Effective digital communication

OPPORTUNITY

HANDS-ON Experience Learning

EFFECTIVE DIGITAL COMMUNICATION

EFFECTIVE DIGITAL

COMMUNICATION

STARTS WITH UNDERSTANDING YOUR AUDIENCE’S DIGITAL USE AND BEHAVIOUR

Like any innovator, civil society organisations have two main levers to drive change: technology and human behaviour. The way we communicate and how we access and process information about the world around us is changing as technology evolves in the 21st century. Those that fail to adapt to innovative new ways of communicating may struggle to keep pace.

Consumer broadband consumption in North America reached a milestone in the fourth quarter of 2021 as averages hit 536.3 gigabytes (GB) per month – surpassing half a terabyte (TB), according to a new study. This figure represents an increase of 165% when compared to the previous average of 203 GB per month.1

Undoubtedly, this figure will be higher today. Back home, a similar picture is emerging. According to a survey of 18 to 26-year-olds in South Africa, young people spend a quarter of the day on their phones.2 This is not hard to believe considering that Internet access using mobile devices is the most common form of access to the Internet (69.4%)3 in this country.

Although the use of mobile devices in rural parts (59.2%) lags urban (73.7%) and metro areas (73.4%), it keeps growing.4

1 Baumgartner, J. 2022. Average data consumption eclipses half a terabyte per month – OpenVault. LightReading, 3 Jan. https://www.lightreading.com/ cable-tech/average-data-consumption-eclipses-half-terabyte-per-month--openvault/d/d-id/775689

2 Nair, N. 2022. Young South Africans check their phones at least 30 times an hour: survey. Sowetan Live, 10 May. https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/s-mag/ living/2022-05-10-young-south-africans-check-their-cellphones-at-least-30times-an-hour-survey/

Smartphone proliferation is bringing more people online globally from Soweto to South Carolina. This is having a profound impact on how we access and consume information, and affects our attention spans, memories and cognitive processes.5

So, what does this mean for civil society organisations focused on behaviour change? And what can they learn from other organisations utilising the power of digital technology? This learning brief explores these questions by centring the experience and learnings of the #keready campaign and other DGMT-funded initiatives, such as: Youth Capital, Nal’ibali, the Zero Dropout Campaign and Amplify|Mobilise|Change (AMC).

3 Statistics South Africa. 2021. General household survey, p. 47. https://www. statssa.gov.za/publications/P0318/P03182021.pdf

4 Ibid.

5 Wolf, M. 2008.  Proust and the squid: the story and science of the reading brain. Thriplow: Icon Books.

Drive public innovation by reigniting civil society

FOLLOW YOUR AUDIENCE

While many young people use mobile phones to communicate and access information, it must be acknowledged that lots of South Africans struggle with access and connectivity. This learning brief focuses on the use of digital communication, but it must continue to be supported by other forms of communication (such as radio and face-to-face communication) in order to reach as many people as possible.

“Follow your audience” is the basic principle.

CASE STUDY #KEREADY

When the Covid-19 pandemic initially swept across South Africa in early 2020, young people were not the focus of vaccination campaigns as they were not viewed as high risk. However, the key to high vaccination coverage is young people – as a third of the entire population is aged 18–34.6 The #keready campaign emerged out of DGMT’s involvement in establishing a demand acceleration task team in collaboration with other donors and government departments in 2021.

Launched in February 2022, after intense engagement with youth in various parts of the country, #keready harnessed the power of digital communication to put young people in charge of campaign messaging promoting the uptake of Covid-19 vaccinations. At the time, only 5 million of the country’s 17.7 million people aged 18–34 had been fully vaccinated.7 #Keready means “I am ready” in Mzansi8 slang, so it is accessible to all young South Africans, not just township youth. The “I am” has a sense of agency, encouraging inclusion and involvement.

