Tag: Snnprofit

Blogging for a Children’s Charity

My friend Beth Kanter has just posted a request for help from a charity based in North Yorkshire and Nairobi.

Alison Lowndes is asking what she can do to attract more interest in the blog she co-writes about the situation of vulnerable children in Kenya. Nedra Weinrich and Celeste at the Studio501c have already chipped in. Alison here are 5 thoughts from your side of the Atlantic.

1 Use your network and your networks’ network. Do more of what you have just done by aproaching Beth for help. E-mail as many people as you can who may blog and ask them (and their friends) if they can write an entry about your blog. It will help increase the number of blogs linking to yours – which in turn will draw attention to what you write (good content by the way).

2 Use more links in your blog entries. Blogging is as much about conversation as it is about sharing information. Write more posts which make linked references to other blogs. Thinks of these as the body language of blogging – each link sends a message to other bloggers that you want to join their conversation.

3 Use tags – your recent piece on Madeleine McCann is pertinent and provocative. Tagging it will help other bloggers (and news organisations) find it and respond to it. If it’s not clear how to do this in your blogging platform you can generate tags using keotagger and other similar sites. You might also like to agree a tag with bloggers who share your interests – so you can find each others work. the Nptech tag is a great example of this.

4 The old blogging mantra of “trackbacks are good”. Trackbacks are a special type of link. If someone uses a trackback link for your site what they write on their blog will also appear as a comment in your blog. That encourages people to write about your material. If your current blogging platform doesn’t allow you to easily include trackbacks think about moving to another platform sooner rather than later. (I think though you can now use trackbacks on blogger)

5 Use Flickr to host photos and link it back to your blog. Kenya is a magnet for British holiday makers, They are likely to find your pics on Flickr and that will attract their attention to your work. From that you may find donors and even online or on the ground volunteer effort.

It won’t happen overnight – but good luck.

Update – the pic is from AVIF’s Flickr site. See also this entry from David Wallace – more on principles than practicalities.  he suggest the four p’s:

  • Participate
  • Plug-in
  • Play
  • Persist

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Lisa Tarbuck, networks, theatre and community safety – a new podcast on the Grassroots Channel

Our last podcast helped stir things up a bit. The Bishop of Birmingham’s intervention on behalf of Diversity Networks in Birmingham was reflected on the news site The Stirrer where supporters and critics of the networks also began to get to grips with some of the issues.

This time we have another podcast from the Grassroots Channel on the future of community networks in Birmingham, including thoughts from Chris Dyer of the Birmingham Community Safety Partnership, plus we hear from actress Lisa Tarbuck in Brierley Hill on hoodies, adolescence, the National Youth Theatre and stronger communities.

Greenmyapple bears fruit.

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The BBC reports on Apple’s plans to make “greener” products. Steve Jobs statement is a direct response to the almost perfectly pitched and pithily web 2.0 Greenmyapple campaign from Greenpeace (which also won the activism Webby on Tuesday). I wrote earlier this year about how it uses the weight of the brand to intensify the pressure.

What is interesting about this is also how it demonstrates lessons for combining online campaigning with face to face work. Greenmyapple harnessed the passion and creativity of apple customers to add pressure whilst also talking directly to the company. And they made the campaign personal both online and offline, (adding pressure to a particularly pertinent member of the Apple Board, Al Gore). Again the response was personal, directly from the man at the top. As campaign insider Brian Fitzgerald puts it

There aren’t many campaigns where the CEO of your target steps out and responds directly to your demands….This has been a tremendous confirmation of the power of consumer campaigning.

Reaction has been good for Apple, Macnn may have blunty said Apple Surrendered but approves of what’s happening, ecorazzi has it as one small step but a good one. But there has been grumbling about Greenpeace. Over at Ecogeek some comments suggest this is more to do with Apple’s competitors going green than the campaign, Slashdot grumpily dismissed the quality of the Greenpeace campaign and this translates the subtext of the Steve Jobs letter.

All that aside I’m impressed, and echo Green Business which writes realistically about the efforts companies will make to protect their brand by aligning with public opinion. And if you check the tags below you’ll see just how many individual and business brands were under pressure.

Good campaigning is about sensing these pressures and then applying your own – it’s also about being realistic and gracious in (half) “victory”. Congratulations Greenpeace.

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Welcome to the Videodrome. Why High speed broadband is the wrong priority.

Two sources tell us the same thing – we need 100mbs internet links and we need them now. The Broadband Stakeholder Group tells us that future internet use in the UK will flounder without an expensive infrastructure upgrade

There was little evidence that the UK’s existing telecoms infrastructure would be able to bring such high speeds to much of the population

Whilst Om Malik warns the same is true of the US

Every day we twiddle our thumbs, we lose some of the edge when it comes to developing clever ways to use the bandwidth.

For me Om has the problem wrong. The first thing to solve is universal access. Ensuring everyone has their 2 or 4mbps is also going to unleash innovation. Compare it with the problem of clean water. Water to every home is the first priority, but not every home needs an industrial sized pipe. Those that do can and will find ways to get the supply they need.

And vast speeds dont give us more time. Being able to download an entire library does not mean I’ll read it. Downloading a thousand podcasts doesn’t mean I listen to them. If we want the internet to drive innovation and support some social benefit then universal access comes first, better upload speeds to make it easier for people to participate and express themselves next, and only then a more widely available ultra high speed network.

After all the latter is really designed to support the videodrome – as much about the online TV and advertising as it is about innovation which improves lives.

Others: Skuds Eric
Hat Tip Drew B Stewart Jones

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