Why Online Reviews, Signatures, Likes, Followers, Shares, Tweets, +1s, etc. Matter

In our advocacy work online we often encounter the following: “Online petitions don't do anything,” or “Writing reviews online isn't going to force positive change,” and many other variations of the above.

While it is true that online petitions can rarely force change, especially from non-government entities, non-government entities are still subject to market forces. In our case, Logan River Academy can only stay open if parents and courts continue to pay to enroll children there. Nowadays a lot of consumers lookup businesses online before making purchasing decisions. When parents Google “Logan River Academy,” they will find the petition, they will see over 2,000 signatures and counting. The larger that number becomes the larger its psychological impact on the reader. Prospective Logan River parents can read the comments on the bottom of the petition left by survivors & parents (although, obviously, not all of them will.) However, for those that do, let me put it this way, would you send your child to an institution with such reviews and which thousands of people are protesting due to human rights violations?

The same goes for reviews on other sites, including Google+ Reviews which are the most prominent since they show up on Page 1 of Google search results. Showing up on Page 1 of relevant Google searches is a worthy goal for ANY online activism. It makes it difficult for the target to operate their business and can ultimately put them out of business. As the nation saw during the Civil Rights Movement, market forces, such as boycotts, can cause change.

So how does an activist organization get onto page 1 of Google results for a given search? It's all about having other websites link to you. Nowadays though, links are not enough, they must be “follow,” links, or more accurately they must not be “nofollow,” links for Google to count them towards “PageRank.”
“PageRank,” is Google's method of ordering search results and determining which results to display first. Every web page Google indexes is scored by “PageRank,” and the pages with the highest “PageRank,” scores are displayed first for a given search.

Unfortunately, links on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and most other big websites, even Wikipedia, are all “nofollow,” meaning they do not boost the Google “PageRank,” scores of the sites they are linking to. Links from personal websites, blogs, & independent media organizations usually count, although in the end it is up to the website admin of the linking page. We use “nofollow,” links to link to NATSAP pages where they state they are not an accrediting body. It is useful for us to link to such pages, as many parents are purposefully mislead to believe NATSAP is an accrediting body, however we obviously don't want to help NATSAP increase their “PageRank,” in any way.

Now, this is not to say that likes, followers, etc. matter less than “follow,” links. Without a strong social media base, there wouldn't be much for anyone to link to. Also, the fact that we have two times more likes & several times more followers than Logan River speaks loudly to anyone who takes the time to listen. In addition, practically all the "follow," links we have come through social media introductions. Success in Social Media and Google “PageRank,” are symbiotic and feed into each other. We need both in order to win.

We do everything we can to cross-pollinate online. Our petition, Facebook, Twitter, & G+ pages point to our website. Our website in turn offers visitors a single place where they can Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, +1 us on Google+, subscribe to us on YouTube, and find our petition. All of this is to hopefully have not just signatures, but also likes, followers, links etc. which can lead to additional signatures, likes, followers, links etc. in the future.

We know that our online presence continues to deter parents from considering Logan River Academy for their children and every signature, like, follower, +1, etc. makes us more prominent. So, please do not allow others to make you believe your voice online doesn't count and can't help bring about change.