How to communicate with the audience
on Instagram about public procurement?
7 ProTenge secrets that work on Instagram
*Anticorruption champion 2021 (USA)
*Open Contracting Champion 2021 (OCP)
Data, figures and documents are very difficult to
“materialize” into something understandable for the audience on Instagram. However, this is critically important - otherwise it would be hard to explain to people why this information is worth their attention.
Maps
Family or business ties
Ownership schemes
In Kazakhstan, the government covers the expenses on news which praise them. Here, the mayor of the city congratulated the journalists on their professional holiday and paid about 500 US dollars from the regional budget for this article.
Publication of an item and its price usually causes a lot of discussion about the effectiveness of such expenditures.
Product and Price
When it is especially difficult to materialize the object of the investigation, then the cat with the gold chain can play the role of a pension fund, and the pug can be a greedy supplier.
2. Explain how the problem you discuss
affects people's lives
The audience on Instagram decides to read or skip your post in a couple of seconds. Reassure them that your information directly affects their lives. For example, the security of a city with 1 million citizens depends on the tender for the construction of a dam for $15 million.
Here's how ProTenge showed the impact of budget money on the work of the media on the day of the parliamentary elections:
Media that does not receive money from the state shows the protest of activists and the reaction of the police.
In the media, which is funded by the state, people would see news titles as: “Teddy bears were not allowed to vote in Karaganda”.
3. Show the tools you work with
or the backstage of your work
When the audience understands how you got the information and can verify this information, then the level of trust in you grows.
This is an official, who escaped from Kazakhstan, is accused of a corruption crime.
He made a statement on Facebook: I am an honest person. He accompanied his statement with this photo.
ProTenge showed the audience how we found the location with photos step by step. This is New York, one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Here we show how we confirmed the information that the Kazakh embassy rented a house in Finland for 12,000 euros per month.
We told our audience how we got access to the Finnish court documents and found out that the embassy paid the owner of the house more than 60,000 euros of debt and also paid 2,000 euros for a broken door.
We received answers to requests from Finland much quicker than explanations from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan.
4. Use unexpected analogies
For people who haven't even seen 10 thousand dollars,
it's hard to imagine hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sometimes it is difficult for our audience to understand how much money we are discussing, therefore analogies help.
In the poorest region
of Kazakhstan, $500,000 was spent on a theatrical performance staged by an Italian director.
It is so expensive that the most famous and successful artists
of Kazakhstan need to work
for 10 years in order to pay
for one such performance
through their taxes.
5. Don't be afraid of using emojis
In serious journalism, it is not customary to express one's emotional attitude to the topic of the investigation, but Instagram is a platform where
the manifestation of emotions can be justified.
Bloggers for your money will praise the roads that were repaired for your money
290 billion tenge spent on useless work
After our criticism,
the Ministry of Culture refused to publish books about
the president
It is very important that your page encourages the audience to take action. As an example, ProTenge holds a contest "Which mayor spends budget money the worst?", inviting readers to vote.
6. Engage Your Audience
Two mayors are competing here: one mayor bought inflatable palm trees for the city, while the other mayor decided to pay a private company to help him fend off attacks of trolls on social networks.
The trolls are probably the mayor's critics.
It was a difficult choice for our readers.
When the audience begins to understand major problems after reading your posts, it is very important to give them the tools so that they can participate in the process on their own. And ProTenge often publishes instructions on how to search for information about public procurement and other government spendings.
7. Give people the tools to get them involved
in the processes that matter to you
What do Google and
a government procurement website have in common?
You can also google on the public procurement website, and we can show how it works
For everyone who works in social networks on serious topics like public procurement, there is a very big risk of overloading people with negativity, and it is not the best currency on social media.
Therefore, ProTenge often publishes inspirational stories about people and organizations that help to develop Kazakhstan alongside with cute animal videos.
!! We do not abuse the attention of our audience, we relax with them. It is important.
We empathize and experience difficulties together, support each other!