Author - Ivana

If I say Turkey, what will you remember about Turkey?

Maybe, seaside, vacation, beautiful buildings and some traditional food. I remembered this feature when I looked from Croatia to Turkey. But if you live in Turkey, it can be so different for you especially if you are young. 

Let’s check closer to Turkey. Turkey is a Eurasian country. Turkey’s population is almost 84 million people and there are 81 cities in Turkey. Istanbul is the most crowded city in Turkey. Istanbul’s population is almost 15 million people according to 2021 data. But also there are so many undocumented immigrants. That’s why the population of Istanbul may be much higher than the official figures.

Young people generally prefer to live in İstanbul because of the job, opportunities, and activities. Let’s listen to youth and explore its good and bad features.

“I don’t have so much free time in Istanbul”

Fatma Çiftçi who is 24-years-old that is studying German Language and Literature at Sakarya which is a city in Turkey. She grew up in İstanbul but she went to Sakarya when she got into university.

Çiftçi says that she likes sitting in a cafe and talking with her friends; if she is alone, she likes watching movies and series in Sakarya. Çiftçi expresses that Sakarya has a good nature but people who live in Sakarya are conservative.

She returned to Istanbul last year because the lessons are online. Also, she is working as an office worker. Fatma Çiftçi explained that she doesn’t have so much free time in Istanbul because she has to work all the time. But if she has free time, she prefers watching series or reading books. She says that everything is so expensive in İstanbul. She states that she was going to the cinema before but she cannot go to the cinema because movie tickets are so expensive.

“Do you want to live in another country?” She replied to this question:

“I want to live in Germany because there is a higher quality of life. Young people in Germany have higher self-confidence because they are supported in many different areas. Young people in Turkey are not supported in every field.”

Taking photos, playing the oud…

Görkem Durusoy who is 24-years-old studied Journalism at Elazığ which is a city in Turkey. Now he is working as a freelance photographer and journalist. The family of Durusoy moved from Elazığ to Istanbul because of economic difficulties in 1989. That’s why he grew up in Istanbul but Durusoy went to Elazığ because he got into university. He says that he was forced because he went from such a big city to a small city and couldn’t find any activity at the beginning. He states that after he made friends, he and his friends created creative activities. Durusoy says that Elazig has a very good music culture and that he learned to play the oud by going to the music community. He likes to travel around Elazig, take pictures, work in the local newspaper and the school newspaper. But he says that Elazığ is a small city and there aren’t many activities for young people. And he says people who live in Elazığ are helpful but conservative.

Now he is living in İstanbul and he describes to this city:

“İstanbul is a very nice city for people who have a traveler spirit and free soul because of historic buildings, big districts to see. Meeting people from different cultures, catching up on different stories are amazing for journalists. Every district of Istanbul brings me different activities. For example, drinking boza in Fatih, eating fish and bread in Eminönü, taking photos in Sultanahmet, and drinking raki in Karaköy. But of course, there are also negative aspects. Transportation is so expensive, finding a job is difficult and life is getting more and more expensive. Young people became more and more worried because of these situations. Activities in Istanbul are enough for young people but if you don’t have money, you cannot do anything.”

“Do you want to live in another country?” he answered the question as:

“I want to live in another country because I want to experience different cultures and I want to live comfortably economically and socially. I want to live without worrying about the future.”

“I like walking in quiet and cycling near the sea”

Tutku Sönmez is 24-years-old and she is working for an NGO as a communication and campaign manager. Previously she was living in Balıkesir, a city in Turkey. She has lived in İstanbul since 2015.

Sönmez likes watching performing arts like musicals, opera, visiting museums and galleries; meeting with her friends, and eating outside. But Sönmez says that she cannot do these activities because of economic difficulties.

She says that there are so many activities and opportunities for young people in İstanbul but she states that she doesn’t like to live in İstanbul because it’s especially very crowded. That’s why Sönmez says that she likes walking in quiet and secluded places and cycling near the sea.

