As promised: My notes from the “L.A. Blogs, Green Blogs; New Media and Social Change” panel, organized by Green L.A. My ideas mostly had to do with local blogs, since I run what’s primarily a v. LA-centric blog.
My overall suggestion: Consider web writers / reporters / bloggers not just as people who might write about your work, but as members of your local community — and potential supporters and participants in your organization.
After all, many local bloggers directly write about groups they’re involved with. For example, LAist broke the cyclist vs. motorist with road rage incident on Mandeville Canyon Road story because one of the site’s contributors, Stephen Box, is v. involved with the cycling community. Similarly, BREATHE LA’s efforts to organize at California Air Resources Board’s public hearing and TreePeople’s Citizen Forester Class both got great first-person blog coverage — the kind that “demystifies” nonprofits and their activities to encourage first-timers to check out orgs’ initiatives.
To that end, I suggest that activist organizations use the very resources that bloggers / writers themselves use in order to network and gather information. Some tips:
1. Get a website. A no brainer, but something Green L.A. still hasn’t done — though I hear there’s a test site somewhere. Having a site up — even it’s just a basic “about us” page with contact info — is more important than constructing a gorgeous site. Otherwise, the new media doesn’t know how to contact you, and even if you do get press, the people reading said story have no way of contacting you for further involvement or info. Your story then has little chance of spreading.
2. Think beyond the traditional email newsletter. Because in case you missed it, we all have too much email, which is apparently “creating anxiety in the workplace, adversely affecting the ability to focus, diminishing productivity and threatening family bonds.”
An easy way of doing this is keeping a blog — one of two types, depending on your resources (or lack thereof):
>> Unique content blog. Having a blog alone will not automatically tap into a new, young population of potential members / supporters — which is why when an already cash-strapped, under-staffed nonprofit asks me if they should start a blog, I usually say a blog prolly wouldn’t be a good ROI for them.
If you decide to invest in a blog, you really do have to invest in it — meaning you’ll need frequent updates with unique content and interesting perspectives. You also have to be comfortable giving the blog’s writers permission to express opinions; bland regurgitations of what other news outlets wrote about you won’t get particularly popular.
Some of the ones I like and read: Carl Pope of Sierra Club’s Taking the Initiative, Environmental Working Group’s Enviroblog (run mostly by Amanda Hanley, a full-time employee dedicated to blogs), and most recently, Mark Gold of Heal the Bay’s Spouting Off.
>> Barebones blog. If you don’t have the money or time to write a blog with unique content and an interesting voice(es), consider using a blog — with an email signup option — in lieu of the email newsletter. Such a blog wouldn’t require any more time than you currently spend putting together a newsletter, but would let you:
1) provide timely content for visitors who haven’t signed up for a newsletter,
2) automatically archive info re: your org’s activity, making it easy for any blogger / writer to find out what you’ve been up to both recently and in the past,
3) allow people to get timely info re: your org in the way they want it, whether that’s via direct blog reading, rss feed, or email.
For example, most people who read green LA girl rarely visit the green LA girl page, except to leave a comment when so moved. The vast majority of green LA girl readers either read it via an rss feed reader (Bloglines, etc.) or via email digest (automated via Feedblitz) without ever visiting the site. This means that by writing a blog post, I reach at least 3 different types of readers with distinct web reading preferences.
3. Use the tools new media people are using. Facebook, Twitter, and most things Google are the way to go. Get on them, and figure out how they work — then make them work for you.
What you should NOT do: Waste time convincing people to use your own unique tools. People on the web have already signed up for a lot of stuff and learned a lot of new apps — and are rarely willing to sign up for and learn about another one. Thus, it’s generally a bad idea to try to create your own community site via Ning or other apps (or even worse, building one from scratch — both a time and money wasting effort).
For example, the Westside Permaculture group — which BTW doesn’t have a website — keeps sending me emails to join its “Wiserearth” group page. I like what the permaculture group’s doing, but the signup’s not gonna happen. In contrast, when I got an invite to add Heal the Bay as a cause on Facebook, I hit “add” — and apparently have recruited two more people to boot (see image above; they saw it on my page and hit add without my asking them to do so).
Twitter’s a newer tool that’s getting some press for its social media potential. A recent NY Times article mentions how Whole Foods, Zappos, and Southwest Airlines are all tweeting. I follow Whole Foods in an attempt to win gift certificates –
The key is to find ways not to be intrusive by using methods people use anyway, instead of forcing them to adapt to your new method (no matter how cool you think it is).
Second lastly — A few blogs on nonprofits and social media you might find helpful:
>> Beth Kanter’s Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media
>> Britt Bravo’s blog at NetSquared: Remixing the web for social change
Lastly: Here’s a post on “50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing,” which could be helpful for activist organizations too. This post also illustrates how social media’s used — I found the post by way of Felicia Sullivan‘s tweet.
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