone’s work schedule (most of the people will be away from work till beginning of January), we can channelize this time to make our roles and responsibilities in the ST group more clear. I have planned a set of posts/notes in the coming week after Christmas that I believe define a mind set we need to adopt as a group if we are going to set ourselves in a direction that will lead towards achieving something remarkable together, come April this year.

A growing tribe:

The leadership group behind Social Traffic has been working on a video montage of the Christmas cheer campaign that will be published in the coming days.

For now, here is a short image collage of a few of the people who have been touched and been touched with the Christmas cheer. If your picture is in there, tag it. If not, let me know. On December 31st everyone votes for the best picture.

Merry Christmas to all of you – and let us not forget the spirit of Christmas for the year to come. Here’s a link to the tagged image on Facebook, and here’s one to the post.