Guest Post
by Joe Marchese, SocialVibe CEO
In honor of Blogger’s 10th anniversary, we are excited to announce that you can now use your blogs to create positive, measurable social change. By adding the SocialVibe gadget to your blog, you’ll be turning brand dollars into real charitable donations for the cause of your choice. The World Wildlife Foundation, Nature Conservancy, DonorsChoose, Invisible Children, and Charity:Water are just a few of the great charities you can support on Blogger.
Once you install the SocialVibe sidebar gadget on your blog, money will be earned for charities every time readers engage with the gadget (e.g. rating a Showtime video clip). You can switch your cause and sponsor as often as you like, and receive regular updates from your charity about goal progress and impact. Thus far, SocialVibe has been able to raise over $500,000 for charities, and we know the Blogger community will be able to significantly increase this amount. In fact, we are setting a goal for the community to raise $50,000 before the end of the year (and remember, you don’t raise money by taking money out of your pocket—or your audience’s—but rather by getting your readers to engage with your SocialVibe gadget).
Adding the gadget is easy. Here’s the low-down on how you can use your blog to make a big impact:
Step 1 – Add the Gadget
From your Blogger dashboard, click the Layout tab. Then, click the Add a Gadget link and click on “Featured”, then select SocialVibe. (If you don’t see it in the Featured gallery, follow this link, or click “Add your own”. In the textbox, add the URL http://www.socialvibe.com/s/blogger/gadget.)
Step 2 – Configure Gadget
Here’s the fun part. Choose the cause you want to support from the drop-down list. If you want to customize the size and title, you can do that here as well, and you’ll see a preview of your gadget underneath. When you’re satisfied, click Save.
Congratulations, your gadget has now been added to your blog! Your readers can help you earn for your cause by engaging with your gadget, and will even have the chance to leave you comments and add a SocialVibe gadget to their own blog.
The yellow overlay you see on your gadget is only viewable by you, the blog owner. Click on the link in the overlay to create a SocialVibe.com account and earn even more charity donations by adding it to other networks such as Facebook, MySpace or WordPress.
With SocialVibe, the Blogger community can pool our individual influences to create positive change in the world. Never before has making a positive social impact online been this easy.
This is one of many features announced as part of Blogger’s 10th birthday. Happy Birthday!
