Social media has many purposes. Companies use it to sell, help with their brand and build communities with similar interests. I use Social media for all of the above and I also like to throw in a little social good.
I first got the “do some social good” bug while building out the TangoTab brand here in Toronto. TangoTab is an innovative mobile app that leverages Social and food that helps food banks and other food related causes. The next Social good item was a twitter chat called #SMRebelsHelp (Social Media Rebels Help) with host Robert Fondalo (follow this guy). This twitter chat helped start ups and worthy causes get much needed Social Media exposure.
Recently while listening to the radio, watching the news and eating supper, I caught Pat Foran of CTV ( Follow Pat at @patforanCTVNews ) news discussing a couple that was basically ripped off by a wedding video production company. Here is the short version. Leandra and Frank were married almost 2 years ago and still had not received their video memories they had paid for. Pat Foran aired their story on Consumer Alerts and I happened to be watching the news. I thought to myself, our company has the resources to probably help them out. So I reached out to Pat on twitter.
@patforanctvnews The couple who needs a wedding video edited...I may know a company that may do it for them free - Nice story
— William Goddard 🍁 (@W_Goddard) June 18, 2013
Even though we don’t offer wedding video services (yet), I thought, with our team of experienced story tellers, television and ad production from Jennifer Connolly and video services work Francisco Piñeiro had done in the past for us, I knew we could deliver.
Luckily, the couple was fortunate enough to get all the footage thanks to Pat at CTV and their team who tracked it down. After some emails and calls with Leandra and Frank, a meeting was scheduled with Jennifer to discuss what they were promised. Jennifer story boarded their needs and shared that with Francisco. With a few back and forth’s and some serious editing time, Jennifer and myself met with Leandra earlier last week to deliver the finished product.
Here is the email from Leandra to both Pat and our team.
Hope you are doing well! I wanted to send you an email to thank you again so very much for airing our story on your segment of Consumer Alert! After the story aired, you passed along William Goddard’s contact information as he had sent you a message offering to edit our video for us free of charge. He and his team were so unbelievably nice and generous to us – and edited our entire video just in time for our 2 year anniversary 🙂 They provided us with an amazing DVD which captured every element of our wedding beautifully. The video is a true treasure for us and we are so delighted to have this memento which we have been anxiously awaiting for so long. Thank you so much for your involvement in our story. It is because of your help and William’s generosity that we have our video today!!! We could never have imagined receiving such an outpouring of kindness and are very grateful!!
Thank you again for all of your help and involvement. It was a true pleasure meeting you.
Kindest regards,
Leandra
Let me end this with an ask of everyone that reads this;
If you use social media, please take a few minutes once per week to do some “Social Good” RT a worthy cause, answer a question or provide assistance to those that ask something. And if you hear, see or come across something where you can truly make a difference, Just do it! You’ll feel good about it…Trust me, WE DO!
