How to Create a Campaign

  1. Choose an issue within a broad topic 

It is important to narrow down on a range of issues within a broad topic. For e.g. “Stop sexual harassment at workplace” can be an issue within the broader topic of ‘Ending Violence against Women’. Once you’ve chosen the issue, you may give it a descriptive and catchy title like “Speak Up”, depending upon the approach you take to the given issue.

  1. Decide your approach

There are many solutions that exist to solve a single issue and you may come up with an alternative solution that hasn’t been thought of or proposed elsewhere. The way you plan on tackling a problem will largely determine the substance of your campaign and become the USP of it. For instance, the ‘Slutwalk’ campaign worldwide addressed the issue of ‘victim blaming’ within the grand scheme of street sexual harassment faced by women’ by using the bold and satirical approach of wearing skimpy clothes and holding placards that said, “I didn’t ask for it!”. 

       Associated with the campaign, you can:

  1. Start a petition – Find out more on ‘How to Write a Petition’
  1. Ideas – You can propose ‘Ideas’ in connection to the campaign as long as they coincide with the themes running in the current weekly challenge and/or The God Awesome Idea contest.
  1. Share your campaign – Makes sharing your campaign on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks easy.
  1. Useful tip #1: Turn on your subscribe button on Facebook so you can selectively share news and information, which can be viewed by general public on your profile. Unprotect your updates on Twitter and use popular hashtags. For eg: In a petition of ‘Check poaching in Gir forest and re-populating the tiger species’, you can use #savethetigers (Don’t forget #halabol in all cases).
  1. Useful tip #2: Reach out to thought leaders, non-profits, media outlets and personnel, celebrities and to the Government itself on Twitter/Facebook. The Twitterati have mass followers and wield a great influence to what they tweet and retweet, so you can easily do the math. No, we don’t suggest hounding anyone but carefully plan and strategize how to effectively pitch your campaign to them. Most likely, you’ll only get one good shot (or two if you’re lucky!).  
  1. Start Discussion threads – Let’s people share their thoughts with you, and each other.
  1. File upload + download – Share video, audio and images with other users.
  1. Email a friend – People can send an email recommending your page to friends.
  1. Add a link – Let your campaign page be the Mecca for all news updates and additional information (blogs, wikipedia entries) and multimedia (Youtube videos, photographs, images, cartoons, book and movie reviews, documentaries, short stills, public service announcements) on the issue. While you may be busy trying to reach out to all those concerned, you may also like to check out what sort of initiatives have been taken online and offline before, after and simultaneously. This build up of cross-posted information adds traction to your campaign.
  1. Online to Offline: There is no greater validity you can give to a campaign than actually getting on your heels and scraping your elbows. Organize a ground rally or petitioning online- the sky is your limit!