“If you are living in İstanbul, you feel like you are trying to survive,” says Sönmez and adds: “Istanbul is a city where time is limited and time is mostly spent on the roads. Even if young people go to an event, it is difficult to find a safe, fast and economical way to return home after the event. Istanbul is a cosmopolitan city but consists of small ghettos.”

Author: Evin Arslan

Tips, tricks and advice for NGO’s, small businesses and anyone else who needs social media marketing

Social media is used by 58.4 percent of the world’s population and the average daily usage of social media is 2 hours and 27 minutes, according to Datareportal reasearch from January 2022. The start of the COVID-19 lockdown period contributed even more – there has been a significant surge in internet and digital activities. But the number of people using social media is still continuously increasing, with an average of 13 new people signing up for the first time every second.

With the usual apps of Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, FB Messenger and Wechat which have taken over the first six places on the chart of globally most used social media platforms, TikTok had announced that it had passed the 1 billion monthly active user figure at the end of September 2021. It has taken TikTok just 5 years to reach this milestone.

Considering the just growth of social media we can see the importance of digital presence for brands, small businesses, non-governmental organizations etc. Big and successful brands are trying their best to hire professionals in marketing industry who have exceptional skills and creative mindset to create the best image of their brands online, on the platform that their clients are using. Hiring a whole team of professionals and investing in marketing is worth millions of dollars and the results of campaigns are often not tangible – brands invest enormous amounts of money to be visible, recognizable, important which leads to other values such as customer loyalty.

But what about small businesses and organizations who can’t pay a team of professionals to do the social media marketing for them? If you have just a little bit of creative component in yourself, the will and time – you can do it yourself for no money!

I have started doing social media marketing at the start of my studies when I joined the student council. Then I started working with small companies and NGO’s who didn’t have the time for social media. As a student I couldn’t afford expensive systems for creating and organizing content, so I have found multiple free platforms that helped me work through the barriers.  Five years have passed since I’ve been actively learning about social media and the trends that are changing rapidly. I did my master’s study in Marketing field, learning more about digital marketing and content production. According to my short, but valuable experience I am writing a list of tips, tricks and advice for doing your own social media management.

1. WHERE TO BE? HOW TO START?

Deciding on the platform you want to use is up to the fact where you can find your targeted public. The young audience (18 and less) is usually not on Facebook anymore – instead, they mostly use Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. People in business are on LinkedIn, and generations up to gen Z are on Facebook. Datareportal platform offers up to date information on Global Social Media Trends. If you determined your targeted audience, you will easily find the social media platform that would work best for you. If you have multiple accounts and a website, try combining it on free platform linktr.ee. You can always add and remove links from it.

Share your profiles with people whom you know, follow other accounts that could be valid to you or who you want to support. If you have a workplace that other people visit, create a QR code with QR Code Generator so they can easily scan it and follow you! 

2. WHAT TO POST AND WHEN?

Maybe it would be the best to get yourself a pen and paper, at this point. Write down your company name and start an association game. What do you do? How could you represent your offer/products/activities online? Along with this, could you include other content that would interest your audience – like showing the process of making your product, tips&tricks, advice, quotes, recommendations, interesting facts? Please, be careful here to put the source and make sure to fact check the information.

The timing is the one thing you would have to test. For example, Instagram likes consistency. You can try posting at 4 pm for one month, and at 8 pm the other, and see when your audience is moslty online. Instagram also likes when you use the new tools it offers, such as reels – so try all the new with every update because then Instagram will push you on its own.

3. VISUAL ASPECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is mostly a visual tool and therefore it is important to create visualy pleasant content. The start point here is to determine your brand color palette, you can take it from your logo if you have one. This is when Canva comes in handy. Canva is a free graphic design software that lets you alter photographs without having any prior expertise or knowledge of photo editing. Using Canva’s free color palette generator you can easily get the colors you can work with. You can use Canva to create all of your content – you will quickly figure out how it works since it is very user and beginner friendly. It is also a great source of inspiration!

