3. Social Media Marketing Strategy

One of the most effective ways for marketing is the use of social media marketing and each of the companies including NGOs are successfully setting crowdfunding, organizing events, financing their projects, increasing brand awareness and also building relationships with customers or their audience, only by using the social media marketing. Based on this fact, a marketing strategy could also help Solare Zukunft to be promoted around their target audience, to generate more people to be part of the mission, people who would like to share the same goal. Many of the NGOs that share the same spectrum of activity as Solare Zukunft use social media marketing that is mainly promoted in Facebook, Instagram and Twitter but none of them are on TikTok. This opportunity gives Solare Zukunft the benefits of being ahead on this social media network and to create something unique for the mission. TikTok is a creative short video social software, which is a music short video community based on contemporary young people and the users of this software can create their favorite short videos with music and special effects. According to statistics, among the user groups of TikTok, 68.7% are less than 24 years old, and 73.69 are less than 30 years old and that means that people with Tik Tok are mainly after ’95 or even after ’00 (Shuai Yang et al., 2019). It is available in over 150 countries, has over 1 billion users and over the 2019 and its revenues grew over 300%, passing Twitter and Snapchat combined. Now it is the 7th in terms of social network sites ahead of LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, with 90% of all TikTok users using the app on daily basis and spending an average of 52 minutes per day (Brandon Doyle, 2022). 68% of Tik Tok users watch someone else’s video and 55% of them upload their own videos (Chris Beer, 2019). Putting all of this into perspective, it took Instagram six years from its launch to gain the same number of monthly active users that TikTok managed to achieve in under three years, on the other hand for Facebook it took the best part of four years (Alison Battisby, 2021).

3.1 Utilization of TikTok for Solare Zukunft

For Solare Zukunft, TikTok would give more possibilities to go viral because it prioritizes videos from creators that were never seen before, so the audience may see videos just by randomly scrolling, contrary to Facebook or Instagram which consists of contents from people or channels you already follow. The other TikTok marketing strategies include the creation of trend-driven organic content, using popular hashtags and incorporating TikTok influencers into promotional campaigns. Most important when creating a TikTok account is to identify and to target the audience needed based on age, location, interest, language. For Solare Zukunft the target group is mainly children and students and also adults, teachers/pedagogues to whom they offer training, so the common interest is sustainability. Being the first NGO using TikTok to promote their mission, the advantage of creating something unique and interesting videos that could help this community to understand the mission, could also encourage people to be part of the mission. To promote the community the option of paid advertisements can be used in order to reach more users, to reach specific targeted demographics of users. On the other hand, according to Statista (2022), the global influencer marketing space has more than doubled since 2019 to $13.8 billion in 2021, which means other than paid advertisement, a cooperation with sustainable influencers plays a major role in community promotion. At this point, it is mandatory to define if we want the mission to be global or only focused in the local community. Focusing on the local community, a good cooperation could be with the young student and environmental protectionist Marvin Rüb, a 20 years old, who is mainly focused on the German speaking audience and interested to promote and cooperate with every project that would save the environment and nature. His posts on TikTok account @rescueplanetlife are very interesting and provide a message on how to raise the awareness of people to protect the environment and nature.

3.2 Community Engagement

To make people join the mission, a well-constructed email or an invitation to the list of prospective members of the Solare Zukunft’s existing community should be sent in which a link for the TikTok account should be attached. A short-video in which the objectives of the mission are clearly stated, can be used as a welcoming video, keeping it always short and meaningful. This video will also give the members a sense of transparency. Another way to invite people is to visit blogs, groups and forums where the target audience is likely to be around and just drop the URL of the TikTok account, for example in Sustainability Portal provided by Green City Freiburg. Introducing ourselves and joining the conversation with other sustainable members could be also helpful. Once a community is established, inviting members casually to take a look at the content or a post that has been made in the TikTok account could be helpful as a promoting strategy. To facilitate the sharing of the TikTok community, asking close friends and family is also an option. Making posters or cards with QR link that would immediately direct the people who are interested to the TikTok account, and put them in poster-boards like Sustainable University Work Group in Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. In order to give a first good impression, updating the description which should capture the community in one quick read, profile photo, which should be the most visible thing and a warm message video pinned to the top of the homepage is a great way to welcome new followers. To keep the community active, key performance indicators for member’s growth and engagement, for instance observing the total number of users, new users in the past, user growth over the month is also needed. Noting how many total engagements we have, how many posted comments, what is the percentage of total users liked or commented in a month could help the mission to understand how the community is expanding day to day. To keep the community engaged, a good idea would be the creation of a theme for each day or in every two-three days of the week with topics that are fit to discuss and that would help with the development of the mission by raising questions as a way to spark discussion. At this point the mission tries to build a two-way relationship, interacting with the audience because people are more likely to return when we acknowledge their presence, for example giving them as reward T-shirts with the Solare Zukunft’s logo, giving them free tours around the sustainability hub. To also promote the sustainability hub, one simple way can be using hashtags, which are short and easy, it can be used in each video. Weekly, creating a short video to the audience and letting them know what is going on in the community, highlighting the new members and giving the community heads up to the re-upcoming events or promotion, creating short videos explaining why the projects are important and how could the people of Freiburg benefit from it, will be a good way to promote and to engage the community. Also creating videos that will show to other users that Solare Zukunft is trying daily to improve; letting them join on different polls and give users the idea that they are part of the community, and their little help is helping the mission to improve daily. Using the “live option” and trying to engage with the community, can also help to collect tips from the audience. To include a bigger audience trying the option of “Go Pro” will allow to get more interactions. In order for the audience to get more of the idea of the solar energy showing the project in action is beneficial, like doing videos on how it helps the community to save energy, highlighting how the project fits a sustainable lifestyle and how it is a great way to get noticed in higher steps. To give the audience the feeling that they are part of the mission, going behind the scenes with videos and showing them on record what we does Solare Zukunft in daily basis, like showing the offices, daily practices, highlighting every partnership with green vendors, trying to cooperate with institution and companies that also have the same goals inside the city of Freiburg like Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg with its departments like The Centre for Renewable Energy, The Department of Sustainable Systems Engineering (INATECH), institutes like The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), Klimapartner Oberrhein, Ökostrom Erzeugung Freiburg GmbH (Freiburg Convention Bureau, 2022) would help the mission go further. Other partners of Freiburg city like Die Agentur Innovation Academy, Aiforia, Freiburg Future Lab and OSM are some possible chances to cooperate with them and to show the idea. The big idea is to always have an idea on what the mission wants to show to the audience, posting consistently which means mastering some of the trends that are currently on TikTok and try to do something similar which would increase the curiosity of the audience to look up into the mission. Keeping the audience engaged and hopefully increasing is a creative and continuous cycle in order to work in the finest way.