International Justice Day

How many people at your office knew today was International Justice Day?

How many people at your school?

How many people in your home?

How many people around you did anything about it?

Today is just one day that is supposed to remind people to fight for justice. Supporting Mocha Club is one way you can fight for it every day.

Media Relations for a New Generation

Saturday I drove to Atlanta with my roommate to participate in The Rescue, an event in 100 cities across 10 countries by The Invisible Children. If you’ve never heard of The Invisible Children, educate yourself.

The Rescue was (and still is) an attempt to end Africa’s longest running war, Joseph Kony’s war in Uganda with an army of abducted child soldiers. The event started Saturday at 3 in every city and is still happening in the cities that haven’t yet been “rescued.” The plan is essentially a non-traditional media relations strategy: To be rescued, each city must attract major media coverage and a celebrity to the site to make a statement of support for The Rescue. The hundreds and thousands of people who gathered won’t leave until they’ve been rescued. In Atlanta, we were rescued 8ish on Saturday by Jeff Foxworthy and Fox 5 News. While I’m writing this, 11 cities still haven’t been rescued– and they’re holding out.

What makes this event different than a protest or something of the sort is the connectivity of 100 cities in 10 different countries all supporting each other online at the same time. Even in the cities where the media has refused to come, the longer the participants stay, the more exposure the movement gets and the more desperate their cries become. The Invisible Children set up an online hub for everyone involved that includes a live-streaming video at the headquarters (the hosts have not slept, making them very interesting at this point in time…), a real-time Twitter update down the side (#therescue was at the top of the Twitter trending topics this weekend), and hundreds of pictures, videos, montages, and articles from every city involved. People in London voicing support for the unrescued in Chicago. People united in a cause and able to encourage thousands of others from their vantage point on the other side of the world.

The thing is, with or without the so craved national media attention, this event is hugely successful. The Internet is a medium, and The Rescue has been ALL OVER IT for the entire weekend. It will continue to be as the stories of people not going to work to stay at the site make the story more and more dramatic. This media relations effort is different because the demonstrators are also creators of media. The event produced (and is producing) more pictures, more videos, and more interviews than media outlets could or would produce. And they’re all available 24/7 on the Web site, on blogs, on YouTube, on Twitter, etc.

Spokane, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Austin, Chicago, Huntington, Charleston, Richmond, Baltimore, and Harrisburg still need help. If you have any influence with media or moguls in any of these cities, please do what you can to aid their rescue. The last city, Chicago, was rescued yesterday by Oprah and her friend Gayle. They’ve invited the Invisible Children people to be on the show today at 4 pm! Check it out!

Spot-on use of Facebook for Online PR

I recently went to dinner at Thaicoon Ricefire and Sushi Bar in Greenville, SC for a friend’s birthday (interesting and irrelevant side-note: friend got sick after about half an hour leaving me having dinner with 5 perfect strangers, all Furman University students, which made for an entertaining evening of conversation that stopped cold and restarted about every 7 minutes).

The owner, Bobby, is a very friendly guy who came around to talk to every guest and stopped to sit   at our table for a while and discuss all manner of randomness. He realized that the majority of his regular  customers were Furman students and that Facebook was the best way to connect with them. So, as he lingered at our table, he encouraged us all to add him as a friend on Facebook by the name Bobby Thaicoon. Each week he randomly goes down his list of friends and picks 8 or 10 to receive a free meal if they come in the following Sunday. And you know what? Every Monday he has 20 or 30 new Facebook friends (undoubtly the amis of those who received free food, these are college students we’re talking about here).

His strategy is brilliant, beyond just marketing. He meets you face to face first, talks to you about life, asks you how your food is, and is an entertaining conversationalist. He’s using Facebook correctly–as a way to connect with people he has already pursued relationship with. The students love him, and they definitely love free food. So, I give Bobby’s tactics an A+. He’s drawing in large numbers of customers by reaching them where they are. And the food is awesome, too

Give Your Blog Some Personality

I’ve been checking out fellow COMM student Cheryl Harrison’s blog. She’s a student at Capital University with apparently more time than the average person (or at least more energy)–she’s the superwoman of students who work, intern, study, and volunteer time. All that, and she’s probably going to be one of the most sought after graduates for the field of PR here pretty soon. Here’s some things I’ve learned from her blog:

1) Don’t be afraid to include your personality on your blog. Keeping things professional does not mean sacrificing your natural creativity or taking on a non-human voice. Read anything on Cheryl’s blog, and you won’t be able to avoid noticing her sarcasm and wit.

2) Paying for a personal domain and a graphic designer is a worthy investment. Cheryl is a student, but her blog looks very professional and not at all cheap. It’s an impressive bit to show potential employers–far more interesting to look at than a traditional resume (even if you splurge on the “quality” paper).

3) Her resume is listed as a page on the blog. I think this is brilliant! Anyone who stumbles on the blog can check out her qualifications. She could get (and probably has already gotten) internship and job offers she might never think to apply for just because her experience is available to whoever wants to know.

Very cool blog…inspiring me to revamp this one in the near future…

Web Stratgey Time-Budget

Beth Kanter wrote a great post about how organizations should budget their time for online strategizing and reaching out to publics. See my thoughts about the balance between email, blogging and other social media activities in this comment.