Using Digital Marketing to Boost NGOs/ Non-profits' Visibility - A test case

Using Digital Marketing to Boost
Visibility of NGOs & Non-Profits
A test case on WWF-India’s Facebook using picture stories

Jan – Mar 2012

Ameen Ahmed
Senior Communications Manager
WWF-India, New Delhi
Email: aahmed@wwfindia.net
www.wwfindia.org

Using Digital Marketing to Boost WWF-India’s Visibility – A Test Case

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1. THE OPPORTUNITIES

1.1 Internet in India
The online world in its current state sees its future in social media. As the internet expands
its presence in the hinterlands of India not only through the state owned BSNL but also
through mobile internet technology, the audience variety and numbers engaging social
media is set to grow exponentially.
According to a study released in Sep 2011*:
- ‘Active’ Internet users in India stand at 65 million (Up 28% from 2010).
- 61 million ‘regular’ users (46 million urban, 16 million rural).
- Internet reaches 29 million Indian households (avg. users per household up marginally
at 2.23/ house).
- Covers 11.3% of all Indian households and 5.4% of all Indians (13% urban, 2% rural).
- Over 4 in 5 are ‘daily’ users. Daily users’ base grew faster, at 33%.
- Access up from all places (avg. place of access up at 2.23 from 1.76).
- ‘Home’ is the single largest place of access (58%), and the most preferred place of
access (43%).
Adding to these facts, a Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) report^ in June 2011
suggests India has 346.67 million active Mobile Internet Subscribers (GPRS/2G/3G/CDMA-
Data).

1.2 Social media in India
According to a report by Nielsen ~ released in mid-2011:
- 30 million people in India who are online consumers are members of social networking sites
- 20 million of them spend time daily on social networking sites
- Surprisingly, Indians spend more time on social media than to check their personal email
- By the end of 2011, it is estimated that 45,000 online Indians intend to join social
networking sites each day.

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- A quarter of online Indians were able to recall brands using social media
- Having a social media presence corresponds to ‘innovation’ ‘customer friendliness’ and a
sense of ‘cool’
- Social Media in India is growing at 100 percent. By the end of 2012 it is likely to touch 45
million.
As the above data suggests, the scope for WWF-India to get a bigger share of the ever
growing social community is tremendous. If we can ride on this wave, the social media will
give us great leverage for our visibility in the online world and ultimately in the real world and
might help translate into funding opportunities as well.

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2. THE CHALLENGES

A comparison (on 24 May 2011) of WWF-India with another NGO working for environment in
India suggests we need to pull up our socks:

WWF-India
YouTube: 29,448 views (59 Twitter: 4,202
Facebook: 9,730 likes
subscribers) followers

Greenpeace India
YouTube: 1,64,717 views (534 Twitter: 4,658
Facebook: 34,647 likes
subscribers) followers

The opportunities and the above comparison suggest there is scope for much improvement
for WWF-India in its social media outlook. WWF-India needs to graduate beyond having a
single strategy for both the traditional and digital media. There is a strong need for a specific
strategy for its engagement with the social media users. There needs to be an understanding
of:
1) The different available audiences.
2) Their social media needs.
3) How WWF-India can answer those needs.
4) Once these needs are answered there has to be a mechanism to measure the
audiences’ reaction to our provision of their ‘needs’.
5) Finally, WWF-India’s investment in Social Media and the results have to be
documented to ensure there is proper ROI. This is critical if resources are to be
invested on a bigger scale.

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3. A TEST OF THE POTENTIAL

In order to demonstrate the potential of WWF-India to expand its presence in the Digital
Media world, a small test was conducted between 20 January and 10 Mar 2012 using WWF-
India’s Facebook (FB) page. FB was chosen over other social media outlets like Twitter and
Youtube as it has proven to be the most popular of all social mediums so far in India.
3.1 The background
Since its joining the FB, WWF-India would post a link of all its web stories on its FB page. The
link provided for the lead picture of the story to appear as a thumbnail in the post and the
visitors had to visit our website to read the story. Although such posts were good to tell
people what was happening, they didn’t have enough ‘stuff’ in them to excite visitors to ‘like’
the same, let alone commenting on them or share them with their own subscribers or on
their pages. Also, the number of ‘likes’ the WWF-India’s FB page was getting by posting such
stories was not something to boast of.
Thus was born the idea to conduct a small online experiment.

