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Operation Link Love - PR Bloggers “Pay It Forward” and Give Back
Robert on Mar 04 2006 at 5:57 pm | Filed under: Blog Talk, Community Relations, OpenPR, PR, Viral Marketing, WOM, WOMM
Operation Link Love
Giving back. The ultimate in simple and selfless gifts by PR bloggers, it is easy to do and will definately help non-profits gain visibility and (if you offer it to them) advice on how to improve their social media implementations.
What initiated this idea?
I read Tom Murphy’s Charitable Blogging… post. Earlier, I commented on his post Call: Charities using blogs.
In his most recent post, Murphy asked this question, which I took as a call to action:
So the question for charities out there is how can we help? I’m in the planning stages of a small project here in Ireland where I’ll be working with Enable Ireland to possibly put together a free blogging workshop for charitable organisations. But I’m sure there’s stuff we can do online, and I’m sure the ever growing PR blog community won’t be found wanting…
That sounded like a call to action to me, so …
Then, I wrote to Constantin Basturea and asked if I could create a page in The NewPR/Wiki dedicated to non-profit blogs and social media. Constantin agreed and coined the phrase “Operation Link Love” regarding my idea to answer Tom Murphy’s call to action. Many thanks to Constantin for his suggestions and support.
So, that’s where we stand today.
What is it?
A list in the NewPR/Wiki. Operation Link Love
Visit the wiki and you may:
- add links to non-profit blogging and social media examples you know of online
- use these links to visit the sites
- comment on their sites with either support or constructive criticism/advice on how to improve their practices
- write a post about their efforts in your own blogs, or include them in a podcast, and discuss the value of social media for non-profits
- add the links to your blogroll in a special non-profit/charitable social media, or blogging, category to provide support and heighten awareness of these sites
- bookmark these sites in the popular social media sites with “OperationLinkLove” and/or “nonprofitblogs” to help further spread the meme of non-profit social media efforts. Examples of those sites are: bloglines, technorati, del.icio.us, furl, digg, spurl, wists, simpy, newsvine, blinklist, reddit, fark, blogmarks and yahoo’s myweb2 search
Visit The NewPR/Wiki’s Non-Profit Blogging, Podcasting and Social Media list and participate.
The List
(as of March 4, 2006)
- Omidyar’s list of non-profit blogs
- Getting Attention Blog (resources for non-profits)
- Re-focus - Fundraising Technology
- Dr. Len’s Cancer Blog - American Cancer Society
- Blog for Hope [Archive only] Yahoo! & American Cancer Society
- Alabama Special Camp for Children and Adults - Easter Seals Camp ASCCA
- Greenpeace
- Oceana
- American Lung Association of Minnesota
- The Diva Marketing Blog Profile on the American Cancer Society
- Jamie’s Big Voice - Big Issue charity and the Hansard Society’s e-democracy programme.
- betachurch.org (resources for churches using social media)
Also, thanks to Constantin’s suggestion, we have this ‘button’ you may use to link to the wiki page and encourage participation in “Operation Link Love” in other blogs. Want to make a better button? Won’t hurt my feelings. Send it in and we’ll load it up there.
Cut-n-paste this code into your blog’s sidebar or a post:
Come on and join in. This kind of giving is easy and painless. Surely there is one non-profit cause you can support.
Finally, yes - I am involved in the Camp ASCCA, Alabama’s Special Camp for Children and Adults blogging effort. So, if my initiative seems too self-serving on my part, no problem for you. Choose another from the list or find one on your own and add it to the list. Then link to them. Honestly? I want you to link to all of them. Hey, a guy can dream.
The goals here are simple. Encourage non-profits to explore blogging. Share a little link love with those blogs to help them out. We all know what links can do for these sites with regard to search. Please take the few minutes of time it will cost you and help them.
Thank you.
7 Responses to “Operation Link Love - PR Bloggers “Pay It Forward” and Give Back”
Robert,
Fatastic! Well done, this is a great start!
Hopefully we can help to raise awareness of blogging among charitable organisations and help them get online.
Thanks again
To
Great initiative Robert!
Thank you Tom and Stephen.
Now to get others to buy in - find links and write about them.
[...] Any good blogger will tell you that link love is the life-blood of a working blog. Link out to people, and if you’re doing something relevant and interesting, chances are they’ll link back. SEO experts will tell you that good anchor text is important for helping search engines determine the relevance of your links. No-one should have to tell you getting a link from a popular blog (because you linked to them) can be a gold mine. [...]
[...] I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while. At the beginning of this month, Robert French started a new initiative called “Operation Link Love.” He explains it at his own blog as: A list in the NewPR/Wiki. Operation Link Love [...]
Just trying to put the project back out there for consideration…
[...] Now For The Legit Stuff: Healthcare Non-Profits That Deserve Link Love Robert French has been asking people to share some link love with non-profits to draw attention to their activities and to support their blogging efforts (see this post.) I’ve nearly completed my massive report on healthcare blogging and there is a big section in it on healthcare non-profit blogs. So, here’s me giving link love to the non-profit blogs I highlight in my report. Visit their blogs, support them (if you agree with their cause) and link to them. Now, the list: [...]