Social media followers have been cited as the inspiration behind an RAF Lossiemouth airman’s attempt to raise £15,000 for a services charity.
Jon Nixon is currently CO at RAF Lossiemouth’s XV(R) Squadron, responsible for the training of all Tornado GR4 aircrew.
He is well known for getting involved in a variety of fundraising stunts including playing 100 holes of golf without a break and a 24-hour ten-pin bowling contest.
Now he is set to take on his biggest challenge yet – running the 2015 London Marathon and hoping to reach his target with the help of his army of online and offline friends with the RAF Benevolent Fund as the beneficiaries.
Ina blog for the RAFBF website, Jon said: “I recently raised £500 for the RAF Benevolent Fund after an impulsive decision late one evening. I had left my car 19km from home during an evening out – and decided the best way to collect the car would be to run and get it the following morning.
“But only my friends, family and Twitter followers would sponsor me to do it. Over the four hours before I set out I learned more about the power of Social Media – many of my followers were glued to the story as it unravelled.”
Jon’s ‘Twitter Challenge’ came when he published on the Social Media site saying he wanted 1500 followers by the following week – his tweet gathered momentum after he said he would run the London Marathon if he got to 2000 followers by midnight on February 1.
He said: “My followers quickly raced to that target and by midnight on that day I’d passed the 2000 mark, gaining more than 800 new followers.
“To help me raise my fundraising target I’m hoping to get the whole of RAF Lossiemouth and the local community behind me – and hopefully my Twitter followers will support me as well.”
Jon added that he could not think of a better way to celebrate another milestone that year, as his squadron will be 100 years old.
Twitter users can follow Jon’s progress to the London Marathon by joining him on the social media site