Recruit allies and supporters

ChangeEverything.ca is an opportunity to expand your organization’s constituency and audience – and not just by reaching out to people already on the site. CE can be your gateway to a whole universe of social networks and online communities, if you know how to use it. Here are some ideas for using your involvement in CE to find even more potential supporters online:

Before you can find your potential new allies online, you need to identify the keywords and phrases associated with your issue, work or organization. For example if you and your friends want to start a community garden, you might look for content related to “garden”, “organic”, “vegetables”, “gardening” PLUS either “Vancouver” or “Victoria”. Once you know what keywords to look for, you can start searching for kindred spirits in a variety of online communities.

Finding bloggers. To find bloggers – even those not on CE – use a blog search tool like Technorati to search on each of your keywords. If it’s a broad subject, like “climate change,” be sure to search on both the keyword AND your community name. For example, search for blog posts that contain the words “climate change” AND “Vancouver”.

The results of your search will show a list of blog posts that contain those words. A quick glance will give you a sense of which blog posts are actually related to your issue, and which just happen to include your keywords. If you use Technorati you can filter your results to show just those posts that come from blogs with “a lot of authority” or “some authority” (use the pull-down menu below the green bar at the top of the page) – these are the blog posts that will be read by the most people.

Now, leave a comment on the blog post that links to the change you’re working on on Change Everything. Be sure to respond to the blog post so you’re not just spamming. For example you might leave a note saying, “It’s great to read your thoughtful comments about the impact of SUVs on climate change. Maybe we could ban them from East Van as part of making it the first carbon neutral community in Canada. We’re working on this on Change Everything – see http://www.changeeverything.ca/neighbours_for_a_carbon_neutral_east_van”

Your comments are like a trail of breadcrumbs leading people to your work on Change Everything!

Finding photographers. The Lower Mainland and Victoria are home to a lot of enthusiastic photographers, many of whom are sharing their photos online. These photo sharing communities – like Flickr, which started in Vancouver – let amateur and professional photographers share their work and organize it by topic. If you look for your keywords on Flickr – like ”climate change” and “Vancouver” and you’ll find photos related to your interests. Leave comments on these photos leading back to your Change Everything blog posts and changes, just like you’d leave comments on a blog post.

Finding readers. Lots of people now track their favourite web pages using social bookmarking services like del.icio.us (kind of a community version of your Explorer favourites folder), ma.gnolia or Digg. But you don’t have to sit back and wait to become a favourite. First, sign up as a member of ma.gnolia (or del.icio.us or Digg). Then when you write a blog post or add a change to Change Everything, you can store it as a bookmark in ma.gnolia. Be generous with your keywords – save it under “climate change”, “environment”, “eco”, “carbon neutral”, etc. – and other ma.gnolia users will discover it when they browse or search through bookmarks on the ma.gnolia site.