“The campaign is deliberately unbranded so that it is an uncontested space for the youth. It represents the views that young people repeatedly shared: they don’t want to hear from government or from politicians or even from paid influencers about vaccines.”

Lebo Motshegoa, head of communication, #keready

6 DGMT. 2022. #Keready –

https://dgmt.co.za/ keready-young-people-want-their-lives-back/

7 Kgomotso,

8 Informal name for South Africa from IsiXhosa, literally meaning “south”.

Dr Joe Phaahla, Minister of Health, endorsed the campaign as part of the Health Department’s demand generation efforts: “We were happy to support young people who decided to take the vaccination campaign as their own under the theme #keready, I am ready. The campaign is led by young health professionals and ours [sic] is simply to support and encourage, they are in charge of the campaign.”9

An independent evaluation report by Genesis Analytics found that vaccination uptake in 12 to 19-year-olds was significantly larger than would have been expected without the #keready campaign, with an estimated 251 000 more vaccinations administered as a result of the intervention.10

The campaign has since evolved into a movement that seeks to enhance healthcare-seeking behaviour among young people. #Keready aimed to put young people in control of the message, creating incentives for their participation in vaccination programmes and public health activities, as well as offering unfiltered health information.

10

Young people want their lives back!

M. 2022. Health department reworks campaign to encourage youth to vaccinate. Eye Witness News, 18 Feb. https://ewn.co.za/2022/02/18/healthdepartment-reworks-campaign-to-encourage-youth-to-vaccinate

9 Government of South Africa. 2022. South Africa: speaking notes by the Minister of Health Dr. Joe Phaahla during the Covid-19 vaccination update media briefing. Press release, 10 Mar. https://allafrica.com/stories/202203100604.html

Genesis Analytics. 2022. Evaluation of the Covid-19 Youth Vaccination Programme. April. "PowerPoint presentation"

Figure 1: Total Vaccination by Week and Age Group (12 - 19) – Expected and Actual

Figure 2: Total Vaccination by Week and Age Group (12 - 19) – Trend and Actual

THE #KEREADY APPROACH

REACH YOUR AUDIENCE WHERE THEY ARE, NOT WHERE YOU THINK THEY SHOULD BE 1

“I am on Twitter, I am on Facebook, I am on WhatsApp. If you are looking for me, that is where you are going to find me."

– This is the response that #keready researchers received from the young people they were hoping to target.

Young people are not always accessible through traditional mediums of communication such as newspapers, television or radio. But most can reliably be reached on their phones through social media.

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS

between February and March 2022 for #keready

Headline figures for social media

› 2.4 million estimated social media reach

› 612 inbound messages on Facebook

› 260 inbound messages on Instagram

› 339 inbound messages on Twitter

› Facebook page impressions: 367 000

› Instagram profile impressions: 49 000

› Twitter impressions: 68 000

Headline figures for the WhatsApp line

› 41 500 active users

› 10 000 total questions

Hot topics

› Boosters

› Side effects

› Getting vaccinated while pregnant

Motshegoa says:

“The hashtag was the first thing we got right. It meant we were available on all forms of social media.”

A key initiative of the campaign was the “#keready doctors”, a network of young health professionals who engaged daily with young people on various platforms including social media, answering their many questions. Another digital initiative was the WhatsApp hotline “Ask a Dr”, which has more than 54 000 users.

Source: Genesis Analytics. 2022. Evaluation of the Covid-19 Youth Vaccination Programme. April. "PowerPoint presentation".

After months of restrictions, young people were tired of being told what to do and demanded greater freedom. The campaign tapped into that by asking if they were ready to take advantage of opportunities to follow their own path. Motshegoa expands: “We wanted to say: ‘Make yourself opportunity ready. If you don’t and opportunities present themselves, you might miss out.’” To visually demonstrate this feeling of being opportunity ready, the #keready team included tick-box graphics on its social media content (see Figure 3).

