Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have noticed my attempted contest last month.
Then again, you might not have, because all in all, it was a tremendous fizzle. I hyped it for two weeks, tweeting about it two or three times a day, and then I got one participant. One. Thank you, @mmj5170! Without you, it would have been total failure. And even then, he refused to accept a book for his trouble until he beat his own record, so I guess he came in both first and second.
I’ve been told it failed because I expected people to actually go out and do something.
Because I actually expected them to care enough about the plight of others to get up and push the wagon. I’ve been told people don’t do that anymore. But I think we’re better than that. I think there are are better, more socially responsible ways to run a contest than to have you mindlessly tweet my name over and over and hope your particular slip of e-paper gets pulled like a wireframe rabbit from the digital hat.
I think we can make this work. But I don’t know how.
So I need your help. I need your ideas. I need your comments. Tell me any ideas you think you might have, any way you think you might know to make this work. There are people going to bed hungry every night in every nation on Earth, and most of those people really can’t help it, for whatever reason. We can’t feed them all, you and I; we can’t push every stalled wagon in the world, all at the same time.
But we should do what we can.
Tell me how to work this, and let’s make it work this time around.
When it’s your turn to ride, ride. But when it’s your turn to push the wagon, get out and do it.
OK, Levi, happy to brainstorm.
Briefly:
what’s the aim of the contest? Who are you trying to reach, and what are you trying to do?
If you could give a little info on that I’ll try and set people I know on helping you figure out how to do it
.-= Dan Holloway´s last blog ..Dan Holloway’s Crash Pad =-.
Well, the cynical view is that I just want to give away some books. Extend my reader base, and all that. The better answer is that I want to do so as a result of a contest that will both make people feel better for participating, and make the lives of those around us a little better.
I want to do some sort of contest that rewards people for giving their time, money, or food donations to their local food bank. I don’t think that’s asking too much, but then, I’ve been called crazy for half a century, now.
Levi
I did see the contest! I did. But I thought it would be cheating if I entered as I already volunteer 2 days a week at the local food pantry. We do need to do something to help. maybe we can get a few more bloggers in a loop and bombard the twitter ;D
When our trailer at the pantry was stolen a lot of people donated money through paypal. You might consider that as an option.
.-= Julie Butcher- Fedynich´s last blog ..Magic Spreadsheet for Writers! =-.