Save the World with Twitter

This Saturday is the Live Earth event - 7/7/7. What is it?

“Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.”

As part of this event, you can sign up to their Twitter feed and receive tips via your mobile phone on what you can do to help save the world. Here are some sample messages from their feed:

“Shading windows. It can lower your home’s temperature and reduce your cooling costs by 30%. Answer the Call at liveearth.org.

Cutting down. If 1 million people cut down their trash by 10%, we could reduce our CO2 emissions by 50,000 tons. Learn more at liveearth.org”

All you have to do is sign up to Twitter via www.twitter.com and go to http://twitter.com/LiveEarth070707 to add Live Earth as a friend.

The people behind this campaign are SOS an ” ongoing messaging campaign and larger movement behind Live Earth.” According to their “About” section:

“The SOS campaign is using a powerful multimedia platform - short films, television and radio PSAs, an interactive web experience, books, the Live Earth concerts themselves - to provide a global audience with the tools to tackle the climate crisis.

This multimedia campaign will ensure that the message of Live Earth echoes long after 7/7/07.”

This is an important campaign that will benefit all of us - and future generations - so it’s well worth signing up for.

As an aside, my feeling is that this is what many communications strategies need to look like in the future - whether you are a not-for-profit, big business, small enterprise or solo professional. As we all become multi-media smart, it will become increasingly important to spread the word about your event or product or services across a number of platforms in an integrated way. For small businesses and solo professionals, the interactive multi-media tools of Web 2.0 are cheap - often free - and easy to use. There are great opportunities these days for the enterprising small player to make big waves via the internet without a huge budget - all you need is a readiness to engage with the new technology.

Some ideas:

* start a blog and make your presence felt on the internet

* use podcasting to chat more informally. Writers could read extracts from their books. Record a speaking engagement so those who couldn’t be there can hear your speech.

* create presentations to show online. There are tools available to post slideshows eg Zoho

* record a video to show online. Facial expression and tone can convey warmth so much more than just words - what about a short presentation by your Chief Executive reporting on your company’s annual results?

* use Twitter to send out regular short messages. Executive coaches can twitter their clients daily encouragement or actions to boost confidence and productivity.

Photo: thanks to smh.com.au