Using Social Media to promote Causes

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facebook, human trafficking, social justice organizations, social-media, twitter

Social Media plays an important role in marketing. Facebook and Twitter especially can be great places to promote causes. I’ve found a lot of social justice promotions on both of these sites.

For example, The Ball State chapter of International Justice Mission has a Facebook page that members and others can “like” to stay up-to-date about what’s going on with our chapter. You can find that page here: https://www.facebook.com/BallStateIJM?fref=ts.

The actual organization International Justice Organization also has its own Facebook page that you can “like” here: https://www.facebook.com/InternationalJusticeMission?fref=ts. On this page, you can see promotional videos about why it’s important to support this cause. You can see what is going on around the world as far as human trafficking and what IJM is doing to fight it.

There are also social justice organizations that have their own Twitter profiles. One example is End It Movement. You can see its profile here: https://twitter.com/enditmovement. They tweet about different things you can do to fight human trafficking. I’ve signed a few petitions that I found because I follow this twitter profile. This is also how I learned about the red X day that End It Movement did.

Another cool thing about promotions on twitter is hash tags. If you hash tag something on Twitter, it becomes a link. You can click on it to see a list of all the tweets with the same hash tag. If a hash tag gets tweeted enough, it becomes a trend. There is also a hash tag #enditmovement. You can see all the tweets that contain this hash tag here: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23enditmovement&src=hash.

Another form of social media that can market social causes are blogs such as this one that I am writing. I’m not the only one writing about this topic. I searched for other blogs about social justice on WordPress, and have found some pretty neat blogs. You can see a list of more blogs on this topic here: http://wordpress.com/#!/read/topic/social-justice/.

Outdoor Advertising

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advertising, billboard advertisements, business, marketing, outdoor advertisements, social justice issues

Outdoor advertising is another way that people and organizations raise awareness and support for social justice issues. Outdoor advertising is an impersonal, paid form of advertising in which the sponsor is identified. It’s the oldest and simplest media businesses. Examples include billboards, painted bulletins, or displays. It’s particularly effective along metropolitan streets and high-traffic areas.

One of my favorite examples of outdoor advertising for social justice is the statue of liberty! Among many things, the statue of liberty represents friendship between nations and liberty from oppression. It stands for the freedom and justice offered to citizens of the United States. Whether these things are still true of our country or not, the statue serves as a reminder of what our country should believe in. You can find out more about the statue of liberty here: http://www.nps.gov/stli/faqs.ht

I also found some neat examples of billboard advertisements and advertisements on the sides of busses. The sponsor is identified on these outdoor advertisements and there is usually a phone number to call or website to go to if you see human trafficking taking place. Human trafficking is more common than most people think. It happens in our country, in our state, and even in the city of Muncie where I am writing from. The more people are aware of it, the more they can do something to help stop it. Below are some examples of outdoor advertising to build awareness for human trafficking.

These types of public displays in high-traffic are meant to get attention and to get people thinking. Our country was founded on liberty and justice for all. Human-trafficking and other human rights issues are not okay. So what are we going to do about it? One of the main things that need to be done is building awareness that these issues even exist. That’s where marketing techniques such as outdoor advertising come in handy.

Guerilla Marketing for Social Causes

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advertising, business, end it movement, guerilla marketing techniques, marketing, neat examples, social justice organizations

A common way that social justice organizations gain awareness for human justice and social causes is through Guerilla Marketing. Guerilla Marketing is a unique form of marketing. I can be described as unconventional, innovative, low-cost marketing techniques designed to get attention in unusual ways. Sometimes these kinds of tactics are the best way to get people to see the needs of their fellow human beings and want to do something about it.

Below are some neat examples of building awareness for human trafficking and violence by using Guerilla Marketing techniques.

As you can see, this type of marketing gets attention from people by shocking them with things that they don’t expect to see.

