By Bill Bernardoni

There are very few forces in the world today that are more powerful than that of social media. When the viral post is done right it can truly change the world for the better. Just look back at the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

Eleven long years ago, in the summer of 2014, my wife was pregnant with our first child, and I was working in the truly awful and exhausting world of politics, desperately trying to make a difference.  I failed to do so, but that summer, three individuals who were living with and fighting ALS with everything they had started something that inspired millions of people, me included, to dump ice water on themselves.

What started out as a simple video trend raised over $115 million for the ALS Association – and changed how the world viewed awareness campaigns, forever.

Obviously, not every campaign will have that type of actual impact, look to the recent and extremely viral trends around National Breast Cancer Awareness Month that did successfully generate a lot of visibility, but made almost no impact at all.

Awareness With Very Little Action

This campaign, one year, asked women to post what color their bra was—or where they “like it”— speaking of where they like to leave their purse, on social media without having any context at all. The posts created a lot of intrigue and made social media users curious but did very little to actually make an impact. That leads us to the topic of cyberactivism.

The Susan G. Komen Center did see a slight bump in traffic, but not enough of one for them to be able to show that the various viral campaigns were having any real impact at all bringing in actual meaningful donations.

What Actually is Cyberactivism?

IGI Global defines cyberactivism as:

“The use of e-mail, blogs and social networking sites to publicize a cause by disseminating information quickly that is unavailable through traditional news sources.”

Putting it another way, I really love what the Breast Cancer Meme Case Study in Strategic Social Media: From Marketing to Social Change has to say about this:

“Humans want to do the right thing, and if the call is to simply ask you to push a button to “like” a status, we don’t mind obliging. Your own Facebook page may be filled with charities and organizations that your friends have sent to you, yet you have never actually participated with. Calls for cyberactivism can spread quickly but make little difference in the world because they are not linked to any real-life mobilization” (Mahoney & Tang, 2016, p. 71).

 Clicks Without the Commitment

I think most of us have seen the types of viral posts that we’re discussing:

“Alecia, white.”

“I like it on the barstool.”

“Inches, 8. Takes 10 minutes.”

These viral posts, the examples above are examples of what my wife would have posted if she had taken part in the viral trend. These posts got the attention of social media users and went extremely viral. They started a conversation, but they did little to nothing to actually make a difference.

Where was the actual action? Where were the links? Where were the requests for donations? Where were the calls to volunteer or information about breast cancer prevention and self-checks? It was nowhere to be found and that is just too bad because this had the opportunity to really make a difference.

What Can We Learn from This?

Yes, bringing some notice to the issue of breast cancer is always important, but why stop there? Why not turn that viral content into actual action? Add a link for social media users to make a donation. Include information about breast cancer prevention or even create a challenge like with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that actually makes a difference for the cause. Doing something like that takes almost zero added effort, so why not do it and actually make a real difference.