This is the Third Article in the Campaigning Coalitions of Bloggers" series (one, two).

When the informal "coalition cum network" coalesced around the "Usmanov Affair" in autumn 2007, a number of actions happened within the first few days. At the time Evgeny Morozov, who writes the Daily EM blog "about the future of technology, media, globalisation and other issues", put together some reflections under the heading "Cyberactivism 101" - documenting the lessons that could be learnt by susequent campaigns.

In this post I am recalling his tips for coalitions where an opponent is attempting to close down debate. This is a summary - Engeny's original article has much more detail, and relates the comments to the specific example of the Usmanov case.

10 tips to make your distributed advocacy more effective

1. Make copies of the initial post widely available on third-party web-sites.

This helps to garner public support by convinced those who have not yet decided whether to get involved or not about the nobility of the campaign’s intentions (i.e. make sure that people know what they are fighting for).

2. Document all developments related to the story via a single resource; make it easily accessible to non-blogging audiences.

First of all, decide on which blog or web-site would serve serve as a resource of record for all new developments related to the story. Then take the time to update the original post with all new developments related to the story — make sure you put the post at the beginning of the blog.

Once your story is picked up by the mainstream media, this resource page will be of great help to journalists who would like to cover your story.

It may help to create a special Wikipedia page dedicated to documenting the timeline of the affair and actions taken, linking to all the players involved, so that it’s easy for reporters to get in touch with all main characters of the story.

3. Tell supporters of your campaign how they can help.

This help can take multiple forms: they can write a post about it, they can link to the original post, they can help edit a Wikipedia entry, they can design a badge /banner/button/logo for the campaign, they can draw a cartoon that can help raise the spirits of the campaign.

Remember, the more people link to one particularly damaging post, the more likely it is to end up REALLY high in Google search results. Thus, even if you lose in your campaign or in court, the culprit’s reputation will be destroyed via Google. You need to explain this to people — this makes their contribution to the common cause feasible even if they don’t have the time or energy to get involved besides this. The more links there are out there, the more the episode warrants being mentioned in Wikipedia.

4. Leverage social news and community web-sites.

At this early point in the campaign status, one of your main objectives is to raise general awareness of what you are fighting for and sign up as many new volunteers as possible. It helps to rely on the power of social news sites like Digg or Reddit to promote a story about your efforts to the front page — please encourage all existing volunteers to go and cast their vote.

5. Put meta-data on everything; it makes your posts/pics easier to discover.

Don’t forget to instruct your campaign supporters to take the effort to tag and name all cartoons they create and upload appropriately. The more meta data they provide, the more likely their cartoon is to end up among Google Image Search results.

6. Encourage and facilitate intra-campaign communication.

This one is really simple: set-up a group on Facebook. Make it a place to aggregate all news, cartoons, videos, MSM coverage of the campaign, but also take advantage of the social networking component: encourage horizontal communication between different bloggers that take part in the campaign (use Wall and Discussions Board features proactively).

7. Crowdsource, crowdsource, crowdsource!.

It’s amazing how much online and offline data is out there that can further compromise the reputation of most parties involved in almost any dispute. Take advantage of the distributed effects of your campaign; have your volunteers dig deeper into the business activities of your adversaries.Set directions and point them to resources, and have them report back.

8. Find partners to build coalitions.

Don’t forget to search for potential coalition partners — non-activist bloggers who may help you for their own particular reasons.

9. Find ways to form language hubs thus getting access/spreading your story to non-English language communities.

10. Be prepared!

Always have back-ups of your blog/web-site stored somewhere outside of your primary ISP. Even better, set up another go-to URL in case your blog is blocked and publicize it widely with your audience (follow the advise of the Chinese blogger/activist Isaac Mao, who switches to notisaacmao.com when isaacmao.com is blocked).

(The previous articles in this series are here:

* Ten out of Eight Cats
* Community or Network? )

Matt Wardman edits the group political blog The Wardman Wire, and yesterday suddenly found himself in the middle of a new Campaigning Coalition of Bloggers.