Blog Action Day started in 2007
as the initiative of just two people. Look how it’s grown! This year —
today, October 15 — some 9,400 blogs in 150 countries are spreading the
word about climate change to almost 13 million readers: Change.org is
running the event this year, and clearly doing a stellar job of it.
There are good lessons and ideas to be found in Blog Action Day, for even the
smallest nonprofit organization.
Take the Blog Action Day video, to start with:
Video has Viral Potential
Like many nonprofit causes, “climate change” is large, complex, and
difficult to show in video footage. Graphics and animation, set to an
ear-catching soundtrack, can help to fill that need. We’ve talked
before, too, about Animoto for nonprofits — an easy-to-use tool that turns your still photographs into a dynamic video without the need of high-tech skills or software.
Posting your video to YouTube makes it easy for supporters to share,
comment, embed the video on their own blogs and websites (as we’ve done
here), or — best yet — to respond with videos of their own.
Bear in mind, although YouTube is certainly the traffic leader, there
are many other video-sharing sites that can be used, too — you’ll find
the same BAD09 video at VodPod,
for example. (Here's a list of 8 best free video-sharing sites for
nonprofits, if you’d like to explore those wider options for
sharing your own organization’s video projects.)
RSS gives legs to Social Media
One click lets supporters promote Blog Action Day on Twitter or Facebook, but that’s just the beginning. A designated Twitter hashtag, #BAD09, helps Twitter users share links to their climate change blog posts, and the links are rebroadcast at http://twitter.com/blogactionday
as well as being livestreamed on the Blog Action Day website through
the magic of RSS feeds. Given the viral nature of RSS, there's no telling how far those
links will travel to find new readers and help to educate them about climate change!
Tweets and backlinks are a compelling reward for bloggers, too, so
participants get a little something back in exchange for raising
awareness of both the event and the cause — as well as the positive
feeling of taking part in a global online movement for good.
But you still need to make it incredibly easy for people to
participate, if you want your cause or event to get the numbers to be
noticed.
Easy Tools for your Supporters
Asking bloggers to write about climate change for one single post
may sound simple enough, but the topic can be a challenge even for the
environmentally inclined to tackle — and it is far removed from the
subjects that many of the participating bloggers might normally cover.
Blog Action Day has that covered, with a resource list to get bloggers started, and specific suggestions for how to write about climate change (without going far off-topic) on blogs about business, technology, lifestyle, health, design, travel, and more.
Badges for participation are an obvious extension of an offline tradition for nonprofits, and the distinctive Blog Action Day badge
comes in a variety of sizes and shapes to fit just about any blog
layout. Again, make it easy — provide your supporters by giving them a
snippet of code that they can just copy and paste to their own websites
in order to display your badge.
Some campaigns create badges but then ask their supporters to save
the image to their own web space, rather than “hot-linking” from the
original site. I’d advise against this if you’ve got the bandwidth to
host the badge images on your own space. For one thing, it’s much
easier for your non-techy readers in particular — several fewer steps
to take, and much less time involved, if all they need to do is copy
and paste a bit of code.
This also gives you an easy way to measure the exposure that your
badge is getting: the number of times the image is called from your
server will give about the most accurate gauge of its views that you
could hope for.
Do be sure to include a link back to your site in the copy-paste
badge code, too, as the click-throughs from various websites that
display your badge will be another important success metric of its
success when you come to review your campaign and plan the next one.
Audience Participation, too!
And — this is vital — don’t forget about all those people who are not
creators of online content, but primarily consumers of it! Online action must
convert to offline, real-world action, and these people are just as
capable of making that happen as the Internet content creators, the
webmasters and social media mavens and bloggers.
For those who don’t
have a blog or other Web-content space of their own, or for those who simply prefer to find
another way to participate, Blog Action Day offers a big list of other ways to take action
— from petitioning the US President to “lead the United States in
taking bold and significant action to reduce greenhouse gasses,” to
connecting with one of the many organizations who work globally on the
climate change issue year-round, to simply learning more about the
science and implications of climate change.
Could you do the same, for
your own supporters?
What other aspects of Blog Action Day give you ideas for promoting your nonprofit’s cause, campaign, or event?