Following the success of the “Bring Back Bondelli’s Blog” strategy (if it wasn’t a success I couldn’t be posting this right now) I thought it might be helpful to explain my methodology and show how you can apply the same techniques for your own causes and campaigns.
After I sent emails to WordPress support about the suspension with no response, I decided that I needed to come up with a way to get their attention. My idea was what I called an “internet flash mob.” Flash mobs have traditionally been used for humorous purposes, with seemingly random groups of people meeting up at a location, taking an unusual action, and then quickly dispersing. I figured that a group of people from across the country emailing WordPress support would definitely get their attention and push them to remedy the situation much faster than they would otherwise.
With any such effort it is important to choose an effective medium. While email as a lobbying medium has greatly diminished in efficacy due to the low level of commitment and ease of action, it was the most effective option in this case. All support requests for WordPress go to the email address, so an influx of 40-50 emails about the same blog is disruptive enough to get them to act. It also gives them a pretty good incentive to take care of the situation quickly, since by solving my problem they are taking care of dozens of requests compared to the one or two emails they receive on other issues.
Once I decided on the action that I wanted people to take, I had to get people to take the action. This is where social networks came into play. Primarily I used Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter. I took advantage of two aspects of Facebook: notes and the mini-feed.
I wrote the note seen in the screen capture above and tagged people that I thought would take action. I wrote two notes with the same content in order to tag more people. Facebook notes are effective because the act of tagging puts the note front and center in the attention of that person. They are alerted that they have been tagged in a note and the note itself is listed on the person’s mini-feed. With the amount of people tagged and the close network of Young Democrats online, the note also was likely to be featured on the Facebook home page News Feed (22 of your friends were tagged in the note…..). This led to people finding out about the situation and taking action even though they were not tagged in either note.
I changed my profile picture, Facebook status, Google Chat status, and updated Twitter with my call to action.
Two hours after I started this, 40-50 emails were sent to WordPress support and my blog/account was reinstated. Here is why I think this was so successful:
- The medium (mass emails to support) was effective in getting the attention needed.
- The word-of-mouth power of Facebook notes and mini-feeds helped my message spread quickly.
- I used specific and simple call to action. If I had just posted a note whining about the blog being suspended nothing would have happened outside of a few comments of support.
- I leveraged multiple online services in unison to get the highest possible level of saturation with a unified message.
- My request was polite. I asked, instead of telling, people to help me. I also used please and thank you (which really does go a long way).
So that’s basically it. I am interested in hearing if any of you have used similar strategies in the past and how they worked for you. Please share with a comment.
