Social Change using Social Media- Stand Up Take Action
There is a news from Agency FAQs that WAT Consult team is working with United Nations Millennium Campaign (UNMC) to end poverty by 2015. I would like to congratulate WAT Consult team for assisting UN to spread the message in South Asian countries.
It looks like they have completed 2 months in this initiative and Rajiv has given update on the work. I will be closely watching this initiative as I think this is a real case study to understand the social media tools for spreading awareness. In two months they have reached about 13,000 people. I would guess this number is for both online and offline. By October 2008 they have a ambitious plan to reach out to about 1 million people in South Asia. That is over 7692% increase over the current number, in a span of 4 months. I know social marketing can be viral. But I will be interested to know the kind of activities that will reach the goal of 1 million people. 
Currently they are spreading the word in social networking sites and twitter. I took a look at the activity of these initiatives. They have the most members (1073) in Orkut, which is the most frequently used social networking site in India. But the level of participation is low. I think the level of participation will go up in due course of time.
The Facebook group has around 92 members. There is a separate channel in Youtube which hosts around 22 videos clocking around 167 views per video on a average. 186 people follow this initiative on twitter. The last post on the Stand Up Take Action Blog was on October 2007. Isn’t blog a tool which can be leveraged for social media marketing?
I personally feel that the buzz in these tools can be ramped up by frequent discussion. See the graph which shows the participation level in the Orkut Community. I am sure there are various plans for ramping up the participation in due course.
BTW the some of the numbers do not tally from Agencyfaqs and WATBlog. Can any one from WAT Consult confirm latest numbers. As a side note there is an interesting post from RWW on the usage of Social Media for Social Cause.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
So, we met again after the “Muziboo…” post on WATblog.com…
Let me clarify few things:-
1.The social media drive in in a very initial step.
2.The figure include both direct & indirect reach that’s why the difference.
3.Regarding engagement, though in the early stage, we got to see some action:-
e.g.
http://flickr.com/photos/endpoverty2015/sets/72157604805547476/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZGjoheY_PY
4.As Harshil said earlier, we have some exclusive social tie-ups in pipeline for both offline & online synergy.
Moreover, thanks for writing about it, as I know that it’s a long way ahead & its “WE” that can make a difference.. I’d appreciate if you can spread the words through the blog-badge available at WATblog.com
Thanks & stay tuned for more updates…
Harshil and Rupesh, Very interesting comments. I will be closely watching the updates for this marketing casestudy. As I have mentioned, this can be a good case study for users like me to understand how one can create online buzz for a company or a event. Good Luck
[…] is yet another initiative which uses internet to create awareness for a social cause. Teach India is a […]
Hey - thanks Saad for writing about the Cause. I’ll definitely check into the numbers. Maybe someone else from our team will respond to that. Im also pleased to inform you that we are tying up with some of the big social media vehicles in the country. One of them should be up next week. So i’ll keep you posted on that. It will basically be an exclusive zone with exclusive content and participation opportunities. There may also be micro event which will have an online + offline synergy. There will be mobile inclusion as well. True - it will be an interesting case study - - we hope to get some traction around it. You have my email id - if you need anything else on this i’ll be happy to keep you updated.