DigiActive.org

Tool: Using Squidoo to raise money for your cause

What it is: Created by marketing professaional Seth Godin, Squidoo is an online forum that allows members create lenses (i.e. pages) based on their most fundamental passions.  Additionally, users can gain earn ad money through the site.  According to the website:

Squidoo is a hand-built collection of half a million pages built by people just like you.

Squidoo is about finding people when you care what they know instead of who they know.

And Squidoo raises big money for charity every single day by donating money from the ads and links you see on every page.

How can it help activists? There are multiple benefits from using this tool: users are not only spreading awareness of their “passions” to other users (and creating passion from that), but they also have the above ability to raise money and interact in a forum that allows for a high level of collaboration.  These are the ingredients for getting things done.

While many people make lenses to earn themselves a little more, there are an increasing number of lenses being used to raise money for charity.  Some examples include Water Can Save the World, a Knitting Coop in Rwanda to spread world peace, and a philanthropic neurosurgeon who has saved thousands of lives. In fact, Squidoo initiated a Charity Challenge in April of this year, run by the Squidoo Activists.

I would expect similar tools to pop up in the near future, and it looks as though Squidoo still has several charitable ideas coming in the future…

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us - Tribe Community
• Seth Godin asks: Should human-powered search abandon the Long Tail?

From Blogs to Facebook: A shift in Kurdish online activity

Description: Last year at this time, one could have counted a few hundred active and decently-read blogs coming from the Kurdish population, primarily in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey (see the Global Voices report from 2005).  But now, their activity level has greatly diminished, with some not having posted in several months.  A look at the comments sections of many of the blogs reveals often harsh and nationalistic responses by those not in support of Kurdish culture or society, which may have been a deterrent to keeping up the posting.

Did the bloggers disappear?  Were they discouraged enough with the results of their efforts to decrease internet activity altogether?  No, they found a new place to focus those efforts, one they find more conducive to their cause.

Tool: Facebook

How this tool is being used: With groups such as Sign a Petition Against Killings and Stoning of Women in Kurdistan (3 533 members as of this posting) and Free Kurdistan (1 556 members as of this posting) having become much more trafficked and updated in the past year, Kurdish activists are finding that their efforts are not only gaining more traffic, but also avoiding a reasonable amount of outside harassment.

Many of these pages encourage bloggers to continue voicing their opinions through their blogs, stating the importance of a broader presence.  While there is yet to be a resurgence in activity in the blogsphere, it is clear the population is adapting to the changing dynamics of internet spaces in a way that can better support their cause.

Iran: A Campaign for Supporting a leftist Student

Description: Abed Tavancheh, an Iranian leftist student and blogger, was sentenced recently to eight months imprisonment for his political activities, with a chance to request an appeal. In recent months several students have been arrested and jailed. A blog has been created to support Tavancheh:SOS Tavancheh

Tools: Blog and Petition

How this tool has been used:Hundreds of Iranian students and academics both in Iran or abroad have already signed the petition condemning the court’s ruling. There are several Iranians and Germans from a Berlin-based committee for defending Iranian political prisoners who joined this campaign. It shows that the campaign goes outside Iran’s borders. The blog includes news from leftist students as well as interviews with Tavancheh and his lawyers.

Outcome: Creating blogs and petitions to support Iranian students have always been useful tools to inform the general public and the media.

A few notes on Permission Marketing

Permission marketing definition: eMarketers ask permission of their audience to send them advertisements, usually through a method of opting into a platform chosen by the marketers to disseminate information.

This concept can be directly applied to digital activism: as activists, we are trying to market our causes in a and persuade people to believe in them. While we’re not selling anything, we still want something from our listeners, and it’s our job to convince them that they want it.

Permission marketing is achieved in many ways, most prominently through platforms such as Facebook, Digg, or cause-specific social networks. Blogs aren’t generally considered permission marketing because people don’t have to read them if they choose not to.

In digital activism, as in marketing, there are few Dos and Don’ts to consider when using tools that are meant to reach a vast number of people who’ve allowed you to contact them and who you hope to persuade.

Do make it personal: People want to feel as if your message is tailored specifically to them that they’re as close to the source of information as they can be, and that the source (you) is genuine in wanting to influence them personally.

Do succintly state your reason for taking their attention: Since people have opted in, they expect you to respect that fact.  They can easily opt-out should you not appeal to them in any way.  Tell them immediately and clearly how you expect to fill their time, and make your points of contact valuable to them.

Don’t overdo your message: Closely linked to being clear of your intent is being cautious of crossing the line with your messaging.  The audience receives your messages whether they want to or not.  Excessive messaging with little value will more likely be detrimental to the overall goal.

Don’t make it difficult for people to opt-out: You can’t win everyone over.  Let them leave, un-questioned, if they want to.  This becomes easy in many programs, but if people can’t leave with a click of a button or a simple request, irritation could result.  And while we all know and believe in the power of spreading good messages online, negative messages can also spread.

The concepts of permission marketing can be very valuable to digital activism, but it they need to be used wisely to be effective.

Campaign: Iranians blog to save wetlands

Description: Several news sites and blogs have reported that Iran’s wetlands are in a very critical situation, and a few of them could disappeared in the near future. Construction of roads and dams are considered two main reasons wetlands’ existence are in jeopardy. It seems the Iranian government has paid little attention to the warning signs from environmentalists. Several green bloggers have decided to inform people about the current situation of Iranian wetlands and the danger that threatens the ecosystem.

Tool: Blogs and participative site such as Balatarin.

How These Tools Are Being Used: : Green bloggers have published posts and photos to attract attention to the birds in danger. They are encouraging other bloggers to write at least one post about the wetlands between July 5 - 10.

What They Say: Mohmmad Darvish writes [In Persian] that the loss of wetland means the extinction of 52 percent of fish, 31 percent of birds and 13 percent mammals…next generations probably never forgive us if we destroy wetlands.

Jamshidi writes[in Persian] that Iranian nature faces different disasters and each day there is a piece of bad news that we hear…

Outcome: Green bloggers in last two years have organized several events to protest and to inform people about the environmental crisis. Several of the green bloggers are also journalists and write about the same topic in Iranian publications. Although it is difficult to know the impact of such a campaign on Iranian government right now, it is another step to at least mobilize the Iranian public.