Use Care2 to Promote Your Cause
Care2 (http://care2.com) is a social advocacy community, with close to seven million registered users.
Care2 combines the elements of several social networking websites and adds its own "do-gooder" approach. In addition to forums for user groups, Care2.com features user-generated news (similar to Digg) and personal profile pages (similar to MySpace).
All Care2 features are aimed at helping end-users to share advocacy information and make a difference.
The Care2 News Network
The Care2 News Network (http://www.care2.com/news/) is a social news bookmarking site dedicated to advocacy issues. Care2 members submit links to news stories along with a headline, description, and an accompanying photo. News stories that receive the most positive votes, called "notes," are featured on the Care2 News Network front page. News stories that receive the most overall notes are featured on the Care2 home page.
The good news is that it is relatively easy to promote an article to the Care2 home page. Generally, success requires:
- rapid voting support from 10-15 of your Care2 friends
- a catchy headline
- an accompanying photo that is thin and very tall, like this:
The bad news is that a link on the front page of Care2 will drive less than 100 visitors to your website. However, Care2 is good for social networking practice and does make it easy to recruit and motivate online volunteers...
Care2 Groups
A Care2 Group (http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/) is worth the effort if it can be managed for you by dedicated volunteers. To be successful, you'll need volunteer moderators to respond to messages, delete spam, and recruit group members.
With dedication, your Care2 Group can turn into a powerful forum to share links to your website and spread information about your advocacy cause. Group members are usually happy to note the stories listed in their groups — giving news submitters who also run groups a significant advantage.
Amnesty International, for example, runs a Care2 Group with close to 29,000 registered members. Group moderators use the message boards to post links to Amnesty International causes and to post a list of "Care2 Stories to Be Noted."