3.2 Methodology
It is said that a picture tells a hundred words but a good picture conveys an entire story.
Hence, the idea was to post an exciting picture from an event with a small description of it to
see if that would improve the Key Metrics or KMs (likes, comments, shares of the individual
posts and the overall likes of FB page).
The following was decided:
a) Between 23 Jan and 10 Mar 2012 (the test or project period), the Species and
Landscapes team would source some ‘exciting’ wildlife images.
b) At least 75% of the posts during this period would be such small picture stories.
c) The small caption accompanying each image would suffice for any visitor to encourage
her or him to positively impact that post’s and our FB page’s KMs.
d) The images would be used to create short picture stories as and when sent to us from
the field and there was no planned gap between such posts.
e) There would be one person from the Species and Communications team who would
respond or get the field staff to respond to any queries or criticisms within a short time.

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f) The aim was to achieve an overall increase of 25% in the number of likes of WWF-
India’s FB page within eight weeks of the start of the test. The no: of likes were 11,103 as
of 22 Jan 2012.

3.3 Results
The following is the data obtained from the 12 posts (including 9 small picture stories) posted
during the study period.
a) Table 1: Increase in no: of likes of FB page

No: of Change in Absolute % Avg no: of
Date range
days no: of likes no: increase increase increase/ day

9,730 to
24 May 2011 to 22 Jan 2012 243 1,373 12 6
11,103
11,103 to
23 Jan 2012 to 10 Mar 2012 47 3,718 25 79
14,821

b) Table 2: Messages posted between 23 Jan and 10 Mar 2012 and the Key Metrics data

photo other
Message Posted like share comment view clicks
Red Panda 3/1/12 397 186 40 4,879 511
CEC member Biba Jasmine reports
on a WWF-India project # 2/27/12 47 11 134
This Earth Hour, lead the way for
your entire city 2/24/12 42 25 3 131
Camera trap images from Kargil 2/22/12 120 36 13 1,323 229
4 rhinos find a new home 2/21/12 94 23 13 1,153 343
Clipping the wings of illegal bird
trade in India 2/15/12 86 41 7 356 261
Alsatian dog Tracey helps recover
32 kg of ivory in Jharkhand 2/8/12 51 15 16 760 266
World Wetlands Day 2012
celebrated at Asan Barrage 2/2/12 44 10 3 389 109
Occupancy surveys and camera 2/2/12 29 11 2 64

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trapping in parts Haldwani forest
division#
Four individual tigers roaming the
wilderness - wild, free and fearless! 1/31/12 121 20 20 710 328
A sight to behold amidst
Uttarakhand’s River Kosi# 1/23/12 33 7 2 86
Tigers camera trapped in Ramnagar
Forest Division (Uttarakhand) 1/23/12 83 18 20 823 257
#
Non-picture posts
c) The above results also correspond with the higher no: of hits that stories with good
pictures and narrative content, which describe action in the field, receive on WWF-India’s
website as compared to non-narrative, plain write-ups describing photo opportunities.
d) There were 9 requests received by FB users during the above study period to volunteer
for WWF-India’s work.

3.4 Basic analysis
a) The number of people ‘liking’ WWF-India’s FB page rose by 3,718 numbers to 14,821 by
the end of the study period. This is an increase of 25% in the percentage of absolute
numbers. A further analysis of the change between the two study periods of 2011 and
2012 shows the big difference in numbers and percentage of changes, clearly favouring
the use of image stories with captions to gain on the KMs.
b) Short picture stories received significantly higher likes than non-picture posts.
c) Short picture stories have greater visibility beyond the initial users as they are shared
more than the other type.
d) No: of people spending time on WWF-India’s FB page was much higher than the non-
picture posts as seen in the ‘photo view’ column of Table 2.

3.5 Key learnings
a. In the study period, the pictures stories with captions improved the KMs of WWF-
India’s FB page. It is suggested that this method be used to expand overall visibility
of WWF-India on FB.
b. An educated guess can be made to calculate the ROI in social media marketing using
the key metrics like the ones used in this test.

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c. These results can help shape the overall social media marketing strategy of WWF-
India, which needs to be developed separately.
d. Similar tests can be conducted to see if they help in fund raising for the organization.
May be a good picture with a small caption with a specific monetary ask should be
tried.
e. Similar approach can be tried with other social media platforms including Twitter,
and Blogging.
f. It should be experimented to see if short viral videos particularly on Youtube and
Vimeo can raise the profile of the organisation.
-------------------------------------------------------

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•••

Note:
Social Media, Digital Media and New Media are often used in place of one another as they
denote the same meaning

References:

* http://indiamicrofinance.com/india-internet-statistics-2011.html India Online Landscape
2011, Juxt Consult (an online and new media research organisation which profiles ‘online
Indians’ as internet users and consumers.)
^ http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/trai/upload/Reports/55/Indicator_Report-Mar-
11.pdf

~ http://www.nielsen.com/in/en.html

Acknowledgements:
I thank my colleagues Rohit Mishra and Anil Cherukupalli who helped me collate the required
data.

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