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NRL News
“What Can
I Do to Help?” Since Election Day, NRLC has received numerous requests from pro-lifers asking, “What can I do?” and “How can I help?” The story that begins on page one offers you a number of excellent options. But there is an additional way to help reinvigorate the Movement by creatively adapting pro-abortion Present-elect Barack Obama’s Internet strategy to the needs of the pro-life online community. The Obama campaign masterfully used the Internet to generate and organize supporters. One of the Internet tools it used best is what has come to be called “social networking.” The campaign created an umbrella social network called myobama to centralize the basic campaign messages and themes. From there the campaign utilized “viral marketing,” which is nothing more than a kind of electronic word of mouth spread through social networks. The commonly known social networks are twitter, facebook, myspace, meetup, youtube, and blogs. Young people in particular were targeted, although the outlets are now being used by people of all ages. The Obama campaign utilized them to propagate the “Change We Need” theme and to seek out like-minded supporters. How? The campaign empowered individuals to be “captains” to replicate what it was doing. Captains spread the word, attracted supporters, raised money, and found more captains throughout the entire social networking community. The Obama campaign used them to encourage event attendance, find new supporters, and help raise funds, to name just three activities. The result was the creation of a vast “like-minded” online community. So what will President-Elect Obama do with this network as President? There is consensus speculation that it will be used to drive his agenda. Just a few clicks and the new administration can mobilize millions of “like-minded” citizens through e-mail to urge the U.S. Congress to take a particular action. They can also text message, use Twitter, and blog several million almost instantly with just a few keystrokes and additional clicks. Think of the power! www.change.gov (President-elect Obama’s transition web site) believes there is a strong chance that it may use its contact base to become the largest special-interest group in America. So what does that say to those of you who want to help? The NRLC family (you, your family and friends) needs to create our own social network and mimic the success of the Obama campaign. Start a profile on twitter, myspace, facebook. Start a blog. If you already are a part of these social networks, add and promote pro-life content. In these social networks you want to encourage education. Use the factsheets and any other content from the NRLC web site at www.nrlc.org. People are busy and they simply can’t know a lot (or even a little) about everything. Enough of the public simply didn’t understand Obama’s role as an Illinois state senator in thwarting efforts to enact the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. Hiding his real agenda will no doubt be a major component of Obama’s strategy as President as well. When you promote discussion on the issues it both allows friends to further educate others and encourages others to start profiles to mimic what you are doing. Connect with each others’ sites and discuss what is working for you to cultivate new friends. Discuss upcoming legislation, take action, notify your elected officials of your position, and encourage your online community to do the same. The NRLC web site has that feature built in for communication with the U.S. Congress. This area of our web site will periodically have action alerts. Copy the text, post a blog, and encourage action. “I want to get involved, what can I do to help?” One answer comes from the title of an article that appeared in the October 8, 2008, edition of Newsweek: “Transforming social networking into social change.” We need to get in step, get going, get connected, and win the Internet battle. |