Guest guest Posted May 21, 2008 Report Share Posted May 21, 2008 13 ways to more effective online activism! By Deane Rimerman - http://forestpolicyresearch.org/13-ways-to-be-a-better-online-activist/ 1) Keep a fire in your belly! Online work can be very draining, stay inspired! Computer time requires a counterbalance of rigorous physical exercise. Also an artistic outlet seems to be the best kept secret of the most talented activists. 2) Setup profiles on as many networking sites as possible. (ex: my networking links: http://forestpolicyresearch.org/about-2/ ) It doesn't take long to set up a profile and five minutes of friend requesting every few days can rapidly build a large network of very real live caring people. Once you set yourself up with lots of friends and send an announcement to them all… That's when it only takes them five seconds to spread your message to all their friends, and their friends may even send the message to all their friends. These kinds of networks are becoming very powerful. 3) Spend less time talking and emailing the day away. Your time is precious! Focus it on making your campaign message more impressive, more refined, more worthy of attention. Any material you've written that is older than a couple weeks doesn't fly in cyber-reality. Fresh off-the-cuff material that seems to come from a real human being is what makes its way around the networks the most. Also when your campaign /personality is continually unique and creative in ways that people have never heard or scene before… That's when people start paying attention and supporting your cause. In other words, if you want to succeed you have to be prolific! 4) Web 2.0 is ever changing. Keep an eye out for trends and popular sites in relation to your demographic. Try out social networking sites when they get popular. Don't expect too much from 'em until you've spent significant time growing your profile. The most valuable time you can spend online for your campaign is in meeting new people and getting them to accept your friend requests. Consider this a discipline that - if your creative and passionate enough - pressures you to refine and perfect your message, as well as your ability to turn strangers into friends. (caution see #1) 5) Currently Myspace and Facebook are the primary tool you'll need to use to grow your support base. Send messages, post bulletins, etc. Keep all your profiles alive and fresh! Change photos often. Use all the major tools to be everpresent in your friends online lives. (Note: A wilderness group in BC recently used recurring facebook messages to organize a rally with more than a 1000 people. It was the largest BC forest protection rally http://www.wildernesscommitteevictoria.org/gallery_af_rally.php in more than a decade.) 6) Set up alternative myspace and facebook accounts where you can try out social networking software like: friendtools.net which does mass friend requests, as well as mass comment postings. Sometimes if you aren't careful using this kinds of automated social networking software means you are seen as a spammer and your account will be deleted without due process. Also there's new software like OnePage and Sociogami that seeks to integrate all of your online profiles into one interface. Easier said than done thus far… 7) Your communications need to occur in all 5 formats: Text, Image, Sound, Video, and most important: in-person in the real world. Each person your trying to reach has a preference for one of these five. Ideally your in-person in-the-real-world format is the foundation on which you will build your other four formats. (Note: Your campaign is at its best if it is not solely in front of a computer) 8) Video and TV is the primary preferred format of your audience. How many times have you heard someone say: " I got your email, but I haven't had time to read it yet? " As environmental and social justice activists we too often are the ones who don't own a TV or don't want to spend time watching DVDs. That's great, I'm the same way, but 90% of the people around you find great value in watching their TV screens. So put together a slideshow / video / web-cam with windows movie maker software, or some other kind of more ethical harder to use software. Then load this video to your You-tube profile. Then You-Tube has a new function that let's you announce your new video by sending a message to all of your myspace and facebook friends. See where we're going with this? 9) Know how an internet marketer gets to the top of a googlesearch engine these days? They make a video about their product, then they load it to U-Tube, as well as a variety of other video watching sites. They also use an mass video uploader http://www.videoandclips.com/ software. Then they take the links to all those sites that their video was uploaded to and send them thru their social networks / social bookmarking sites. 10) Create original interesting material in all 5 formats every ten business days. Activist campaigns that succeed online today are the ones that provide updated ever-changing quality content that's personal in the same way a friend is personal. When it comes to online activism: novelty and newness is what keeps people interested! Nobody reads tired, dull message when something completely new and fascinating is just one click away. 11) So who's really getting your message? The nature of the internet is that you can find detailed analysis of your traffic. As part 2 of the megalithic Stomper release there is now Site Seer http://www.stompernet.net/goingnatural3/ , which gives you the ability to graphicly interpret which of your publicity stunts / presentations was effective and why, and to whom. This data is also essential to your fundraising program. A popular article about 28 different ways to generate revenue with your websites / weblogs has been analysed here http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/848/dissecting-28-ways-to-make-money-with-y\ our-website/ .. 12) Approach your online endeavors with a sense of history. Learn a sense of perspective for what the printing press / internet has done for society. Understand the ways it's development into web 2.0 allows it's concept to grow and change. The best 5 minute video about this can be seen here http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=vowb3nos3o . Also I wrote the first of three brief histories of the subject which can be viewed here http://forestpolicyresearch.org/history-of-the-printed-word/ .. 13) Know that your best online workbench to test networking machines is wordpress.ORG Most weblog server accounts are not controlled by the bloggers themselves. But with wordpress.org you host your own blog on your own server. It keeps you in controlof your content! Also self-hosting a wordpresss.org blog allows you to choose from 1,000s of plugins, many of which can automate the complex ways in which you can meaningfuly onnect with your readers. To learn more visit the folks at Becomeablogger.com http://becomeablogger.com/ . Lastly, I'd like to thank the folks with Become a Blogger as they are they are the ones who initially inspired me to do this research. You can learn more about how I was inspired at: http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com Be well, Deane Below is an up-to-date list of links where my online forest activist analytics and artistics can be experienced. Network with me @ my Profile sites: Myspace http://www.myspace.com/olyecology Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=645746985 Tribe http://people.tribe.net/deane Friendster http://profiles.friendster.com/3706548 LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/pub/5/b31/125 Tagged http://www.tagged.com/forestpolicyresearch Care2 care2.com/olyecology Development Crossing http://www.developmentcrossing.com/profile/DeaneRimerman Bebo http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=6749756620 Network with me @ my Bookmarking sites: Technorati http://www.technorati.com/people/technorati/ForestPolicyResearch StumbleUpon http://peacefromtrees.stumbleupon.com/ Digg http://digg.com/users/denaetr Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/ForestPolicyResearch Network / RSS with my Blogs: Earth's Tree News http://olyecology.livejournal.com/ Forest Policy Research http://forestpolicyresearch.org/ Keep an eye on my media: YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/peacefromtrees Nature Photos http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w166/peacefromtrees/ People photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/26766130@N05/ Singing http://www.myspace.com/olyecology Photo-Poems http://www.peacefromtrees.org/ WetPaint http://olyecology.wetpaint.com/?t=anon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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