The power and speed of social media for spreading the word.

So two days ago my wife calls me on her way home from work. She is a little upset at some of the news they got in a meeting after work. To give you a little background, my wife is a teacher. Apparently Texas, the state we live in is cutting $5 billion in public school funding. This means things like Art, Music classes and Librarians will be cut along with many other younger teachers depending upon your district.

So you can see why my wife and her school were upset. So the leaders recommended that everyone start doing some old school techniques and start writing their senators. My wife on the other hand has heard me talking about social media for years now and has also been on facebook for several years herself, has decided to update the way she reaches out. Her goal is to get as many people following her page and educate everyone how to get on board and make a difference.

In as little as 2 days, she has set up a Facebook Community Page under the name Save Texas Schools. Beyond just setting this page up, she has been able to collect some 50+ people getting on board with this cause. Only a handful are actual contacts she knows personally.

The great thing is these people are passionate about this cause. They are starting to rally the troops and set up meetings to discuss this problem. Keep in mind these are not necessarily local people they are all over the state. There have been a few people who have already reached out to my wife to connect and join them for in person meetings or phone meetings to band together and solve this issue.

If you are in Texas and do not want to see these big cuts ($5 billion), please go and join this group to Save Texas Schools.

For the rest of you that are regular readers of this blog, here is how it ties into business marketing. I have business owners look at me like I am crazy when I recommend we start using social media to help build their brand, connect with their audience, build traffic to their website and help convert people into leads. The key is getting a bunch of people passionate about your brand. Look at companies like Apple. An Apple user will fight till the death to keep their macs if they are in a majority Windows PC office. That is some passion! Apple’s multiple facebook pages are going through the roof as are Apples profits.

So do you want to get your message out to the masses and build a strong following of evangelists? Than maybe you need to set up a Facebook Fan Page for your business. Think of how cool it would be if in two days your business got 50+ followers and had people start calling you to learn more or buy your product. That is the true power and speed of social media when done right. Now get social!