by Phyllis Zimbler Miller

When I self-published my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT in April of 2008 I had no idea that this would lead to my involvement in numerous online volunteer activities that support military personnel and their families.

All I knew was that I had self-published the novel in order to preserve a slice of women’s social history during the Vietnam War.  (The novel takes place in 1970 right after the Kent State shootings.)

And now a year and some months later, I’ve been the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show YourMilitaryLife.com since November 2008, helped raise funds for Operation Soldier Care, and started two Web sites to help support military personnel currently serving.

I now have a new project to use the Internet to further my objective of expanding people’s knowledge about our military personnel today.  This new project is to work on getting MRS. LIEUTENANT into high schools as an adjunct to classes in language arts or U.S. history or social studies.  I envision the novel as a jumping-off point for discussing the Vietnam War as well as the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

How does what I’ve done apply to what you can do on the Internet? 

Is there a volunteer activity in which you are involved for your community? Do you want to get out the word that more volunteers are needed? 

Why not search on the Internet for a social media site that might offer you the opportunity to get out the word?  There are social media sites that have geographical sub-groups or social media sites focused around a single topic that might fit in with your community activity.

Or do you run a soup kitchen that on some days unexpectedly finds itself short-handed?  Why not have your volunteers follow you on Twitter so that you can send out an emergency SOS tweet when you suddenly discover you need help right then?

What about using social media to praise volunteers who have gone above and beyond the “call of duty”?  Everyone likes to be praised.  Tweeting or doing a status update on Facebook or LinkedIn praising a volunteer will warm that volunteer’s heart and perhaps also encourage other volunteers to step up their involvement.

Perhaps you’ve written a nonfiction book about making the world a better place.  If you start a blog to attract readers to your book, you might write blog posts about volunteer efforts that have caught your attention.  Besides writing about information that is on the “spine” of your brand, you are providing information that may inspire others to start their own save-the-earth projects.

Of course, given the collaborative nature of the Web, you can also cross-promote to help others.  The Operation Soldier Care project I mentioned above was very much a joint project with three of us using Twitter, our blogs, etc. to reach out to others.

The beauty of using cyberspace to promote your volunteer passion is that these strategies I’ve described are free or low cost.  There’s no need to spend money on printing and postage or paid advertisements in order to promote your good deed efforts.

If you brainstorm with your volunteer colleagues, you’ll probably come up with tons of other ways to use the Internet to promote good.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller’s company has started a low-cost monthly program at www.WeTeachWebMarketing.com to help people promote their brand, book or business.  She’s also a National Internet Business Examiner at www.InternetBizBlogger.com, on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/ZimblerMiller, and her novel www.MrsLieutenant.com was a 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semi-finalist.

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