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Darah Bonham

May 04
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The Difference One Can Make in Social Media: the Abolish Cancer Story

By Communications

In 2009, My friend Darah Bonham had a nugget of an idea — how could a platform like Twitter be used to connect people and make a difference? Could Twitter somehow be used to abolish cancer?

That idea took off with a feed began and updated by Darah in October of that year. www.twitter.com/abolishcancer is the first Twitter feed solely founded to generate donations to cancer-battling charities. It works by engaging sponsors who pledge to donate $1 for each new Twitter follower for the @abolishcancer feed on a given day. Celebrities and consumer brands have gotten into the act, re-tweeting to help generate followers (thus bumping up the pledge).

Darah recently announced his resignation from his day job to focus on Abolish Cancer as a full-time venture. He’ll be working to share the story of the organization, to continue to generate interest in the cause, sponsors and donations to help fight the battle against cancer.

I’m eager to see Darah succeed and hope you’ll lend your support by following and re-tweeting @abolishcancer

Visit http://www.abolishcancer.com/ to see more than 100 celebrities supporting the cause and to find out more about the organization.

 

May 05
Love0

I Get Jazzed Talking About Social Media

By Uncategorized
Talking Social Media, Business and Academia at the LSP Conference at UVa

Talking Social Media, Business and Academia at the LSP Conference at UVa

I am one of those odd people who truly enjoys public speaking. The bigger the crowd, the better. I do quite a bit of speaking about social media, social networking, public relations and reputation management. Last week, I participated in a panel on behalf of Standing Partnership and Social Media Club Charlottesville. The topics were social media, business and academia and the session was held at the University of Virginia for a group of IT professionals who support the University’s technology needs. With me (and pictured above, left to right) were Darah Bonham, the director of Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center (CATEC) and the infamous Steve Whitaker, director of technology at the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning/Curry School of Education.

As you can tell from the totally geeked out look on my face, the discussion of social media and its possibilities is my favorite topic. I love being before a group and fielding questions on the topic and can, for hours, talk about the uses of social media and networking for building business, for relationship development, for customer service, for promotion . . . I frequently get the “finger drawn across the throat” signal to shut up already because we’re out of time.

If you can’t tell by the content of this blog, I thought a look at my jazzed up, goofy grinning face above would be more proof of how much I love what I do.