Yahoo's "Blog for Hope"

Take a telethon and a group blog and you have Yahoo's Blog for Hope project.

Yahoo! and the American Cancer Society are breaking new ground in an effort to connect individuals in the fight against cancer. In a 30-day Blog for Hope event on Yahoo! Health, celebrities from every walk of public life will share the triumphs, insights, and personal stories of how cancer has affected their lives. Join Deepak Chopra, Senator Hillary Clinton, Sam Donaldson, Fran Drescher, Jill Eikenberry, Peggy Fleming, Tom Green, Mary Hart and millions of blog readers around the world as we unite to raise awareness and bring an end to cancer.

This is a great idea for a great cause. It's also making good use of a blog's unique benefits:

• The celebrities do not have to be in a studio, in front of the camera or manning phone banks. They can continue their normal schedules.
• An event blog is a temporary commitment with long-lasting results. It can stay up post-event and continue to raise awareness from search engine traffic and links long after these bloggers sign off next month.

We've already seen how quickly international awareness was raised through the blogosphere for Shari Kurzrok and, as a result, organ donation. Blog for Hope will hopefully be another great example of tapping into the blogosphere's highly-networked nature to spread good news of hope instead of bad.

tags: public relations, media relations, blog, PR, consumer generated media

Comments

[Rohit Bhargava]

I definitely agree, this is a great idea and a very interesting indication of a new method of social marketing which may prove to gain more and more ground as an influential way of promoting behaviour change. In our work on building awareness for Shari's plight in the blogosphere - we certainly learned of the blogosphere's power as a tool for awareness. As Yahoo may begin to show, it may not be a distant leap to move people from pure awareness to belief and even action.

[odenyi gido]

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