African Marketing & Communication Learning Series:

The Power of Media Visibility

30 August 2022

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Introductions: In the Chat

Please introduce yourself:

• Your Name
• Your Organization
• Where in the world are you connecting from?
• One word to describe how you feel about marketing or media

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Continue to add in the chat as we continue our conversation.

Agenda

1. Your Guides Today (Welcome Esther Ijewere)
2. The importance of storytelling to public relations (Esther Ijewere)
3. How to create content that engages your target audience (Nwando Ajene)
4. Collaboration and association as it relates to media visibility (Tobby Gusi)
5. Supporting women in Marketing their social ventures (Olaniyan Olushola)
6. Panel Discussion
7. Question & Answers
8. Future Series Session and Wrap Up

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Your Guides Today

The Importance of Storytelling to PR

Esther Ijewere

Women of Rubies

Why Storytelling?

Storytelling is a powerful way to communicate with your target audience. Organisations use it as a means of communication that aims to create a positive perception of the brand. The story you share about your brand should be aimed at your target audience and appeal to those who make up this audience.

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What role does storytelling play in public relations (PR)

• Drawing your audience into your brand narrative.
• Build your brand voice and creates positive perception
• Makes your content exciting and easily digestible
• Influences change in thought behaviour

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Your Story

Share YOUR Story about your organisation.

• Share your story
• 1 minute each
• Then ask another person to present their stories
• Discussion

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SHARE: Reflect on Your Learning

How to create content that

that engages your target audience!

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Nwando Ajene

Catalyst 2030

Disclaimer

Today, I’m going to share some necessary ingredients on what drives a compelling content:

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• Learning how to create engaging content is an art and a science
• But the recipe you create will taste, smell and look different
• Some might decide to add or remove ingredients. Others might prefer to skip the recipe steps or allow the ingredients simmer longer than prescribed
• So, rather than be prescriptive about how to create content, we are going to make this a conversation

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Some questions to guide our conversation

What does engaging content mean?

• Does this differ across platforms, audience and SDG types?

How can you create one?

• Have an objective in mind (e.g., fundraising, awareness, action, community building)
• Bring the human element into your content
• Option A: 80% of the world’s children live in abject poverty
• Option B: Selma lives in Guspo with her family. She has never attended any formal school..

Who is my audience and what do they care about? Should I be on TikTok?

• How can I leverage my community to drive conversation? Wait, how do I build a community?
• Who should I learn (or borrow) from?

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Warm up

• What are your favorite social media accounts?
• What do you like about these accounts?

Some examples of social media accounts that others enjoy/love

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• We can’t fit great, engaging content into a single bucket
• They are diverse in their content, approach and platforms
• Yet, we find ourselves reaching out for their content and being a strong part of the community, they have created

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• They are helpful
• They are popular
• Content aligns with our values (e.g., religion, politics, life stage)
• They make us laugh (or sad)

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We (probably) follow these accounts for various reasons

So, what does engaging content mean?

• Compelling – it hits you in the guts. Stops you in your track
• Persuasive – It makes you want to take an action (share, donate, comment, like etc.)
• Succinct – it is delivered quickly (a picture, 60s video, 240 characters)
• Anything else?

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there”

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If you want to create such content, how do you go about it?

• It all starts with an objective
• Why do you want to communicate?
• Why does it matter that people know what you're doing?
• Awareness, fundraising, recruiting
• Awareness – how did you discover your favorite social media?
• What made you contribute to a fundraising you saw on the internet

Start with why

• A good process to leverage is from Simon Sinek – Start with Why
• Quite important to ask the questions before you begin anything
• Platforms change, trends fade, but the objective of communication is resilient hence the importance of asking why

Understand your audience

• Who is the audience I should be reaching out to?
• Take time to do an informal focus group
• If you don’t have the luxury of time and money, try Google. Reach out for articles and research that articulates how the audience segment communicates
• Look for successful social enterprises that have been successful with the audience segment. Find out what drove their success
• Is it a uniform audience?
• Do you have a clear understand of how this audience wants to be communicated to?

The content is the whole point

• Everything we have discussed to this point are adjacent to the topic of content
• We can only create an engaging content after we have created the actual content
• Note:
• Articulate the top words that describe your organization and activities
• Decide how to show those words through content without specifically mentioning those words
• Write your elevator speech
• Use human stories to drive messaging
• Seek feedback from your audience

SHARE: Reflect on your experiences

Collaboration and association as it relates to media visibility

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Tobby Gusi

Girl hub Africa

Supporting women in marketing their social ventures

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Olaniyan Olushola

Wikimedia Nigeria, UG

Information to know…

1. As of 2020, According to the Guinness book of record, Wikipedia is the world's largest online encyclopedia with a total of 55,632,716 articles, while less than 17% of these articles are about women.

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2. 1 out of 10 Wikipedia editors is female

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3. An example of content bias is when a person is refers to an individual by their occupation, such as “doctor” or “engineer,” and it is assumed that individual is male

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4. Gender Bias in Online Marketing: Data Shows Women Are Undervalued by 21%

CCBYSA4.0/Subhashish Panigrahi

Initiatives that support women…

1. Wiki4NaijaWomen

2. The Visibility Project

3. Wiki Loves Women

4. WIkiHerStory

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Panel Discussion

Tobby Gusi

Girl hub Africa

Olaniyan Olushola

Wikimedia Nigeria, UG

Nwando Ajene

Catalyst 2030

Esther Ijewere

Women of Rubies

Ask Questions, Share your Experiences

Reflection on Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned

• Storytelling is a powerful way to communicate
• Learning how to create engaging content is an art and a science
• Create engaging content to engage your target audience
• Collaborations is key to media visibility and engagement
• Connect with people genuinely, genuinely showing interest and support!

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Event Updates : Future Sessions

Interested in joining Catalyst 2030?

197

Countries and territories served by Catalyst 2030 members

2 Billion +

Lives touched by our member organisations

1,700+

social innovators and innovators from 1200+ member organisations

Thank you!

for being with us today

Esther Ijewere

ijewereesther@gmail.com

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Nwando Ajene

nwando@catalyst2030.net

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Tobby Gusi

gusi.tobby@yahoo.com

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Olaniyan Olushola

olaniyanshola15@gmail.com

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Contact Us!

African Marketing & Communication Learning Series:

The Power of Media Visibility

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With Esther Ijewere, Nwando Ajene, Tobby Gusi, Olaniyan Olushola

August 30th 2022