how to use content marketing for social change
No one wakes up in the morning thinking about their sexual and reproductive rights. So how can you engage people on this topic - especially in countries where talking about sex is taboo?
This month we spoke to Vithika Yadav, co-founder of Love Matters India. LM addresses this taboo topic through the lens of pleasure. Through clever content marketing, Love Matters reaches millions of people each month. Along the way, her team breaks taboos, sparks important conversations, and shows the world how marketing can be used to directly grow impact.
Watch the full recording 👇 and browse the key takeaways from the chat below 👇👇
FIVE KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE CHAT WITH VITHIKA
1:16 Lead with what matters to your audience
As an activist in the sexual and reproductive rights space, Vithika noticed that most organisations were only talking to young people through the lens of family planning. Information was academic and boring. But people don’t have sex to have children. They have sex because it’s fun and pleasurable. And talking about sex and pleasure was a huge taboo in India.
As a result, young people were not getting the information about sexual and reproductive health they wanted or needed. There was no place to learn and ask questions without being judged.
Most were getting their information from porn, which actually aggravates some of the misassumptions and negative stereotypes around sex. Digital media was not being used to have sex-positive conversations.
Vithika saw an opportunity to use pleasure as an angle, and digital media as a channel, to educate young people on sexual and reproductive health. The brand, Love Matters, brought these difficult topics from a fun, friendly, conversational angle.
13:04 Develop a clear digital strategy
LM focused on audiences in the North Indian belt which is hugely problematic for sexual reproductive rights.
They spoke to players like Pornhub to learn how they drive traffic, and we did our research. Back then, Search Engine Optimisation wasn’t a big topic yet.
The team started using the keywords people were using to search for porn, to lead them into our website and social channels for different information and conversations around sex.
They hit immediate success because we were responding to an untapped niche. There was an unmet need for sexual reproductive health content.
21:00 Don’t count on people finding you organically on the web or social platforms - allocate a marketing budget
Vithika reminds us that the internet is a very busy space. Over the years what has changed is that you can no longer expect to reach people organically. The platforms will make it almost impossible.
The platforms on which LM operates are businesses (ed: Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc). And they want to make a business out of you.
Companies like Google can make lofty statements about the right to information about abortion etc, but practically, to get your content on that type of topic listed is impossible.
You can have the best kind of content, but without the budget, you can’t really reach the numbers you need to reach.
24:08 Very few funders in the philanthropic space understand digital marketing
“We’ve had to really take donors on a journey with us,” Vithika explains.
They were the first digital project ever funded in the sexual reproductive rights space.
It’s a typical mindset that remains a struggle with the exception of a few bold partners.
LM is struggling with it even today.
Funders think it is a marketing budget, but it’s actually the money it takes to get our information in front of people. It’s integral to the impact.
The philanthropic space needs to evolve. We also need to be able to experiment and fail.
29:25 Don’t spread yourself thin across social channels
Don’t think of social media platforms as different channels for the same audience with the same message. Instead, think of them as having different purposes, and don’t be afraid to experiment.
LM only use a channel if it matters to their audience. LM heard from their audience that they wanted to use WhatsApp to quickly reach out, instead of the website, so they tested it.
LM used Tiktok (before it was banned in India) to host the first dialogue with the LGBTQ community in India because that community was emerging there - a week later the platform was banned.
The team used Clubhouse to have conversations with over 500 people at once, but that platform hasn’t been able to keep up.
Ten years ago, Facebook was the most popular platform to reach out to young people. Now LM uses that channel to talk to parents and educators.
Vithika explains that they listen to audience feedback and choose platforms where people can easily access and engage with their content.
The lesson from Vithika is: don’t jump on every channel. Choose two and do those well.
34:50 Staff your team with digital experts
The social impact team of the future looks like a digital marketing team.
Vithika leads a team of 8 full-time employees. They produce all content in-house.
The team consists of a creative director, editor, associate editor, two social media managers, two associate social media officers, a creative designer, an SEO and content marketing specialist, and someone for finance.
43:10 NGO leaders face increasing pressure to become influencers themselves
The space is becoming busier with lifestyle influencers and there is a push to become more popular with the content we produce at Love Matters.
The Instagram, and Snapchat lifestyle content creators are English-speaking and speak to a more affluent audience, while Love Matters targets mainly people in the lower, vernacular-speaking audience who do not have access to the new medium content.
54:05 Keep looking toward the future
Our biggest need is to be sustainable. We are looking for diverse funding streams to sustain the work that we do.
We are an agile team and although the future is uncertain, we aim to stay ahead of the needs of our audiences.
We are open to partnerships and collaborations where we can link information to service delivery.
We are launching India’s first augmented reality app on sex-ed and we are excited about that.
