17/4/ 2014
GINKS in collaboration with IICD and Akvo organized a revamp capacity building workshop for all Connect for Change partners in the Northern Region of Ghana. The 2-days capacity building workshop was to further enhance knowledge of C4C Health and Education partners on the use of the Akvo RSR Reporting platform, Social communication media strategies as well as online promotion.
The Health and Education workshops took place from 21st February, and 26th February 2014 respectively at the Radach Conference Centre in Tamale. The training brought together partners from the various projects sites in the Northern Regions of Ghana to learn and share new idea about the Akvo RSR updating platform to help shape their updating skills moving forward.
The training ushered participants to various topics and new areas of new media and how regular RSR updating can benefit and promote their various projects and also how social media can be use to promote online presence among others.
Some of the topics participants were taking through were;
- Benefits of doing regular RSR updating
- How to add an update to the RSR partner page
- How social media promote online presence
- How to create social media accounts
- How to upload videos online (youtube, twitter, facebook, blog etc)
- How to link or embed video in social media platforms (twitter, blog etc)
- How to use the new RSR Mobile App for updating
- How to take good looking and quality project photographs
- How to tweet directly from your Akvo RSR account
- You to Facebook directly from your Akvo RSR account
- How to edit images before posting
Talking about RSR, the facilitator Mr. Joseph Kpet, who is Assistant Coordinator of GINKS, defined RSR as Really Simple Reporting. He added that the Akvo RSR platform is both web and Android-based applications that makes it easy to post projects updates online and share progress with everyone interested as it happens. Participants were taken through a step by step approach on how to use their RSR accounts to post and update their projects.
Joseph said, although the importance of social media in today’s business landscape is indisputable, businesses and organisations are still not making the most of its full potential.
As per the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report:
- A significant 86% of marketers said that social media was important to their businesses.
- By spending as little as 6 hours per week, you benefit with social media.
- 75% of marketers report positive results in traffic increase on social media.
- A significant 89% of all businesses that have a dedicated social media platform as part of their marketing strategy reported an increase in their market exposure.
- More than half of marketers who have used social media marketing for over 3 years reported an increase in sales over that period.
Some Benefits of Social Media to Organizations
1. Showcase Your Brand
- Handling a strong social media presence is an efficient way to build your organization’s reputation and showcase your projects.
- By regularly updating your projects on social media, donors, followers automatically start to view your organization as an authority.
2. Increase digital exposure
- If you are eager to be found among the millions of sites on the web, you sure need to work hard on enhancing your social presence. Social media leads to massive exposure due to its worldwide access, sharing capabilities, and huge amount of daily users.
- It delivers instant information in the digital marketplace, thus giving businesses the ability to advertise their products, going beyond distance.
3. Cut marketing costs
- Social media marketing is one of the most affordable ways to brand your business. In the past years it has taken over traditional print marketing and advertising.
- Promoting your products on social media platforms will increase your return on investment (ROI).
- With a strong social media strategy you can achieve business miracles in the market.
Don’t let your competitors beat you out in the social sphere. Your next prospect or donor could possibly come from social media.
Talking about taking good looking photographs, Joseph stressed the need for good looking photos, since photos speaks more than words. He explained that every image needs strong compositional order so that it grabs the eye from a hundred feet away.
Understanding your camera
One important thing we forget to do as project coordinators is to know how your camera features works to enable you avoid taking bad photos. Learn what each control, switch, button, and menu item does. Learn the basic actions, such as using the flash (on, off, and auto), zooming in and out, and using the shutter button.
- Set the camera’s resolution to take high quality photos at the highest resolution possible. Low-resolution images are more difficult to alter later;
- Upgrade to a bigger memory card. If you don’t want to or can’t afford to buy a new one, then use the “fine” quality setting, if your camera has one, with a smaller resolution
- Take your camera everywhere. When the camera is in your possession, you will start to see the world differently; you will look for and find opportunities to take great photographs
- Try an interesting angle.
- Instead of shooting the object straight on, try looking down to the object.
- Go through your photos and look for the best ones. Look for what makes the best photos and continue using the methods that got the best shots.
- Practice, practice, and practice. Take many photos — aim to fill your memory card
During the workshop, participants took advantage to create other among things twitter accounts and they are able to confidently update their Akvo pages and tweets from the Akvo account direct.
They are confident with their new skills and have full control over the Akvo RSR platform. For further updates on all the C4C Ghana Projects, please click here.
