Today is Blog Action Day – a global online conversation to get bloggers everywhere talking about an issue that matters. This year it’s poverty.
By having blogs all around the world talking about poverty in some way, they aim to “change the conversation that day, to raise awareness, start a global discussion and add momentum to an important cause.” Ideally you’ll see Poverty ranked at the top of blog search engines like Digg.com and Technorati later in the day.
Maximising the conversation in the age of Fragmented Media
The media landscape, especially blogs, is increasing fragmented. This is one of the biggest challenges facing modern communicators and marketers adapting from a mass media model.
Blog Action Day addresses this by making their topic as universal as possible, and challenging people to make it relevant to their own blogs – no matter what the subject. They say:
“Every blogger has a unique voice, audience and perspective… The best thing a blog can do is to keep their post on topic. Audiences visit our blogs because they enjoy the style, personality and topic of the site. So it makes sense that the best way to get through to these audiences is to use that same style, personality and topic to talk about Poverty. For example:
- A Design Blog might analyse a set of charity posters and how they convey their message.
- A Tech Blog might look at pro-poor technologies and projects.
- A Political Blog might examine the relevant agendas of leading candidates.
That’s a great way to maximise the reach of your message, show its relevance to everyone on the planet no matter what their interests, and not become spam.
What we’re doing
Which leads to the question: What is Pursuit Public Relations doing about Poverty?
For our Christmas card and gift this year (yes, it’s time to start planning your Christmas party), we’ve been researching charities to donate to rather than send clients presents. The strategy is to find one that reflects our personal values, makes a real difference and that our clients (predominantly technology, R&D, creative and export businesses) would respond well to.
We’re looking at supporting Engineers without Borders, a global group who create ‘sustainable engineering projects’ in disadvantaged communities while creating new experiences for engineers and students. For instance, clean water supplies or sustainable energy in Pacific Islands.
One of the things I like about them is that they provide the base infrastructure that communities and other NGOs can build on. It’s about empowerment. Eg, they’ll go into a disaster area and establish a telecommunications network that other aid agencies can then use. In my experience global NGOs are fairly tech-savy: they coordinate projects around the world; use tech to keep admin overheads down; and they’re experts at social media campaigns to generate support and mobilise volunteers. Blog Action Day is a good example of the latter.
Comments are closed.