Abstract

Since educational NGOs were introduced in China, how many organizations expand their influence through social media has also been changing. Some organizations have received attention and successfully promoted their projects, but most have yet to attract enough attention from people outside the circle. This article adopts the research methods of literature research, data collection, case discussion:"Beyond the City", questionnaire, and interview, concludes, and puts reasonable suggestions through the current social media communication situation, communication content, and communication effect of educational NGOs.

Keywords：NGO，educational organizations，social enterprises，social media，integrated marketing communication(IMC)

Introduction

As China's urban-rural gap between the rich and the poor is becoming more severe,people from rural areas tend to choose to leave their hometowns and go to modern  cities for employment, and this population is gradually increasing. This situation leads to a shortage of teachers and staff in rural schools, leading to the growing urban-rural education gap. No wonder this is one of the hot topics widely discussed in society today. In order to improve the current situation and solve the problem, the concept of social enterprises (which aims at solving social problems and improving public welfare rather than pursuing their profits) was introduced into China's economic system from other countries. Also, in an attempt to solve the problem of rural education resource shortage, educational NGOs, a sort of non-profit social enterprise, have recently become common in China. Educational NGOs, which are non-governmental and non-profit organizations participating in education, assist the government, integrate social education resources, make up for the shortcomings of public education, and improve education in rural areas through various educational means. (Thinking about the Development Orientation NGO -- Change from "Imparting Knowledge" to " Quality Education" Chen Beibei, East China University of Political Science and Law, 201620, China)

So far as we can see, foreign educational NGOs are pretty mature, and domestic organizations are not as perfect. As time pass by, educational NGOs also need to keep pace with With the changes in a social situation. Therefore, most educational NGOs expand their influence by posting relevant information on social media platforms and exchanging experience-based learning with other organizations. With the vigorous development of the domestic We Media and short video industries, posting information through the media is an excellent choice to extend one's influence.

Furthermore, pictures and texts, short videos, live broadcasts, and cooperation with official media are marketing methods. Take the organization: "Beyond the City" as an example of social enterprise in Shanghai. This organization was established in September 2017 and is a social enterprise dedicated to connecting urban and rural areas with the help of education. It perfectly fits the research project objectives of this study. The organization hopes to form equality between urban and rural areas by opening three significant sectors: local research, urban vocational tourism, and exploration of nature. The staffs from "Beyond the City" also devote themselves to providing rural vision and the appreciation of nature for teenagers in urban cities, providing more career possibilities for rural children, and bringing urban support for rural development. The main contributions are to provide urban children with introductions to different subjects and let them enjoy the beautiful rural landscapes, bring rural teenagers to the city and take courses in career development and career planning, establish stores in the rural fields, and set up a "career link" workshop. ( From the official website of "Beyond the City") Their actions somehow improved the rural living environment, integrated resources, and gathered social forces to support rural education. "Beyond the City" have gained the attention of the news business and journalists; The founder of the organization: Xingyu Wang, shared his thoughts and teaching life through MicroBlog and was supported by 980000 network users.

However, only a few educational NGOs, such as "Beyond the City," have successfully expanded their influence. The strategy of marketing and communication used for relevant educational NGO projects on social media in China is still in its early stage and not well developed. The influence formed is not as significant as what they expected. So it is difficult to attract other internet users to pay attention to the situation and problems faced by educational NGOs in remote areas. This article mainly focuses on case analysis and adopts the research idea of "pointing out problems - analyzing advantages and disadvantages - clarifying the path" to find and propose ways to better use the social media platform to attract more public attention to the development of educational NGOs.

1. Marketing form

The spread of information has a strong influence on social interaction. It changes the original communication mode, cognitive mode, and behavior mode, as well as the communication mode between grassroots organizations and the external environment. (Less developed areas of education NGOS resource acquisition process research -- To serve the ethnic minority areas in Gansu Province Education NGO Han Shuxiong, The College of Politics and Law of Northwest Normal University, China). A suitable communication mode will always play a positive role in shaping the image. For educational NGOs, marketing mode is also fundamental. This is why educational NGOs' marketing and communication methods have also changed from time to time since they can benefit from attracting participants and traffic through different medias, ways and forms.

1.1 Official websites

By searching for relevant information about "Beyond the City" on search engines, it is seen that the official website is not in the front row. Internet users can view advertisements, introductions, and different categories of profitable projects from the organization. This has affected the publicity of the official website to a certain extent. This shows that organizations will increase advertising investment in profitable projects, resulting in deviation in the recommended list. After logging into the official website, the QR code of the WeChat official account can be seen on the home page, which shows that the organization has a strong desire to shift the attention of web visitors to the official account in WeChat. The organization's information will spread even faster by using the official account. On the next page, viewers can see a series of timelines, activities, and awards won since the establishment of "Beyond the City" in 2017, which can show readers the development history of "Beyond the City" as soon as possible. The following pages are mainly about local research (mainly open to teenagers from urban cities), urban vocational tourism (open to left-behind children and teenagers in rural areas), rural construction, past review, and promotion of their teachers, mainly with pictures and videos, supplemented by other information contained in the QR codes.

