[HMDS] Public Relations in Second Life
In developing and launching a summer program, Global Kids is encountering an old challenge in a new skin: Recruitment. Working with youth in schools across New York City, the Global Kids staff is well versed in how to attract youth to our programs. We visit classrooms, plaster posters in the hallways, talk to teachers, work our networks in the schools and basically do whatever we can on the ground to be sure that anyone who’s “in the know” knows about Global Kids.
Doing this in Second Life is a bit of a different story. In one sense, a good number of our usual avenues are closed to us. There are no classrooms we can just pop into. There are no teachers or principals we have relationships with. We can’t even leave our island!
In another sense, Second Life offers us a whole new set of tools for getting the word out that we don't have in schools. When a teen comes to the island, we have a neat little tool set up that offers them a notecard full of info about the goings on this summer. It’s kind of the equivalent of having a guy flyering for you on the corner, except that nobody here is getting paid minimum wage.
The teens that have been involved in Global Kids Island have also been a huge help. They keep notecards that they can distribute to their friends throughout the teen grid, passing along perfectly replicable media so that nothing is lost in translation. No risk of the telephone effect here.
Another route we’ve explored is the press. Both the adult and teen grids of Second Life have a budding but vibrant fourth estate, and we’re using it to our full advantage. Press releases went out to various publications, reporters were contacted, keyboards were aflame getting press and ad copy out to meet deadlines.
Our final approach was probably the simplest and oldest in the archetypal sense. We made signs. Really big signs. With help from our in-world intern, we were able to contact landowners and pay them to host our billboards. When TSL users clicked them, they were offered a link to the application page on the web. Classic marketing, with a twist.
We’ve had a great time thinking creatively about how to approach the recruitment issue in this new space, and learned a lot about what works and what we might be able to do in the future. Ultimately though, while the program will be bolstered by our efforts to get the word out, real success is going to happen when the teens that get involved start to relate to the Second Life space in a new way. When the creativity, interactivity and potential for relationships that characterize this environment meet the desire to effect positive social change, we’ll know that real steps forward are being made.
