We are in no position to give lessons on campaigning.
This is the first time we've done anything like this and professionals in the field can probably point to all sorts of things we could do better (please do – email us or post them on our Save Leeds Crisis Centre blog).
We also won't know if our campaign has made any difference until the council meeting on 11 February which decides the fate of Leeds Crisis Centre.
Our successes to date are modest: we have raised awareness about a cuts decision which was being taken as quietly as possible. 1,500 people visited our website in its first five days and we have messages of support from countless professionals, several service users, two MPs and a councillor.
Thousands of people have heard about the campaign via Twitter following support from celebrities like Stephen Fry.
But we do think we've learned some things in the past few days and we hope that we've shown that anyone can start a campaign and gather support. So for what it's worth, here's how to do it and what we think we've learned:
* We decided to run an anonymous campaign which would be safe for service users and indeed council or NHS employees to support. We also didn't want it to be "such and such's" campaign – we wanted it to be everyone's or no one's. And we intend to get back to normal life once it's over!
* To do this, we set up a gmail account and email address, then used this new email address to register a blog (we used the standard, off the shelf Wordpress blog which is pretty easy to get the hang of) and a Twitter account. We are hoping someone else might start a Facebook page for us, because we don't really understand Facebook!
* This created a space in which people could safely express their views. The rest relies on enough people coming forward with personal stories, which fortunately a few kind people have done.
* Every time we post a new blog, we tweet a link to it via Twitter. Every time someone follows us or mentions us on Twitter we thank them and retweet their tweet. We also approach people via Twitter direct messages and email. The blog had 40 visits on Monday. By the end of Tuesday it had 350. It reached 1000 on Friday lunchtime.
* All that activity online is pointless unless it translates into old fashioned pressure. We put the contact details of councillors and MPs on the site with a template letter and all the info people need, which we update as we get more info ourselves. We wrote a press release and sent it to all the journalists whose email addresses we could find. We put that up on the site too. We've tried celebrities – without success.
* From that, we've been approached by local TV and press, which we feel could translate into real pressure. One or two MPs and councillors are starting to lobby on the issue (but not enough of them yet).
When you're angry about something, it's easy to be vicious in the anonymity of the internet. We decided to keep our tone constructive and reasonable and to avoid personal attacks.
We want to leave the key people involved in the decision enough space to change their minds and we feel that we should reflect our experience of the service itself, which is caring and professional, in the campaign.
We hope some of that is helpful – we'll see on 11 February whether it amounts to anything.
This post has been written by the Save Leeds Crisis campaign team. Team members have asked to remain anonymous as they are either relatives of service users or have used and valued the service and who do not wish to be named for fear of reprisals.
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