Among the respondents who filled in the questionnaire, about 39% of them knew the word educational NGOs. Among the respondents who knew the word, nearly 85% of them chose the WeChat official account as one of the media they know well, which leads to a practical understanding of educational NGOs. Through the questionnaire survey, the marketing method on the official website that drives visitors' attention to the content of the official account does have a specific effect.

1.2 Media accounts

On the mainland internet platform, "Beyond the City" operates several Media accounts on RED (Beyond the City BTC), Tiktok (Beyond the City), Bilibili (Xingyu Wang Beyond the City ), WeChat official account (Beyond the City BTC) and Microblog (Xingyu Wang Beyond the City ). The organization settled in RED on September 30, 2022, and officially posted its first video on March 3, 2022 (Many people said that I had narrowed the road to rural revitalization, what do you think?). This video presented Xingyu Wang's words and the video of rural scenery to the audience. The marketing content of the account turned out to be research projects, science popularization, and rural anecdotes. On April 21, 2022, "Beyond the City" posted an online learning video on the theme of "Genghong Liu's workouts, "a popular tag and celebrity at that time, on Tiktok. After that, the videos mainly focusedon the local population living in rural areas. On February 2, 2020, "Beyond the City" first posted a video on the video website: Bilibili. Later, it successively posted 45 medium-long videos (1 for entertainment, 19 for knowledge science popularization, 20 for life sharing, and 5 for film and television, data from Bilibili) within 10 minutes, mainly in the form of Vlog and knowledge science popularization. On August 28, 2018, the first article was posted on the WeChat official account. All the articles were updated frequently. The types were more diversified than previous media accounts, but the theme was still about the research projects. Xingyu Wang's account has been on Microblog since July 15, 2016. In the beginning, it was mainly in the form of a Vlog, and later on, it was more focused on marketing and sharing rural research activities. It is clear that "Beyond the City" are mainly marketed by updating the WeChat official account (Beyond the City BTC) and Microblog (Xingyu Wang Beyond the City). Consequently, Microblog has attracted the attention of many internet users.

Regarding the questionnaire data, 85% of the respondents mentioned the WeChat official account as one of the well-known internet communications and marketing media, and 67% chose Microblog as one of the answers to this question. The attention of the rest of the media accounts decreased significantly, 17%, 7%, and 14%, respectively. We can conclude that our media account's update frequency, content enrichment, and content diversity are proportional to the attention.

1.3 Official and authoritative media reports

On mainstream social media platforms, such as Microblog, internet viewers can access reports from China Youth Daily (new professions are constantly emerging to open up new employment tracks). It mentioned Xingyu Wang as an entrepreneurialyouth and contains content on the new direction of employment at this stage. By searching for "Beyond the City" on Baidu, people can find a report from Forbes China (measuring the distance between urban and rural areas, understanding the natural world | "Beyond the City" Xingyu Wang). Although local research and urban vocational tourism, which serve both urban and rural youth, are mentioned, more words are spent on introducing Xingyu Wang, the person in charge of rural notes. The main content is his new thoughts on the new mode of education under the double reduction policy. There is no apparent attitude in the content of the whole article. The article on People's Daily Online, an official media, mainly introduced the anecdotes of Xingyu Wang and his new employees' interviews in the countryside. "Beyond the City" were mentioned several times as the content of their interviews, but the article focused more on Xingyu Wang's own experience. Through Xinhua net, an official media, viewers can find relevant reports from the Economic Information net (Ctrip and "Beyond the City" launched a whole rural study tour project with a 349% increase in rural tourism popularity). The report mainly focused on rural economic development brought about by the tourism project and its impact on the local economy. The article mentioned "Beyond the City" 's achievements and promoted the latest research projects. Guided by the Propaganda Department of the CPC Hubei Provincial Committee and sponsored by Hubei Daily Media Group, Jimu News, a new media brand, reported on the public welfare and fund-raising activities held by "Beyond the City" and also mentioned the prospect and goals of "Beyond the City" for the future.

In the official media reports, most of the articles are named after "Beyond the City". The actual weight of the articles is still more in favor of Xingyu Wang's personal experience and marketing, and the promotion and introduction of "Beyond the City" are relatively low.

According to the data collected from the questionnaire, 54% of the respondents have read or know the articles or videos published by Chinese educational NGOs in cooperation with traditional official media.

