The passion is amazing! We’re still in our first week and the response is unbelievable. Thanks to everyone who’s participated so far.

We firmly believe that every charity who is nominated stands to benefit from this campaign through increased awareness. That was the key reason that we decided to hold this contest in an open forum and encourage voting and participation through social media.

If you browse the top ten list, there probably a few organizations that you’ve never heard of before. Better yet, search Twitter for CommuniCause and see people publicly rally votes for their favorite cause.

In the last few days, I’ve had a few requests from participants asking for tips on how to promote their charity and hopefully break into the top ten. Given that our mission is not just to pick a winner, but to raise awareness for every charity that participates, I decided to answer these requests in a public forum. I’ll be releasing these tips periodically, so make sure you check back.

Tip number 1:

This tip is probably one of the most obvious, but in my opinion, could be one of the most effective.

Notify the cause you’re voting for about the promotion and get them involved, encourage them to reach out to their user base and rally support.

Alot of non profits have been around for years and have extensive contact lists. When I look at the organizations currently occupying the top ten, they’re not there because they’re mega-charities, they’re there because the organization is participating and leading the charge.

Thanks for participating

Jeremy Hilton

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you have or for tips about promoting your cause via social media.

Email: jeremy.communicause@mindcomet.com
Twitter:  @jeremyhilton

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It’s only day three of CommuniCause and your passion and commitment to charity is coming through loud and clear. Quite frankly it’s amazing! So far, we have thousands of votes and our analytics are indicating that 95% of those votes are via word-of-mouth channels. People are getting deeply involved and rallying support for their cause. Your response is no surprise. We’ve reviewed every organization that was nominated and all of them are doing very special work…we just didn’t realize it would happen this quickly!

While most of the votes are coming through the site, we also created a Twitter voting engine. Did you know that you can easily get extra votes for your cause using Twitter?

To vote via Twitter, please include the three following items:

@communicause

This is what we’re using to search for your vote. Without it, our engine won’t pick it up.

http://ow.ly/4pcs

Adding the URL is all about helping us to drive traffic, and ultimately awareness, back to CommuniCause

The cause specfic hashtag

The voting engine uses this to attribute your vote to your cause. Without it, your vote won’t count! You can find your cause’s hashtag on your cause’s “share” page, which can be located using the charity index page.

That’s it! Didn’t I say it was easy to get more votes?

If you’re confused about what to include, here’s an example Tweet (please don’t use this one, it won’t count as a vote): @communicause I vote for The My Favorite Foundation to win a 25K social media makeover http://ow.ly/4pcs #cause0000

Please encourage your followers to retweet! Each retweet counts as an extra vote for your cause.

If you have any questions about Twitter voting or need assistance, please submit a request via our contact form, ask a question in our Facebook discussion board or message us on Twitter.

Thanks for participating

Jeremy Hilton

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you have or for tips about promoting your cause via social media.

Email: jeremy.communicause@mindcomet.com
Twitter:  @jeremyhilton

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