Welcome to GMT's monthly e-newsletter for July 2008.
Word Count: 1,375
Read Time: 5 minutes
In this issue you will find:
1. Member Connections
2. Be in the Know – How GMT Tools Can Help Your Group
3. Buzz from the Beat
4. Link(s) of the Month
5. Community Coverage
6. Support: Database Do’s and Don’ts
7. Opt out instructions
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Member Connections:
Fill out your User Profile!
The new GMT Member Hub features user profiles, which are designed as a tool for you to reach out to other members who share similar interests, work on similar issues, and who are looking for similar training opportunities.
In addition to the basic contact and bio information, there are skills and interests tags through which you can search for and find other members who have tagged the same campaign topics, possess an ability that you are looking to acquire, and who would form a good online network.
The profile is also a place where you can manage your community involvement. Through the profile notifications, you can track your subscriptions to all of the campaign rooms and posts to which you are joined. In additional to the profile notifications, also visit your Dashboard (located in My Dashboard of the main member hub toolbar) to see a list of all the recent content added to your groups and campaigns.
I encourage you all to fill out your profile with your
Campaigns to which you are joined website
links of interest Email address job description issues you work on
special skills and interests photo
View this screencast for some step by step advice on filling out your profile: http://greenmediatoolshed.org/node/465
Your profile is your landing page when you sign into the Member Hub.
http://members.greenmediatoolshed.org/community
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Be in the Know - How GMT Tools Can Help Your Group:
New Training and Support Content!
In our new member hub, we are working to build a more extensive and easy-to-reference library of training and support content. You will still be able to view all of the content from our legacy site- from the e-newsletters to the On Demand Training material. In addition, we are building a library of new content including:
1. Screencasts for media database and on-site help.
2. More extensive on-site help text- from navigating the new Community space to managing members in your campaign room- in the Support Section.
3. Additional media database content- from an improved glossary, to frequently asked questions and strategy pages.
4. A media database training section, where you can reference the schedule of upcoming database trainings and instructions for Webex.
5. New content about online advocacy, networking, and other campaign and communication topics.
The new content will feature screen shots to help you visualize various steps, and links to related screencasts.
Look out for more newly added content in the upcoming weeks!
Go directly to the Support section at http://members.greenmediatoolshed.org/support
Our training center is located in the Community tab of the Member Hub, next to our Image Library. Go directly there at http://members.greenmediatoolshed.org/community/tr...
Want to comment or make a suggestion on the training and support material or any other feature of the new site? Call the Green Media Toolshed comment line at 202-684-8027.
Give any other feedback, suggestions, and additional questions to Nina at nina@greenmediatoolshed.org
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Buzz from the Beat:
Has Facebook Jumped the Shark as a Political Tool?
A recent article, cross-posted on epolitics.com and TechPresident debates the effectiveness of FaceBook and other social networking sites as tools for social advocacy. It argues that these sites can end up to be used more as email replacements rather than actual networks, and raises questions as to the actual potential than appearance of social networking sites as network builders.
Check out the full article at:
http://www.epolitics.com/2008/05/04/has-facebook-j...
Got feedback? Send it to Nina at nina@greenmediatoolshed.org.
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Link of the month: Big Green Switch
The Big Green Switch website recently won the Campaign for Change award at the New Statesman New Media Awards.
http://www.biggreenswitch.co.uk/
The website, launched in May 2007 by Northcliffe Digital, helps people live greener lives through advice, information, and links to a variety of relevant resources such as a green products shop, environmental job boards, and a directory of environmental businesses and websites. Site visitors are able to share their own ideas through blogs and message panels.
Read more at http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/awards/080703bgs...
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Community Coverage: ECO Soul’s Premier of “Justicia Now”
On Saturday, July 5th, Eco Soul and a few other campaign colleagues premiered 'Justicia Now,” a documentary film about Chevron/Texaco's toxic legacy in the Northern Ecuadorian region of the Amazon Rainforest, and possibly the largest environment class-action lawsuit in history. It includes Ecuador's revolutionary proposition to leave one billion barrels of oil beneath the soil, of the Yasuni National Rainforest, a UNESCO Biosphere and home to fragile indigenous tribes.
“GMT equipped us with the tools” to make this film a success, said Kristina Fitzsimmons of Eco Soul, as she sited their Eco Soul’s use of the GMT media database to help them communicate the message and get coverage from the media. Kristina would also like to thank help from another GMT friend, Celia Alario, whose training and advice also made possible the success of the film.
Eco Soul and their project partner, EcoSutra, share a common vision of aiding the migration off of fossil fuels. The Eco Soul sustainable power park model is a localization tool of resource utilization that can be placed in any location on the planet any size and any scale and is a valuable educational tool. Guided by the permaculture paradigm, the model demonstrates a community solution, for the issues that are global. The EcoSutra film teaches about permaculture and the cutting edge renewable energy technologies that have the potential to create new models of sustainable communities. It includes the Eco Soul power park model.
Get a free snapshot of Justicia Now is free at www.justicianow.org
View the EcoSutra film trailer and eco-pioneer interviews at www.ecosutra.tv
Also check out more about Eco Soul’s other projects at www.ecosoul.org
We would love to hear YOUR success stories. Send submissions to nina@greenmediatoolshed.org.
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Database Do’s and Don’ts:
Making Targeted Lists
Media contact lists are most effective when they are narrowed to targeted to reporters who have the most appropriate beat code, geographic region, and pitching history. Advanced contact and outlet searches on the media database can sometimes yield thousands of contacts. Even if the search seemed specific (i.e. had your right beat code and region), due to the database’s extensive coverage, there still remain many ways in which you can further refine the search results. Here are some ideas…
- Use the “find” feature in the bottom right hand corner of the search results page to refine the search by specific criteria in the contact or outlet profile, including job position, location, or even name or email address.
- Use the coverage wizard (located in the small toolbar of Media Contacts), to find the best reporter at a given selection of outlets. You can prioritize your searches by beat code, and get the name of the outlet’s primary contact if a reporter with the chosen beat code does not exist at a particular outlet.
- Compile your list through multiple searches. For example, if you want to compile a targeted list of energy reporters from several different locations, you can run one search, save your search, then run other separate searches and add them to your existing list. To add a new set of search results to an existing list, go to “Save” and “Add results to list,” in the small toolbar of the search results page.
For quick and savvy web tools or general GMT support, contact Nina Schwartz at 202-408-8850 x. 10 or at nina@greenmediatoolshed.org, Monday - Friday 9am- 5pm EST.
For more advice about creating lists and sending distributions, review these two new 5-minute screencasts that will…
1. guide you through the basic steps to create a list of media contacts through the Media Contacts Advanced Search, and how to save the list for future editing and distributions: http://members.greenmediatoolshed.org/node/401
2. guide you through the steps to create and send your distribution: http://members.greenmediatoolshed.org/node/400
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7. Opt out instructions:
We’ll be sad - but not bitter - if you do.
To opt out of GMT’s monthly e-newsletter, reply to this email with the word "Unsubscribe" in the subject line.
To share feedback about the content and format, please reply to this email and include your thoughts in the body of your message. You can also submit a question to be answered in the next FAQ section by replying to this message.
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View past e-newsletters in our monthly e-newsletter archive at http://www.greenmediatoolshed.org/blog
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