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.

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.”