Do you share a passion for blogging and believe in blogging about social causes to bring about a social change? Then here is your opportunity created by the Indian School of Business in partnership with Indiblogger, an Indian bloggers community. ISB iDiya for IndiChange is a unique blogging initiative where bloggers have been invited to blog about a social cause they are passionate about and its potential solution.
The blog post may also include the story of inspiring people or organizations working towards a social cause. The best part is that the winners can donate the prize money to an NGO of their choice apart from receiving an E-Certificate from ISB. The grand prize is INR 10,000 and there are four prizes of INR 5000 each, in addition to Indiblogger adding INR 5000 to the prizes for every fifty entries received.
Founded in 2009, iDiya is ISB’s national ‘Social Venture Ideas Competition’ that aims to stimulate, enable and develop high-impact, self sustaining social businesses in India. Targeted at working Indian professionals submitting the executive summary of their business ideas and plans, iDiya then evaluates the ideas for a measurable social impact, criticality and sustainability of the enterprise. Armed with an all expenses paid Boot camp for the top six teams, mentoring support for the top 10 teams and seed funding, iDiya seeks to bring your social business ideas to life.
Blogger entries would be judged on relevance, depth and passion with no weightage assigned for votes. Though the NGOs chosen by the winners will be verified by ISB prior to the prize money contribution. The submitted entries need to display a link to the iDiya website and a hashtag #iDiya serves for making related conversations on Twitter.
Reaching out through bloggers and social media
Launching months ahead of the iDiya competition, this idea of reaching out to the blogger community and creating positive stories around the concept, will definitely set the foundation for iDiya. Apart from spreading the word, the blogging contest will also expose bloggers and their readers to social causes, social enterprises and NGOs, while having iDiya associated with it. Great way to build related conversations prior to the contest.
The campaign is being promoted on the social media channels of iDiya, especially on the Facebook page which has close to 8.5K fans. However, the Twitter page hasn’t yet woken up to it. It would be good to see the Twitter account also joining in the conversations through #iDiya – the hashtag created for the purpose.
Nevertheless, engaging with bloggers along with driving the social media community will pave the way for increased interactions for iDiya and going further iDiya can leverage more out of social media.