Social Media, parenting and popcorn

I recently had an interesting email exchange with Connie Bensen before her presentation at the Social Media Strategies conference in San Francisco. I was unable at the last minute to attend the conference, but Connie was nice enough to point me to a few of her recent experiences.

Connie is a newer member of the thoughtful and visionary Network Solutions social media team.

While Network Solutions certainly has earned some recognition for their commitment to social media (heck, even their lawyers are involved in active online response), the thing that struck me most was a link she pointed me to of a 10 year old Cub Scout.



This 10 year old took an entirely new approach to the age old task of selling popcorn/chocolate/coupon books as a fund raiser. Whereas my memories of childhood were going door to door and asking people to buy chocolate bars - this kid expanded his vision, teamed with a non profit and built his own social media campaign. The campaign was called PopcornForKids. His goal was to "give some fancy Cub Scout popcorn" to as many of kids who struggle with meals every day - not as matter of sustenance - but as an unexpected way to show people care about them. The boy teamed with Feeding America as a part of his project.

I can't speak to this success of this particular campaign. However, I can speak to the glimmer of hope that the social media work I'm involved with at Page One PR will also be good for me as a dad as my kids look for ideas to support their own fundraisers and groups - not to mention their greater ideals.