Viral Marketing Chatter

Arbor Day Foundation Joins Facebook: Plant A Tree!

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Arbor Day Foundation has recently added a cool application to Facebook to tap into the social media network and spread the word about planting trees.  With National Arbor Day coming up on April 25^th I think this is a great way to promote the Arbor Day Foundation message and tap into the growing demographic that is using social media sites every day. 

Some of you may be reading this thinking, “Facebook? Isn’t that site for college kids who post embarrassing pictures of themselves that they don’t want their bosses/parents to see?”  Granted, there are lots of college students who use Facebook but it’s also emerging as one of THE social networking sites for corporations and businesses to take advantage of.  According to Forrester 1/3 of the users are professionals of some kind, less than half of Facebook users are still in college, and the fastest growing demographic is 25+.

Here’s how Tree Planter works:  You purchase a virtual tree for $1 and Arbor Day will plant a real tree in a real national forest for each tree you “purchase” and send to a friend.  You can also invite your friends to join in the fun and install the Tree Planter application on their own Facebook page and pass along the message.  The goal is to plant 1,000,000 trees, and Arbor Day has teamed up with Toyota who is footing the bill for the first 50,000 trees planted.  The application was added at the beginning of March and has already planted 19,073 trees.

Some Cool features of the application include:

• A wide variety of tree species and other wild life to choose from to send to your friends

• An updated “Leaderboard” with top tree givers in the nation and also divided up into any “groups” you belong to

• A very easy way to select friends from your network to invite to use the application and gift trees to their network

A few recommendations to Arbor Day to make the Tree Planter even better:

• Take advantage of the blog and create more fresh content to get people excited about coming to visit and download the application

• Jazz up the Arbor Day Foundation Facebook page, (which is different from the Tree Planter page) and utilize some of the feeder applications to promote the fresh blog content and promote the Tree Planter

• How about creating a link or blurb about the Tree Planter on the Arbor Day website?  Could be a great way to let more people know about it

Overall I think the Tree Planter is a great idea to spread a worthwhile and important message.  When I installed it and planted trees for my friends I felt like I was doing something good for the environment and helping make a difference.  Plus it’s fun to pick out the different trees and wildlife to send out to all your connections.

If you haven’t joined Facebook yet I would encourage you to check it out and get involved in all of the interesting things people are passing along.  If nothing else you may find out what your old high school or college crush is up to these days, right?  J