Young people want their choices respected and to feel like they are involved in decisions that affect them. For the campaign to resonate with them, young people’s needs and aspirations had to be at the centre of the campaign, not the vaccine. This led to the co-creation of social media content in the form of a competition: the #keready2flex challenge.

Motshegoa explains that it was important to keep content fresh and flowing, so that people would keep following the hashtag. Gradually the campaign plugged into various parts of life –university, travel, worship and romance.

INVOLVE THE AUDIENCE 3

This initiative, using both social media and community engagement, invited young people to take control of the communication about Covid-19. It challenged youth to frame Covid-19 and vaccination-related messages in their own style using their creative talent. Working with a network of over 100 civil society organisations (CSOs) across South Africa, young people were encouraged to perform, paint, move, write and to share their creativity with #keready. When they did not have a phone, their video clips were sent to the #keready team from the offices of the CSO.

Emma O’Shaughnessy, digital communications specialist and lead of the AMC11 programme says: “No campaign should exist without participation and collaboration. And, it is important to make it clear to people what the effect of that collaboration will be so they are motivated to take part.”

Figure 4: Thousands of competition submissions ensured a strong presence on social media because of the requirement to submit entries on the #keready WhatsApp line and to tag #keready on different social media platforms

Figure 3: Unbranded communication with a strong youth identity, utilising tick-box graphics

"We want to feel that the content is ours. Nothing about us, without us.”

- Audience feedback to the #keready team.

Figure 1: utilising tick-box graphics

11 Amplify|Mobilise|Change is an online learning programme launched in 2019. AMC was developed as an opportunity for communicators in South African civil society to hone their knowledge and skills in technology and online content strategy, and to better integrate online communication into their arsenal of social change tools.

LESSONS FROM OTHER DGMT-FUNDED INITIATIVES USING THE POWER OF DIGITAL COMMUNICATION

KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE 1

Nal’ibali is a national reading-for-enjoyment campaign, targeting children aged 1–10. Athenkosi Matyalana, Nal’ibali’s digital specialist, says his approach is informed by target audience research and engagement with the Nal’ibali network, as well as social media users.

Matyalana explains: “Through audience research, I was able to gather information about the digital behaviour of Nal’ibali’s target audience, which informs the type of content that we create as well as the language and tone we use.”

Nal’ibali’s top tips for making the most of digital platforms:

› CONDUCT AUDIENCE RESEARCH: if you know your audience doesn’t respond to emails, you should rather use SMS. If you know they prefer visuals, don’t use SMS, use Instagram.

› INNOVATE: this can cost less than you think, e.g. serving content by WhatsApp is cost-effective and is a widely used communication tool.

› MONITOR AND EVALUATE (M&E): use Google Analytics to measure how your audiences respond to your website content. This tells you what is working and what isn’t – data doesn’t lie! Other tools recommended for M&E:

› TWEETDECK is useful for monitoring conversations about you and topics associated with your organisation on Twitter.

› FANPAGE KARMA can help to monitor behaviour and trends on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

› MAILCHIMP has built-in tools for monitoring uptake of your newsletters.

Digital channels and digital campaigns play an essential role in raising awareness about the systemic factors that deepen youth unemployment. Most recently, Youth Capital, a national campaign advocating for solutions to youth unemployment, developed a short documentary about the challenges of finding a job. The Youth Capital team knew that to create a buzz around the film, they had to draw on their network of young people to screen the documentary at various community-based events around the country. In essence, the film went on tour, run by Youth Capital’s own network.

Figure 5: Documentary screenings use digital media to mobilise young people

Clotilde Angelucci, communications and network strategist for Youth Capital, explains that on Youth Day (16 June 2022), young people were encouraged to mobilise at least 10 other young people using the resources available to them, e.g. by hosting a documentary screening at home, which made the call for mobilising in their communities realistic and achievable. Events and social media livestreams12 also generated an increase in traffic to Youth Capital’s website (see Figure 6).

Livestreams are when streamed video is sent over the Internet in real time, without first being recorded and stored.

