Today is Blog Action Day and this year’s theme is Climate Change. Earlier this week, I posted a summary from this month’s #4Change chat that focused on social media in the Climate Change movement. If you haven’t seen it, check it out here!
What’s Blog Action Day?
Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be one of the largest-ever social change events on the web.
At the time of this posting, there are already 9,340 blogs contributing to Climate Change conversations today in 150 countries. That’s huge!
Create Actions for Everyone
Something I’d like to focus on today comes about from two things: Tuesday, the eCampaigning Report was released that showed data and best practices for campaigning and advocacy online; and yesterday I met with a local climate change focused nonprofit organization about some of the work they are doing.
The organization comes at climate change from a nontraditional angle: their target audience are those that do not normally care about the climate or social action, spend their time off line and online focused on trends, fashion, networking and livin’ it up. The organization works with scientists and other organizations to stay on top of the latest news and actions going on around carbon, energy, and other climate-influencing topics, then works to translate those things into relevant actions or news for their audience (for example, instead of breaking news about figures or facts, they may encourage people to share photos of themselves in winter woolies and encourage them to dress cozy and turn the thermostat down a couple degrees).
I asked the organization what they were doing next Saturday for the Day of Climate Action. They quickly said, “oh, nothing – our target audience wouldn’t be interested in that.” I was shocked! I said, “really? They wouldn’t even want to get a discount for shopping at a vintage shop (used clothes, not new) only on that day, and have lots of folks going together (bridge online and offline communities)?” The people I was meeting with looked at each other and said, “now there’s an idea!”
I use this story to say that no matter who your audience is, so long as you know them, you can provide relevant and exciting opportunities to take action to make a positive impact on our environment.
The first pieces of any social media strategy or campaigns are to identify the audience and get to know them – how do they want you to talk to them, where online do they want you to talk to them, what do they want to be able to do (give you ideas, share your content, campaign or fundraise for you, etc.)? Knowing your audience is key in all the work you do.
And, when you know them, you can use days like today and next week’s Day of Action to link your network with networks around the world to make a bigger difference.
Join Blog Action Day
- Blog about Climate Change and start a conversation (register your blog to show up on the Blog Action Day website)
- Take action on Climate Change
- Learn more
- Share your ideas in the comments below
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