Late last week women on Facebook began posting their bra colours. The aim of the game was supposedly to raise awareness for breast cancer. And, indeed, the creator of the Facebook group called What’s Your Bra Color??? promised to donate $500 to Susan G. Komen’s foundation for the Cure if that group had more than 1,000 members by this past Monday. The casual campaign to post bra colours has garnered media attention and netted the What’s Your Bra Color??? Facebook group 4,500 members.
Some critics claim that the meme is only a pointless flirtation device, aimed at teasing men. Others claim that we are all already aware of breast cancer. While still others, including Susan G. Komen, praise the action, saying anything that gets people talking about and thinking about breast cancer is a boon. And it did get attention! The fact that the colours have vanished from Facebook statuses, but there is still talk about whether it worked or not is proof that it got people talking.
Regardless of your stance on this particular rash of Facebook posts, the deeper awareness for SEO and internet marketing gurus is a reminder of the deep reach that social media now employs in our society. If a post about bra colour has received this kind of attention, both on Facebook and from the media at large, it is worth talking about social media as a tool for attention for your business.
We’ve talked about the importance of social media within your marketing campaign before, but it bears repeating with this kind of example of its potential impact at our feet.
One big aspect of social media is that it is a new spin on the old adage about word-of-mouth being the best sales tool out there. Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are the electronic versions of word-of-mouth. Although there is some time and energy taken in setting up and maintaining accounts, when your business takes off in these electronic spaces the word-of-mouth rule begins to apply. The bra colour campaign is a perfect example of how well a focused, fun idea can capture the attention of a social media group, sell that idea, then result in action. It’s a perfect business marketing model. The next time a business tells me that they are hesitant to employ social media in their marketing plans, I am definitely going to use this example to show them that social media can get people talking about your business and products.
Now, I have to go and find an old picture to post, pick up the closest book and pick a sentence to post in my status, and make sure my settings are set properly. Social media really is all what you make of it!