I’m embroiled in managing the digital strategy for the Philip Lawrence Awards. This awards scheme has at its heart an online network of young people’s organisations and individuals called PLAnet. Nacro is managing the Awards this year with the aim of increasing nominations from hard-to-reach groups, young people in custody who want to get involved in projects to improve their communities, and areas such as those recently hit by the riots.

I’ve got a small team of staff and volunteers together to target our existing networks of young people and organisations and Nacro’s young people’s projects, as well as these new audiences. We are relying to a large extent on social media marketing so the challenge is to create a buzz, set it apart from other awards and get the message to the large networks of young people’s organisations and Youth Offending Teams who can, in turn, get the message to potential Award nominees.

There has been no shortage of positive feedback but we’re up against an array of other awards trying to target similar groups. We are relying to a large extent on social media marketing, using:

• Twitter, primarily, to target young people’s groups and professionals
• Facebook past winners group
• YouTube channel
• Facebook page
• Redeveloped website incorporating social media features and blog to help increase traffic – in Wordpress to make the admin as easy as possible.

We’re on the steering group, managed by the Home Office, which is working on a new format for the Awards. We are working with Philip Lawrence’s widow, Frances Lawrence, to give the Awards ceremony a more local and meaningful focus and to make the prizes more practical.

{ 0 comments }