“The Witty Mentor”
This is the journey of 7 people having completely different ideas of what they wanted to do. But all of them have something in common and that was their willingness to give it all, resulting in an excellent output in the form of a platform where anyone and everyone can reach out to seek some professional guidance.
After lots of meetings, tons of brainstorming and of course suggesting various odd names for this platform (let me just list a few of them: Desi Thor, Maa Saqdqay, Talk shalk, Roshan Kal etc.), we finally decided on “THE WITTY MENTOR”.
Even with 76+ million active internet users and 160+ million active mobile phones users, we still have a huge gap when it comes to professional guidance of young students or fresh graduates. So we started to put our best to bridge this gap with a little hint of humor.
The process was never as smooth as it seems to be. There was always uncertainty, clash of thoughts, doubt and a whole heap of question marks. But we approached them as challenges rather than as problems or issues.
First of all, we are not from the same city so we couldn’t personally meet up. We are 7 people from 4 different cities, so we decided to shift completely to “Work from Home”. It was kind of hard in the beginning but we blended very well with each other and the credit goes to our lengthy zoom meetings that we would have at least once a week.
Since we were short of time and the whole strategy was time taking to get better output. So we decided to follow the rule of “Divide and Conquer”. The whole team was divided into 3 groups of two and started working on mini-projects individually. This way we increased productivity by 66%.
The plan we decided to follow was as simple as this:
Along with the helping others, we were very focused on personal growth as well. For that purpose, we divided this group of 7 into 4 groups. Out of which 3, will focus on arranging workshops and 1 would have to record the web series. However, despite being divided into groups, we believed in “Aik or Aik Gyara” and all the other members were obliged to assist them wherever needed.
The reason for allotting only 1 group to the web series was because it involved a lot of external factors. The videography and editing was done by volunteers we found from our personal networks. However, all of the members participated in the scripting and the marketing.
Initially a web series was what we were much focused on but as making YouTube videos, scripting, editing and uploading is a long process. We decided to organize virtual events in a single week, regarding the topics we have learned throughout our fellowship. One of the big advantages of this strategy was that we will be able to engage the crowd before our main content on YouTube.
The preparation started and we finally found our first speaker. The topic of our first virtual workshop was “Utilizing LinkedIn for Securing Jobs/Internships”. That event was organized on January 24, 2021. Our guest was Mohammed Bilal who is an Information Security Engineer at Kualitatem and also worked as an associate software engineer at DevsInc.
You can visit https://saadali-sheikh7865.medium.com/the-expertise-alliance-3479efa33b75 for more detailed information regarding this workshop.
Our second workshop was on the topic of “Interview Skills” on January 28, 2021. Again, we got an exceptional speaker with 10 years of experience, Wajahat Ali Shah. His training contribution includes very prolific organizations like, Qasim Ali Shah Foundation, UNICEF, Alkhidmat Foundation, Tars Foundation, Punjab Police and Punjab Rangers.
You can visit https://khanhijab1056.medium.com/how-to-excel-in-an-interview-c47b20932a41 for more detailed information regarding this workshop.
The third workshop was based on the most important document of the whole recruiting process i.e. “Resume Building”. This event was organized on January 30, 2021. Our esteemed guest speaker, Zafar Ullah Zahid is an HR Professional and Consultant with 13+ year of experience and he is running his own recruitment, training, resources provider firm with the name “Syntax Resources”.
You can visit https://farwaahmad.medium.com/career-counselling-and-r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9-building-workshop-c0a6b786be4a for more detailed information regarding the workshop.
We made multiple posters for one event along with some very interesting captions to attract more people.
To our surprise, the results were very appreciating. Although we have put our all for the preparations but we didn’t know we can gather such a huge and professional audience. Collectively, 115 participants joined the workshops from 24 different cities while most of the audience was from Lahore.
Google forms were used to collect the data of the participants and we documented their names along with the emails and used it for further promotions and marketing.
Now we had the content and the audience. So we officially launched our YouTube Channel. We even made a short intro video for our channel. Danish played a big role in recording and hosting and the rest of the team worked on scripting and marketing. In the beginning we reached out to 10 people but only 5 of them responded. But after a while, people started to reach out to us on their own. Some even requested to feature them into the series and they will bear all the cost.
The first episode was on the topic of “Journalism”. The guest speaker was Mr. Nadeem Malik. This episode was released on February 8, 2021.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/dZjslAd8wUI
The second episode was on the topic of “Sustainable Development Goals” with Mr. Sarmad Shahbaz. This episode was released on February 10, 2021.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/37ZopFHrl_g
The third episode was on the topic of “Entrepreneurship” with Mr. Bilal Feroz. This episode was released on February 16, 2021.
Video Link: https://youtu.be/WpjqS2_4S00
The teaser to our fourth episode is out now. Video Link: https://youtu.be/dp-lexUFzZA
Now we had all the content but nothing will be helpful if we couldn’t deliver it well to the audience. So we decided to select one platform as the “Parent” and all the audience from the “Daughter” pages will be converged to that one point. So we directed audience from different social media platforms to Facebook and converged them all at the YouTube.
In addition to that, we would share the links with the participants from our workshops through their emails and by posting it on the Facebook page. Plus we have 45 permanent members in our WhatsApp group and we shared every job, internship and scholarship opportunities we know, with them.
Our whole marketing strategy was organic and no paid promotion was done. Yet we managed to attract a large audience. The peaks of the graph can clearly be seen on the dates we uploaded a new episode which means the marketing was actually really effective.
In addition to that, our targeted audience was youth and the viewers of our channel were also between the age 18 and 35.
The growth of our channel and views are still increasing exponentially. We’ve got some really appreciating messages from the viewers.
Along with our YouTube Channel, the Facebook also showed some very promising and good results. We have zero negative feedback for all the 35 posts.
This project is not only very feasible for us to continue but also very convenient for the audience. So we are planning to continue what we have been doing through out. We will be in contact with the youth through our social media pages and we will keep sharing helpful content with our WhatsApp group participants as well. We even planned to For next month’s session, we have already found a speaker to conduct the session. Also we found a potential partner to collaborate with and they are willing to cover all the expenses.
Our journey of turning our plan into reality was never easy. It was hard to put up with all this work along with our weekly projects and other commitments. Two of our members were going through rough times and they decided to drop out of the fellowship, but the team refused to give up on them. Soon all 7 of us will be graduating. In short, despite all the challenges we faced, we didn’t let each other indulge in negativity.
Stay tuned with us because “IT IS NOT THE END BUT A NEW BEGINING.”
You can reach out to us at:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheWittyMentor/
YouTube: The Witty Mentor
WhatsApp: https://chat.whatsapp.com/CsQJ1hlvVsf...
Instagram: instagram.com/thewitty mentor/
Gmail: thewittymentor@gmail.com
