What Can Recruiters Learn From the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge?

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you've seen the millions of #ALSIceBucketChallenge videos pop up on your Facebook News Feed. While scrolling through video after video of your friends and family members dumping large buckets of ice water over their heads, you've probably thought to yourself 1) Is this actually raising money for ALS, and 2) How did this social media challenge become such a phenomenon?

Some background on ALS and the #IceBucketChallenge

According to the ALS Association, around 30,000 Americans have ALS at any given time. Additionally, "Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed." It's obvious that this disease is extremely serious, so we wanted to take a deeper look into just how the ALS Association made such a serious, sad topic so viral and fun.

The ALS ice bucket challenge began as a social media contest where those who were tagged by friends could either dump a bucket of icy water over their own head or donate $100 to ALS. Many raised the question, "Will a competition in which participants are encouraged to dump ice water so that they don't have to donate actually raise any money for this cause?" The answer, in short, is yes, it absolutely has - and the amount of funding the ALS Association has received from this competition is actually shocking. Because of how viral this challenge has gone, the ALS Association has raised approximately $48.1 million dollars as of August 21, 2014.

How the ALS Association has made the #IceBucketChallenge challenge a success

The ALS Association has really gone to work encouraging everyone to participate in the challenge and increase its virility. On their website, the ALS Association encourages participants to use the hashtags #icebucketchallenge, #alsicebucketchallenge, and #strikeoutals to grow and monitor the conversation. Additionally, they created social media graphics for participants to use on their Twitter and Facebook profiles once they've completed the challenge, which is a great way to build awareness about your brand and control the conversation.

The ALS Association even went so far as to respond to a recent concern that certain parts of the country are in a time of drought and shouldn't be wasting water, saying "Please be thoughtful about water usage! If you’re in an area of the country or world affected by drought, repurpose the water for later use or help spread ALS awareness by becoming an ALS advocate, joining the Walk to Defeat ALS® in your community, getting involved in our fundraisers, or sharing information about this disease via social media. Or you can make a donation instead at www.alsa.org/donate."

What can recruiters learn from the challenge?

1. Social contests work. With the #IceBucketChallenge, the ALS Association has proven that social media contests and competitions absolutely work in motivating employees to tell your story. People love fun, viral competitions and are happy to get involved. Use this theory and apply it to your own organization - organize a social media contest to encourage employees to tell your very own employer brand story!

2. Involving employees builds company trust. Involving employees in the conversation about your employer brand on social media makes them feel trusted. Remember: employees are your best brand advocates! It's easy for them to share their experience and their story at the push of a button, so encourage them to do so. Plus, in order to get employee referral programs to work, you need employees to be engaged.

3. The Halo effect is real. Remember that when it comes to the success of social media competitions such as the ALS challenge, there's a halo effect - once one employee participates, the rest will follow - just as we've seen with ALS ice bucket challenge videos flooding our Facebook news feeds. One person sharing their positive experience will lead to others having a good feeling about your brand. So get to sharing! Everyone at your organization can contribute to social media competitions and they will love working together to create a great employer brand. Building an employer brand isn't just about one or two recruiters or marketers telling a story - it requires challenges, collaboration and communication.