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Go Viral to Support National Mentoring Month!
Dear Mentoring Programs,
The 9th annual National Mentoring Month is in full swing and so far the attention to mentoring in local and national media has been phenomenal! This year, the Harvard Mentoring Project hopes to create a groundswell of activism around Thank Your Mentor Day on January 21, by using social media to encourage people across the country to pay tribute to their mentors.
Using three main online platforms email, Facebook, and Twitter we are asking people to promote national mentoring month and Thank Your Mentor Day.
To make our campaign "go viral" we need your help. Here are a few very simple instructions to get you started. Mentors, if you are not as familiar with social media, why not ask your tech-savvy mentees for help!
Remember: emails, website testimonies, and Facebook testimonies can begin right now, but we want our Twitter push to take place on Thursday, January 21.
Email (To be sent before January 21)
Send an email out to your organization's listserve and to your own friends and family, encouraging everyone to thank their mentors by posting a tribute on our website or Facebook page, sending an email, or posting a tweet. A message that you can paste directly into the email is provided here, with further instructions on using Facebook and Twitter below. Feel free to include these instructions in your email as well.
Email Message
When you were growing up, was there someone in your lifea teacher, neighbor, relative, coach, friend, or bosswho encouraged you, showed you the ropes, and helped you become who you are today? That person was a mentor to you.
January is National Mentoring Month, and on January 21, millions of people around the country will recognize the mentors in their lives by posting tributes, sending emails and writing tweets. Here are a few simple ways to thank your mentor on January 21, and join in the wave of gratitude that is sweeping across the country.
- Send an email to your mentor thanking them and asking them to pass it on.
- Post a tribute to your mentor on our website.
- Post a tribute to your mentor on our Facebook page and make sure to share the page with your friends.
- Tweet the following message on Twitter using the hashtag #thanksmentor and a link our Facebook page where they can write a tribute. The shortened link is http://bit.ly/79yhFr
Tweet text: Who changed your life? Thank them! #thanksmentor http://bit.ly/79yhFr
For more information about National Mentoring Month, visit www.nationalmentoringmonth.org.
Further Instructions
Facebook (Start posting before January 21)
We now have a Who Mentored You Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Who-Mentored-You/247444068268?v=wall) that people can use to post testimonies about their mentors and access more information about National Mentoring Month. Please encourage your networks to become fans of the page and share it with their own networks. Here are a few simple things for you and/or your organization to do on Facebook:
- Become a fan of the Who Mentored You Facebook Page
- Share the Who Mentored You Facebook Page with your friends
- Post a tribute to your mentor on the Facebook Page
- Post a message in your status bar that says: "Thank you [insert mentor's name] for being my mentor. Who mentored you? January 21 is Thank Your Mentor Day so thank your mentor in your status bar and become a fan of Who Mentored You?"
Twitter (For on-the-day tweets on January 21)
- Use our hashtag phrase - #thanksmentor when writing a tweet about Thank Your Mentor Day. (A hashtag phrase is the # symbol followed by a unique phrase that identifies your message.) This way, we can easily search and track the spread and reach of our effort on Twitter. If enough people use this hashtag phrase, it will become a "trending topic" on Twitter and will show up on everybody's Twitter homepage, indicating it is a main topic of the day.
- Post the shortened Facebook URL http://bit.ly/79yhFr at the end of your tweet to send people to the Facebook page.
Tweet text: Who changed your life? Thank them! #thanksmentor http://bit.ly/79yhFr
For any questions regarding the Thank Your Mentor Day online media push, please contact Susan Moses at the Harvard School of Public Health by emailing mentor@hsph.harvard.edu or calling 617-432-1038.
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