2. Content of Marketing

2.1 Intellectual Property Marketing

IP (intellectual property) marketing refers to the marketing means to shape the characteristics of works or projects, define their image positioning, and highlight the design and purchase points, so that projects can obtain many followers or consumers.The research case of the article "Beyond the City" builds itself into an educational enterprise firmly connecting urban and rural areas with education, strengthening equal communication between urban and rural areas. The enterprise also shows eagerness to let young people living in cities experience things they never tried before and let ruralchildren travel to big cities and expand their career possibilities. In addition, Xingyu Wang and his character setting as a graduate student from a famous university have also become points attracting the attention of many media resources and internet citizens.

The IP marketing self-positioning of "Beyond the City" is entirely accurate, and most media hold a positive attitude towards this organization. The spread of the original intention of the project and the project promotion mainly rely on the pictures and videos on its official website and the tweets on other media websites, such as Jimu News ("Beyond the City": "Dreams of N" public welfare activities), and project selling on Shanghai Yuloo net. On media websites, such as Forbes China (measuring the distance between urban and rural areas, understanding the natural world | "Beyond the City" Xingyu Wang) and Bilibili (Xingyu Wang from"Beyond the City": "Difference and Equality"), Xingyu Wang's own experience and his journey of founding "Beyond the City" are seemed to be more critical for publicity and marketing.

According to the questionnaire and the interview, it can be analyzed that IP marketing has the following advantages. First, organizations can use online promotion resources to provide potential followers with things they lack essential background or opportunities to access to gain a certain amount of attention. Second, its self-positioning can make the project more friendly or familiar to people. Take the combination of city and institution brands as an example: in the inland Sichuan Province, where research is currently well developed, the Sichuan government, through cooperation with Neijiang, Ya'an, and Guangyuan to build the local research arts and science company brand, carries out a complete project planning, and finally, the arts and science company and the government lead students to participate in research activities, which undoubtedly strengthens the local students' and parents' recognition and support of participating in research activities.

2.2 Emotional Marketing

Emotional marketing refers to a marketing method that starts from the emotional level and uses empathy to arouse or stimulate consumers' emotional needs to induce consumption in the next step. In the case of ordinary goods, what consumers value is not only the price of the goods but also to satisfy their emotional needs or to gain a sense of identity. For example, emotional marketing products will often stimulate consumers' desire to buy by recalling memories and nostalgic feelings of the past. As for courses and programs, the use of emotional marketing can attract the attention of more consumers. The questionnaire data from this study shows that 58% of the respondents believe that emotional marketing is the most effective way to attract their attention. This explains the use of emotional marketing for many programs. In the case of this paper, "Beyond the City" amplifies its vision of bringing youth from remote mountainous areas out of the countryside to broaden their horizons, primarily in front of consumers. This leverages the goodwill inside consumers' hearts to play the sentiment card of wanting all of China's youth to receive a competent education and develop their abilities. The program has an even greater appeal to consumers. Getting consumers to step out of their natural lives and return to nature, learn about rural life, visit ancient architecture, explore potentials, etc., is undoubtedly an excellent way torelieve oneself from stress and oppression. Through fundraising and other means, we can help the elderly in rural areas achieve a higher quality of life and help rural children access education and the joy of helping others, thus realizing their self-worth. How are these project selling points not a kind of emotional consumption? From this aspect, "Beyond the City" has successfully mastered the content that can move consumers and find the right starting point.

2.3 Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing is mainly divided into the perceptual experience (application of senses in experiential marketing), thinking experience (referring to experiential marketing that allows consumers to gain new cognition or provoke thinking), behavioral experience (referring to experiential marketing that enriches consumers' lives and thus makes them change themselves or their state of life), emotional experience (referring to marketing that makes consumers feel various emotions in consumption), and related experience (referring to the experience of practicing personal desire for improvement, which makes others feel good about themselves. This can be used to establish a preference for a particular brand). (Marketing Studies Wu Jianan, Beijing: Higher Education Press, 2011) The essence of the programs lies in the sense of experience. Hence, "Beyond the City" mainly uses three forms of experiential marketing: thinking experience, behavioral experience, and emotional experience to promote the programs. In the Qilian Gobi Silk Road study program, consumers can create murals and build walls with their own hands, enjoy unique murals, and study ores and rock bodies along the Silk Road in Guangzhou. Developing critical thinking satisfies the thinking experience marketing, consumers' emotional experience through the interaction between their family, and the six-day-long activity also enriches the consumers' journey, which accomplishes behavioral experience.

"Beyond the City" allows teenagers to experience a different life through different types of study programs while also satisfying parents' expectations of travel to a certain extent, leading to their continued interest in "Beyond the City" and even automatic promotion. Qilian Gobi Silk Road Parent-Child Camp　(6,999/person),Liuzhou Native Economy Camp (6,999/person), Xiangxi Writing Camp (9,800/person), and many other study programs from "Beyond the City" is indeed popular among parents. However, their prices are higher compared to ordinary sightseeing groups. However, the targeted audience of the program is a minority in society, so the goal of expanding the influence is not fully achieved.