One of my favorite awareness raising campaigns was for End It Movement. They use red X’s to build awareness for ending human trafficking. 

On April 9, 2013, End It Movement encouraged all of its supporters to draw a red X on their hands. The idea was that others would see all the X’s and ask what they meant, and this would build awareness of human trafficking and more people would desire to end it.

Even celebrities joined in on the campaign. Carrie Underwood tweeted this picture of her and her husband:

Guerilla Marketing is even used for social justice here on campus. Students stood at the scramble light in a cage and chains to build awareness for human trafficking.

As you can see, Guerilla Marketing comes in very handy in awareness raising campaigns for social justice organizations. Guerilla Marketing has been a great way to capture attention and shock people about things that go on in our messed up world as well as teaching people how to make a difference in putting an end to these issues.

Who do Social Justice Organizations Market to?

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current-events, human-rights, marketing, religion, social justice

What are a few social justice organizations and what do they do? Are there any that you’re familiar with or that you support? A few that come to mind for me are International Justice Mission, the Boys and Girls Club, Hands of Hope, and World Vision. These organizations focus on different things: ending slavery, before and after school care for underprivileged children, education justice, and supporting care givers to AIDS patients in Africa.

 

Now I know that this isn’t always true, but I have noticed that a lot of Human Rights and social justice organizations are christian organizations. The bible talks A LOT about social justice and human rights, helping the widow, the orphan, and the marginalized. I think this is why it’s easy for organizations to be based on these values. Therefore, I believe the target market for these organizations would be people who are christians and share the same values of the organization. Of course, this doesn’t mean that they only want christian supporters. There may be people who share human rights values for other reasons.

Now when I say target market, I am not speaking about “customers” that you would normally think about for a business. I mean that organizations look for supporters, and people to get involved with the work they’re doing. This is important, because the people that are actually benefiting from these organizations are people who can’t defend themselves, who maybe can’t even ask for help, especially in the cases of freeing slaves.

I think another thing that social justice organizations try to do in terms of marketing is advertising. They do a lot of events to try to raise awareness for what they are doing. For example, a lot of people don’t know that slavery still exists or what people in poverty go through. For that reason, it’s important for these organizations to raise awareness sometimes in order to gain supporters.

Here is an example of something that would be used to raise awareness. This is a fact sheet flier on sex trafficking: Factsheet-Sex-Trafficking. This is a form of marketing used by International Justice Mission.

Do you support any social justice organizations? What kind of marketing made you want to get involved with that organization? Have you noticed any kind of awareness raising or adversing events going on around you for non-profits? What were your reactions to that?

What is Social Justice?

Who do you define as rich? What amount of money does it take to make a person rich? Mako Nagasawa, and Gary VanderPol (authors of economicdiscipleship.com) would say that a rich person is someone who lives in America and has a college degree. You may not consider yourself “rich.” Perhaps you are middle class. Perhaps you would even consider yourself “poor.” In America, a person who makes about $41,000 per year would be considered middle class, but did you know that if you make $41,000 per year, you are in the top 3% of everyone in the world? If you make at least $50,000 per year, you are in the top 1% of the world. Global middle class is actually about $2 per day ($730 per year). Wondering where your income ranks? Check out this website: http://www.globalrichlist.com/

Who do you consider to be free? Do you think that everyone is the world today is free and that slavery is a thing of the past? I wish that were true. There are actually more slaves in the world today than any other time in history, even when it was legal. It is estimated that there are about 27 million slaves in the world today. This website can explain more about modern slavery: https://www.freetheslaves.net/SSLPage.aspx?pid=375

So what are our responsibilities as free and rich people? Why should we care about people suffering in the world? What can we do as individuals without waiting for governments to try to fix these problems? I will be discussing these issues in this blog. There are many organizations out there already that are trying to solve these issues. How do they market the social needs of the world in order to get people on their sides? How do they get people to see how important these issues are? I hope you will explore the answers to these questions with me.