Clicking the Like button on Facebook or signing an online petition may not actually make the world a better place, but it could be the first step. Regardless of what it takes to get there, taking action is a crucial step.
The advocacy group ONE, which works to alleviate global poverty and preventable disease, proved this by converting millions of YouTube views and Spotify listens into hundreds of thousands of actual actions.
See also: Protest Song Power: Music That Made a Difference
Jeff Davidoff, ONE's chief marketing officer, discussed the group's Agit8 campaign during a panel titled "The Charity Concert 2.0: No Ticket Required" Sunday evening at the Social Good Summit.
"The gateway drug to doing good is the online petition," Davidoff said. "If your first interaction with us is online watching a video, literally you need to move that mouse a quarter of an inch to the right and depress — now you're part of the game."
To get people into the game of activism, ONE asked modern musical acts from Green Day to One Direction to YouTube star Christina Grimmie to re-imagine famous protest songs.
The artists not only performed live at the Tate Modern museum in London, but ONE posted the resulting videos on YouTube and also released songs in several volumes on Spotify. The fifth and final volume hits Spotify Tuesday.
Davidoff said the YouTube videos generated more than 4.5 million views and 250,000 Spotify streams, which led to 500,000 actions, such as writing to an elected official.
"Half a million actions is a meaningful number of actions," he said. "Those numbers really matter."
The campaign was so successful, Davidoff said ONE plans to replicate it next year. The only difference: It will be entirely online, there will be no live component.
"We were not going to reach millions of people at a live show," Davidoff said.
While epic benefit concerts like Live 8 and the Concert for Bangladesh made a difference in the past, through sites like YouTube, music-loving activists of the future can get a free front-row seat.
Watch the video of Christina Grimmie's performance below.


The Social Good Summit is where big ideas meet new media to create innovative solutions and is brought to you by Mashable, The 92nd Street Y, The United Nations Foundation, The United Nations Development Programme, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Ericsson. Held during U.N. Week, the Social Good Summit unites a dynamic community of global leaders to discuss a big idea: the power of innovative thinking and technology to solve our greatest challenges.
Date: Sept. 22 through Sept. 24 Time: 12 to 6 p.m. each day Location: 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave., New York, N.Y. Tickets are sold-out, but tune into the Livestream.
BONUS: 10 Empowering Apps for Social Good
Gone are the days of daring your friends without consequences. When you challenge your friends to Budge, the person who loses the challenge needs to donate an agreed upon amount to a charity of the winner's choosing.
Available on iOS.
Charity Miles lets you raise money for your favorite causes while walking, running or biking. The app's corporate sponsors donate 25 cents for each mile you walk or run, and 10 cents for each mile you bike.
Charity Miles is available for iOS and Android.
With every photo you share, Johnson & Johnson donates $1 to a cause of your choosing. The Donate a Photo app, available on iOS and Android, also lets you follow your friends' photos, so you can keep up with your social life.
Great for foodies, photographers and humanitarians, this iOS app adds a great cause to your foodstagrams. When you dine and snap a food shot at one of the participating restaurants -- which, for now, are only in New York -- a meal is donated to a non-profit feeding schoolchildren in South Africa.
In this free iOS game, you'll travel with Maya, an Indian girl, as she navigates the slums in search of clean water. The longer it takes her to find water, the more school she misses.
The game was created in partnership with charity: water, which lends in-game missions and video scenes to the app.
Did you know that with the money you save cooking three of your own meals, you could fund someone's HIV medicine for three months? Instead is an iOS app that shows you how much you can save with simple tweaks in your lifestyle. Once you make those cheaper decisions, Instead encourages you to donate to a non-profit out of your savings.
My Life as a Refugee is an app for iOS and Android created by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It lets anyone around the world experience life fleeing from conflict or persecution. Through beautiful illustrations, you'll read the stories of the app's many characters, who have been separated from their loved ones and have experienced hardships.
The Recyclebank app, available for iOS and Android, rewards you for recycling. The gamification of recycling awards points that you can redeem in stores and in the app.
Forget daily deal apps -- there are apps that give back while giving you a great deal. TangoTab, available for iOS and Android, donates meals to food banks every time a diner purchases one of its restaurant deals.
Eager for a new volunteer program? This iOS app brings the online volunteer network onto your smartphone. It has a sleek interface that will help you find great opportunities to give back near you.
VolunteerMatch lets you select which skill you're looking to use to volunteer, so you can lend your expert web design or managerial skills, for example.
Image: Mashable