Conclusion

According to the case study in this article, the official website of the educational NGO "Beyond the City" does not play a significant role in promotion and publicity and is mainly responsible for drawing attention to other media accounts. In summary, the paper concludes that at most 40% of the media accounts receive a large amount of attention, and the Microblog account with 980,000 followers receives less attention daily, relying mainly on the WeChat official account as its main channel. In the authoritative official media reports, the promotion and introduction of Country Notes' activities are given less weight compared to the personal marketing of Xingyun Wang, and the content is mainly about marketing his own experience. The problems and suggestions are as follow.

First, the official website of "Beyond the City" does not contain enough content that can attract the attention from the website viewers and is not well designed since there is only a small QR code on the front page which is definitely not attractive. The reason "Beyond the City" didn't do this was probably because they needed to hire additional staffs to maintain the website and make new designs and layouts for it. But this is not worth mentioning in front of the great temptation to attract more attention. Normally speaking, official websites should also deliver more messages forpromotion than any other media accounts because messages delivered on socialmedias are often separated into pieces. Official websites should provide viewers with systematic introduction for them to learn more about the organization. In order to solve this problem, typing the official website as a tag below every single video or article used for promotion on other social medias will be a good choice. This provide the audience with accessible source to know more about the organization. Also, "Beyond the City" should hire staffs to focus on designing the official website and the promotion articles so as to make it a better place for people to obtain knowledge.

Second, media accounts on Bilibili, Tiktok and RED from "Beyond the City" aren’t able to attract a large number of viewers, as well as the videos and articles posted on Microblog.

According to statistics from QuestMobile, by the end of last year, nearly 82% of Bilibili's users were from Generation Z, mostly high school and college students (data from QuestMobile). They are more likely to watch longer videos about 20 minutes or more on Bilibili. To fit their preference, "Beyond the City" should find a specific type of video that the users like to watch, for example: daily life sharing ( what do they do when helping the villagers?) and experience sharing like the series of videos Xingyu Wang recorded ( Wang has something to share).

For Tiktok, users are mainly young people from 24 to 30 years old, about 40 percent of total users (data from Souhu), whose attention can be easily shifted and are easy to get bored with sticking to one object. "Beyond the City" can record their daily fun facts in the villages and some interesting segments. This can draw Tiktok users’ attention to the organization as fast as possible.

The users of RED are mostly women, with a male to female ratio of about 3:7. Female users are irresistible to such topics as shopping, food and fashion. The age distribution of users is mainly concentrated in 18-35 years old, accounting for about 70% (data from Baidu Experience). To attract their attention, "Beyond the City" can introduce the traditional costumes from rural areas: what they usually wear at important ceremonies? How do they make this kind of clothing? What is special about this specific type of fabric...... Besides, recording videos about food will be great. "Beyond the City" can ask the villagers to make their favorite food and show the　process of making it to the audiences. The recipes can attract a lot of attention with no doubt.

As for Microblog, it has the largest number of post-90s and post-00s users, with a combined share of nearly 80% for this group. The overall trend of Microblog users is young(data from www.SGPJBG.com). They don’t actually pay attention to videos no matter how long and short it is, they prefer a few sentences with pictures instead. As a result, "Beyond the City" can share new findings or scenery pictures with their current feelings.

Last but not least, in the media reports, Xingyu Wang's personal image and "Beyond the City" are not strongly related and somewhat fragmented, making it difficult for followers to link the two together. In order to solve this problem, the reports should contain more content introducing "Beyond the City", both what Xingyu Wang did for the organization and what currently the organization is doing with the instructions of Xingyu Wang.

Hope that other organizations can take "Beyond the City" as an example, and use the suggestions to expand their circles by using different platforms to spread their deep insights and successfully attract more followers.

Work Cited

1.Chen, Beibei. CNKI. Thinking about the Development Orientation NGO -- Change from " Imparting Knowledge" to " Quality Education". Retrieved from kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFDLAST2015&filename=CDJY201511009&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=wCAciV9WcmqTxspEHaTir46OYE6sZ644lErFEriV408gtYejEKD1lazpb1L3kRyF.

2.Han, Shuxiong. CNKI. Less developed areas of education NGOS resourceacquisition process research -- To serve the ethnic minority areas in Gansu Province Education NGO. Retrieved from kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CMFD&dbname=CMFD201301&filename=1013002765.nh&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=8r1yeSi-iA0zsM01mC8-LUfbiqpsl0QdHOcvyBvXjmWyLDKEfPzM-wDOKz_D6-g2

3.Wu, Jianan. (2011). Marketing Studies. Beijing: Higher Education Press.