4. SCHEDULING YOUR CONTENT

Did you know that you can schedule your content so the chosen platform posts for you? A lot of people are not familiar with this life saving tool! The one that is free and that I use is called Creative Studio by Meta, you can find it in the search bar inside the Facebook applications. It connects Instagram and Facebook profiles and posts at the time you want. When posting try coming up with an interesting, but not so long text that will interest your audience in reading, liking and commenting. Remember, every like, comment and share is valueable as it’s rising your online visibility! Also, don’t forget about the hashtags… They are not of much use on Facebook (only if you want to put an emphasize on something), but on Instagram they are extremely valuable if picked correctly. For this purpose, I use a mobile app called Tagify and choose the moderately popular hashtags. You don’t want to put the most popular ones as they have a couple of thousand uses and your post will just get lost then. And please, use emojis – the world is a prettier place with emojis. ☺ 

5. SOME OTHER ADVICE

For photo editing I use Snapseed and Adobe Lightroom, and for video here is Video Guru app. If you want to see how your Instagram feed would look like in advance, before you post anything – you can try the mobile app Feed Preview. All the messages from Facebook and Instagram are combined in a mobile app called Business Suite. 

The world wide web provides us with many free options to manage our own social media. Although the platforms are free, the social media managing can be pretty time consuming, but worth it in the end! It is a great way to connect with your audience and stay important online. All the apps and platforms I recommended are user friendly and I guarantee you they will make your life easier if you want to get your socials on the next level and learn on the way.

Author: Paula Petrinec

 The more we grow up, the more we realize the importance of the concept of time. Sometimes we feel that the time hangs heavy on someone’s hand. And sometimes we do not understand how time flies. However, we all do like the chill moments when we close our eyes after an exhausting day in a rush. We, sometimes, might even forget to spare some time for ourselves within the fatigue of the day, backlogs, deadlines. In fact, we can beneficially do many things in 24 hours when we plan it well, 

At this point, we thought that it might be perspective-changing to confer with young people. Even if time is equal for all of us, the concept of time is individual. Comparing ourselves to others might be uncomfortable for us. When looking from this point, within the interviews, there are students, workers, both workers and students. The time is equal for those however, while 24 hours would be enough for some, It is not enough for others. Herein, maybe, we should observe how useful and wisely we can benefit from the time.

In other words, how much time can we separate for ourselves while we are lost in time and find ourselves in the rush of life? Yes, maybe we would feel better when we separate time to get away from our continuously thinking mind. Let’s imagine a moment how we can benefit from our free time even when it makes us smile when we think about it. The answer of “separating time” was more or less the same. The young people are very aware of this subject and pay attention to separate time. While some of them can have the whole weekend for themselves, the others have time in the first opportunity. Still, we can see that the seven days are equal for each of us. However, we are different in individual aspects.

Not only separating time, but also we dissent when it comes to free-time activities. While some of us prefer resting and chilling, others prefer singing in their free time. However, there is one mid-point, which is to watch films or TV series. I guess this is within our favorite activities. The other mentioned activity is to drink coffee with friends. In this point, we can see that Croatian youth love to talk, share, socialize and separate time for their family and friends. In addition to that, they also pay attention to working out frequently. We all know the countless benefits of working out. Croatian youth is also very well aware of this. 

And sometimes, we end the day without doing anything. When we look back, we feel sorry for spending a day in vain.  In fact, after the conversations we held, we saw that young people think au contraire. To put it all in simple terms, sometimes we can give an off day to ourselves as a reward. The only thing that our brain and body need might be just resting and doing nothing. They all agreed that it causes nothing but sadness and regret to force ourselves to do something when we need rest. But they also agreed that if there is something that they have to do, but do not complete, then they feel bad about it. However, they also underlined that if there is no task to do, forcing themselves to do something only cause tiredness.

To sum up, as a result of our interview with the young people, we had a chance to see the importance of free time and the priority of our requests. We can also say how beneficial and progressive the free time activities can be. Before concluding, I would like to add this quote that biased me from a book written by Ana Tan “Free time was the most precious time when you should be doing what you loved, or at least slowing down enough to remember what made your life worthwhile and happy.”

Author: Erkin Duman

Photo by Marija Gebert