How Do You Use Social Media to Help a Good Cause?

On Mashable today is a list of five social media campaigns that focused on helping out the needy. Gradon Tripp and Matthew Knell give the skinny on several (mostly Twitter) events that mobilized communities and asked people to do their part in contributing to good causes.

Campaigns like these would mostly leverage on the popularity and authority of social media movers and catalysts. I’d call it one’s social media pull. After all, if you have thousands of Twitter followers, it’s easy enough to get hundreds of those to heed the call to give or contribute something. But would charity campaigns work for social media users who may not be so popular?

I would think that no matter how small your effort may be, it would still count. Be it small or big, the fact that social media is being seen as bringing about change in how fundraisers are conducted is a good enough indicator of the potentials. I remember one time when people pitched in to help a blogging colleague pay legal bills (for a blogging-related lawsuit). We started small, but those little trickles resulted in something significant enough, and was well appreciated. And that was before the time of microblogging. Imagine how even more viral a call for help like that would be in this day and age.

Have you done your part in helping others through social media? If you have plans to, or if you have a running campaign, tell us about it, and we’ll help spread the word.