Grants:IdeaLab/The Wikipedia Instagram Campaign/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2017-18 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:IdeaLab/The Wikipedia Instagram Campaign.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

We didn't completely meet the original goals, but new opportunities were discovered during the execution of the project; new goals were set and met. We are very satisfied with how the project panned out.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Getting atleast 100 people to make and share their videos.	About 54 videos were shared; however, over 500 people shared how Wikipedia has helped them in their daily lives, using the comments sections.
Achieving a total video views of a million	Based on Instagram Account Insights analysis; the total views for all posts on the account was around 365,000; unique views were around 200,000 reach. 90% of these views were achieved through word of mouth (users tagging other people to view interesting videos and like them, and not through paid promotion, which achieved minimal views, but acted like a kickstarter).	We overestimated the number of reach we can achieve with the budget we had for paid promotion. If we had budgeted a bit more for paid promotion, the opportunity for organic growth would have continued to get bigger. It was also suspected that the prizes for winners weren't enticing enough to draw in more people.
Getting a total social media following of 10,000	About 2,400 social media following was achieved.	Again, the explanation for this lower figure is given above. This figure is considered a big success regardless, and this followers were able to engage in discussions, when the contest was followed up with a series of "did you know?" posts.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

The social media campaign in itself worked well. We were able to get several Nigerians online to talk about Wikipedia and to invite their friends and acquaintances to learn as well. On a budget of $2,000, we wouldn't have been able to get close to 400,000 people to view promoted videos which do not require any form of public engagement. Therefore, indeed, we were able to save cost and get better results, by running a campaign which requires the public to get involved and tag other people.
When the contest was over, the momentum was still very high, and people kept asking if the contest was still on. Some people still went ahead to post their recorded videos anyway. Unfortunately, we didn't have the funds to still reward people. Rather, at the end of the contest, we decided to run another month-long series of "Did You Know?" posters, revealing unpopular facts about Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement. This really sparked up discussions in the comments of the posts, and got the audience further engaged.
At the end of the campaign, over 10 users got interested in Wikipedia editing; Links to Wikipedia editing guides were forwarded to such people and they were directed to the closest Wikimedia Hub to their residence. Unfortunately, many of them are living quite far from a Wikimedia community.
The video company which produced the contest calls, helped to re-edit the existing Wikipedia ad videos which were produced last year, to fit into the contest, at no extra cost (1, 2, 3, 4). These videos were also helpful in drawing people to participate in the contest. Apart from the original contest call video, 4 other videos were produced from previous Wikipedia Ads. Furthermore, a video which I filmed (featuring community members describing Wikipedia 5), was also edited for free by the video company. This video ended up being one of the most watched videos during the campaign.

What did not work so well?

Paid promotion costs were grossly underestimated. We had hoped that the $329 budgeted to promote the contest call would bring around 200,000 views, which can then kickstart a word of mouth that'd lead to over a million views. However, we eventually had to spend $665 on paid promotion in order to get more exposure, but that brought about just around 40,000 views. Apparently, promotions on social media costs way more than was thought.
The total amount spent on this campaign was higher than what was budgeted for. This happened in the bid to increase the impact of the initial paid promotions

What would you do differently next time?

Next time, better research would be carried out to find out the costs of promotions, and our expectations would be reviewed accordingly to fit into reality. We did research about these costs, but it turned out that we obviously didn't get real figures.

Anything else

Original Videos

Contest Call Video
Wiki Love from Ilorin Wikimedia Hub Community members

Selected Submitted Videos

Some notable submissions from the campaign

Wiki Love with Music
Wiki Love with Sign Language

Winners

Grand Winner and the Weekly Winners of the Wikipedia Instagram Campaign

Finances

Grants funds spent

S/N	Item	Quantity	Unit Cost (NGN)	Total cost (NGN)	Total cost (USD)	Notes
1	Video production	-	150,000	150,000	492	For the contest call video production service, including the rental of location used. The studio also helped to edit 5 other videos at no extra cost.
2	Instagram Ad promotion	-	-	202,825	665	The cost for this promotion had to be increased, in order to have any noticeable effect on the campaign
3	Internet Subscriptions	4	3,000	12,000	39	Each of the Instagram account managers was gifted internet subscriptions to help manage the contest efficiently. The data wasn't sufficient, but was managed.
4	Weekly Prizes	3	65,000	195,000	639	3 Samsung galaxy smartphones were given out to weekly winners, until the final week.
5	Grand Prize	1	110,000	110,000	361	1 HP laptop was given out to the grand prize winner for the month.
6	Shipping fees	1	8,700	8,700	29	We only had to ship to just one of the winners, the other winners chose to pickup their prizes.
7	Miscellany	1	1,800	1,800	6	minor costs incurred while running the campaign (taxis, bank charges, exchange rate fluctuations, etc)
-	TOTAL EXPENDITURE			671,325	2,202	**Forex rate used by the bank $1 = 305

Remaining funds

No funds remain; rather, the budget was exceeded by NGN 71,325 (USD 234).