The value of blogging in activism
The number of people who are unfamiliar with blogging always takes me by surprise, as it did at the CCFC Summit. I get so entrenched in the blogosphere that I forget about the whole real world out there. (That’s not good. I’m going to get out more.)
But for my colleagues at the CCFC Summit, and anyone else engaged in activism, allow me to take a step back to answer the question: Why blog?
Today’s post will cover how word of your cause can be spread through the blogosphere.
Blogs reach people. From the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s most recent data:
– 75 percent of American adults use the Internet;
– 91 percent of those use search engines,
– 81 percent look for information on services or products, and
– 39 percent read blogs.
One of the groups that I’m most interested in reaching are parents. According to Technorati (a blog ranking site), there are more than 7,000 blogs identified as being about parenting and more than 45,000 individual posts about parenting.
Bloggers pass information along. My posts reach other blogs and their readers through linking. For example, Mark’s Daily Apple, a health and fitness blog, picked up my post about candy designed to look like illicit drugs. More than thirty of Mark’s readers clicked over to read Corporate Babysitter.
Another good example is an aggregator like BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed takes popular stories and features links to blogs that write about them. BuzzFeed picked up the Abercrombie & Fitch/children’s hospital naming rights story and featured a line from a post I wrote about it. That link brought more than 150 readers — and those 150 people, like the thirty from Mark’s Daily Apple, may never before have been exposed to the concepts behind Parents for Ethical Marketing.
Commenting on blogs is another way to make outside audiences aware of your cause. Every day I run across posts from people discussing the very issues we’re trying to address. If I post a comment on their blog, it links back to Corporate Babysitter and the site becomes a reference for them. I commented on a post about Nancy Nord, former interim head of the CPSC, at the hugely popular blog Crooks and Liars, which brought me handful of readers. I try to comment thoughtfully on at least five blogs a day.
A blog, over time, becomes an archive of information. Just because a post is a week or a year old doesn’t mean someone isn’t still going to read it. I still get comments on a blog post I wrote on my old blog in February, 2007: Bratz girls are not sexy and you’re sick for thinking so. (Check out the comments if you’d like to see how girls defend their Bratz collections.)
And an archived blog is a searchable blog. Some of the popular search terms used that have brought readers to Corporate Babysitter:
– is marketing to children ethical?
– book fair alternatives
– marketing by targeting new parents
And don’t forget media outlets: The New York Times has visited six times and I’ve been contacted by two television stations. They all found me by using Internet search engines. (And keep in mind: Corporate Babysitter has been active for only five months.)
Corporations read blogs. Or they at least have an automated system that searches the Internet for anything written about them. Since Corporate Babysitter went live, it has been visited by:
– Edelman PR (responsible for Dove, among others), 15 times
– Procter & Gamble, 10 times
– General Mills and Scholastic Book Fairs, each 7 times
– Disney, 5 times
– Target Corporation, 139 times
Corporations are concerned about their reputations. The Media Relations Summit, happening right now in San Francisco, includes sessions on Influencing the New Influencers: Blogs, Podcasts, Online Video and How to Monitor Reputation in an Online World. ReputationXchange.com is an example of a blog dedicated to managing online reputations. BrandsEye is a software created to ”. . . help you to protect your brand against reputation damage in addition to harnessing positive word of mouth to take your brand to great heights!”
Blogs can change corporate behavior (which is essential to our mission) because corporations care about their reputations and because they read blogs. An article at Procter & Gamble’s Beinggirl.com site that promoted eating-disordered behavior was removed after several blogs wrote about it and asked readers to write and call. Another recent example is Target’s reconsideration of their media contact policies after a post on Shaping Youth toured the blogosphere and made it into the New York Times.
Still too overwhelmed to start blogging? If the RSS, social media, pinging, and trackbacks are too much, start by reading and commenting on a few blogs. At Technorati, you can search on terms important to your work and see what others are already doing.
Next up is part two — what you can learn through blogging.
Resources for new bloggers:
The Blog Herald
TechSoup, especially Ready to Start Blogging?
Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media
April 10th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
There’s another, much more micro link between blogging and activism — At the indivdiuals level, I think it’s mobilizing. When you chronicle your own frustrations, it inspires you to act on them. Once I started to write it all down, I started being more vocal IRL also. In addition, if you start reading blogs on your issue(s), you often find new ways to act through others’ provocations. This builds your own activist toolkit and deepens the efforts of others. It’s great.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I blog because I got tired of mainstream publishers telling me girl issues, including marketing about them and to them, didn’t make compelling enough reading for a monthly column.
I now write a daily column about it on my blog, http://www.sosiouxme.com and I am getting great feedback about it. I know parents are tired of the way girls are marketed to and how they are perceived in advertising. Parents are just hoping someone will help them figure out what to do about it. Here I am.
I got a great response from the Abercrombie Hospital story I put on my site. I appreciate the CCFC giving parents an easy action step so they don’t have to feel so powerless.
I would have loved to have been at the conference. Since you had the opportunity to go would you like to guest-post on So Sioux Me and share what you learned in relation to girls?
April 10th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Mom, you are absolutely right. Blogging also helps me organize my thoughts so that I have something to say when I do speak out to others.
Tracee Sioux, thanks for the comment. Yours was one of the first blogs I read when I first got started. I’d love to write something about the conference. I’ll send you an email.