Digital Workshop at SOS Children Villages

NGOs – a sector that is social as social is. They represent the pluralism and diversity that is characteristic of any society. And within this framework they constantly push the boundaries of what is possible. From environment to child rights to women empowerment, some of the NGO led advocacy campaigns have induced policy changes at a global level.

In the past 8 years we have been involved with NGOs for a lot of cause marketing initiatives. And we were extremely happy to share our expertise in this domain with the representatives of SOS Children Villages an independent non-governmental social development organization that has pioneered a family approach to the long-term care of orphaned and abandoned children in India.

Team OMLogic conducted a 4 hour digital workshop for the members of SOS Children Villages at their Faridabad center to talk about how an NGO can leverage social media for fund raising. Attended by the representatives of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Korea, here are the key takeaways from the workshop.

Engage. Empower. Influence.

The framework in which any NGO operates is strikingly similar to the framework required for moulding public perceptions. A lot of times people actually getting the benefit from the cause are not online but people in the associated community are. The success of the social media program will be if we can take the stories from the people who are impacted, get them verified or expanded upon by people in the community, use them to reach the opinion makers and influencers, who in turn connect you to collaborators and funders.

Social Media As A Propagation Tool

Depth of issues needs dialogues and social media helps in doing precisely that. Also, when there are 3.175 Billion active internet users globally, this platform indeed acts like a window of unmissable opportunity. Social media helps not only in collating the humongous data but also helps in channelizing it, enabling in instant correction, if required.

Tap On The Power Of Advocacy Marketing

An NGO is a member driven organization. While they try to communicate, educate and spread awareness about the cause to the outside world, they often forget the fact that they house powerful evangelists. These are their members, stakeholders, donors and other associated members, both at a national and international level. Each of them are influencers in their space and would therefore work as the perfect digital brand ambassadors. For example, SOS Children Villages has 1800 employees in India and around 10,000 employees globally. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if each one of them could share the brand message online? Think about the share of voice it could generate! Now translate that into digital ROI!

How To Get Your Content To Become Viral

Though there is no magic formula to virality, here is a quick guideline:

Step 1: Create your content from the point of view of not only things people will like to view but things they would like to share.

Step 2: Provide the content to your internal stakeholders to share.

Step 3: Identify your influencers(opinion makers, celebrities) and provide the content for them to share.

Step 4: Share and synchronize across social media.

The workshop ended with us defining a social media strategy for SOS Children Villages on a broad level. We look forward to its successful implementation by the SOS family. Let us know if you have any queries regarding how NGOs can initiate fund raising activities via social media.