Once you have successfully grabbed your audience’s attention, the common challenge is to hold it over the long run. Angelucci acknowledges that retaining someone’s attention long after they attended a digital livestream or in-person event is a challenge. Overcoming this hurdle requires developing curated audience journeys aimed at soliciting higher levels of engagement over a sustained period.

3 CREATE SCROLL-STOPPING CONTENT

REPURPOSE TRADITIONAL MEDIA CONTENT FOR SOCIAL MEDIA 4

Audiovisuals13 are a good way of using content you already have, says Kendra Stewart, communications officer for the Zero Dropout Campaign. “Most of us in the advocacy space are doing radio interviews as part of our awareness-raising efforts. Now, we can merge traditional media content with new media by repurposing radio interviews into sound bites for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s a win-win.”

Microvisual (reels) are also popular, particularly those with motivational themes. Stewart explains: “Reels garner a wider reach on Instagram, while visual clips from TV interviews tend to perform better on social media than static images.”

“There is so much content being pumped through these systems and it is important to develop scroll-stopping storytelling in every campaign that you run.”

Emma O’Shaughnessy, digital communications specialist, AMC

Storytelling can help a campaign to capture the hearts and minds of its target audience. O’Shaughnessy expands: “People don’t simply make decisions based on rational thought alone. Their feelings play a major role in their decision-making processes. Even a serious campaign that has legal implications should speak to the emotional reasons why someone should care about a campaign’s call to action.”

O’Shaughnessy says creative content and storytelling are critical; we must keep challenging ourselves to innovate with content, not just through calls to action, but also solution-based messaging.

13 In terms of social media, audiovisuals are audio files presented with the visual effect of sound waves as certain social media algorithms prefer video to static images.

Figure 6: Tracking of Youth Capital’s traffic to website in June 2022, related to live conversations and the documentary launch

Figure 5: This is an example of a reel that performed well on Zero Dropout’s Instagram account

CONSISTENCY IS KEY 5

“I see a lot of people trying to do once-off campaigns that don’t really land with their audiences. But the more consistently you campaign around a topic or a theme, the more trustworthy you become,” says O’Shaughnessy.

It is important to remember that building responsiveness to campaigns happens gradually. It is tricky to have a successful campaign with a once-off run of content, as relationships take time to build and nurture. Often the hard work in a campaign happens behind the scenes once somebody has responded to a call to action. Helping them participate in the campaign in valuable ways is often done one-on-one, which requires time and effort. O’Shaughnessy adds, “If you are going to be running a campaign, be prepared to engage and manage those conversations actively. It is a big part of any campaign’s journey.”

ALLOCATE A BUDGET 6

Don’t skimp on communications, but you don’t have to break the bank. “It is difficult to get the kind of reach and engagement on social media that you want if you don’t spend a bit of money,” says O’Shaughnessy.

“You don’t have to spend a lot of money, especially on places like Facebook and Instagram, since microbudgets go really far. For instance, you can reach tens of thousands with a few hundred rand,” she explains.

Managing spend and seeing the value in one’s spending becomes easier once you begin tracking calls to action, outcomes and connect them to real-life impact. If you are running an awareness campaign with no action, it is hard to see the value of the money invested, besides the fact that you have reached many people.

CHANGE IS IN THE AUDIENCE’S HANDS

Digital technology can be used to drive changes in human behaviour for the benefit of all South Africans. However, the success of any digital campaign depends on the relationship between the campaign and the target audience and the campaign’s ability to retain that audience. Civil society organisations must offer a compelling narrative and a reason to get involved in their campaigns. As O’Shaughnessy concludes: “If you tell people how and why their contribution will lead to tangible change, they are more likely to feel motivated, to engage and to stay.”

Learning brief developed by Daniella Horwitz, with contributions from #Keready, Nal’ibali, Youth Capital, Zero Dropout and AMC, edited by Rahima Essop.