towards a un social media strategy (for printing)

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Joe Mitchell

Our people are our voice Towards a social media strategy for the United Nations Summer 2012 v.0.5

First draft by Joe Mitchell (@j0e_m) Disclaimer: this document does not (yet) represent the views of any people

actually employed by the UN.

Towards a UN social media strategy Joe Mitchell @j0e_m

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Table of Contents

1. Executive summary ........................................................................................................ 5

2. Background and methodology................................................................................... 8

3. Audience.............................................................................................................................. 9

3.1. Who do we hope to engage with in social media? ....................................................... 9

3.2. How can we segment this group of people? .................................................................. 9

3.3. What do audiences want or expect from the UN in social media? ...................... 10

3.4. Where do people get information about the UN? ...................................................... 11

3.5. What social platforms do they use? ................................................................................ 11

3.6. What is social media’s mother tongue? ......................................................................... 12

3.7. What is social media use like across the time zones? .............................................. 14

3.8. What about those who don’t have internet access? .................................................. 14

3.9. What does this all mean? How should this data inform our strategy? .............. 16

4. Existing UN communication objectives ............................................................... 17

4.1. UN system-wide communication objectives ...................................................... 17

4.2. Secretary-General’s Five-Year Action Agenda ................................................... 18

4.3. UN Competencies for the Future ........................................................................ 18

4.4. Committee on Information .................................................................................. 19

4.5. Department of Public Information objectives ................................................... 21

4.6. DPI Strategic Communications Division (SCD) priorities ................................. 22

5. Suggested vision, mission and objectives ........................................................... 23

5.1. Comparing models of corporate social media ............................................................ 23

5.2. Suggested vision, mission and objectives for UN DPI social media team ......... 25

5.3. Turning objectives into SMART goals ............................................................................ 26

6. Evaluation ......................................................................................................................... 29

7. Realising our vision – part one: staff training ................................................... 30


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7.1. Baseline research on staff and social media ................................................................ 30

7.2. Our people objectives ........................................................................................................... 35

7.3. How to go about realising the objectives ...................................................................... 35

8. Realising our vision – part two: UN branded accounts ................................. 38

8.1. General ....................................................................................................................................... 38

8.2. Which platforms should DPI use? .................................................................................... 38

8.3. Languages and local focus................................................................................................... 39

8.4. Platform use ............................................................................................................................. 39

8.5. Content plan and workflow for accounts managed by DPI.................................... 41

8.5.1. Content plan ......................................................................................................................... 41

8.5.2. Workflow and work tools ............................................................................................... 41

8.5.3. Workflow diagram: ........................................................................................................... 42

9. DPI’s coordination role across UN system ......................................................... 43

9.1. General ....................................................................................................................................... 43

9.2. Procurement ............................................................................................................................ 43

9.3. Liaison with owners of platforms .................................................................................... 43

9.4. Knowledge sharing ................................................................................................................ 43

9.5. Shared evaluation metrics .................................................................................................. 44

10. Next steps ......................................................................................................................... 45


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Appendices/Annexes .......................................................................................................... 47

A. DPI Structure ......................................................................................................................................... 47

B. Information on UNICs ........................................................................................................................ 48

C. Notes from UN Communications Group ..................................................................................... 50

D. Objectives from the Committee on Information’s draft resolution to 67th GA ............ 51

E. Status, basic rights and duties of United Nations staff members (ST/SGB/2002/13)

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F. World Summit 2005 ........................................................................................................................... 53

G. Interviews with social media practitioners in UN system .................................................. 55

H. Data on literacy, first and second languages, social media platform use ...................... 59

I. The US State Dept model (staff numbers in brackets) .......................................................... 60

J. Giant spreadsheet of everything ................................................................................................... 62

K. Micro goals for each platform ......................................................................................................... 63

a) Twitter ................................................................................................................................................. 63

b) Facebook ............................................................................................................................................. 64

c) Weibo ................................................................................................................................................... 65

d) UN blogs platform (blogs.un.org) ............................................................................................... 66

e) Pinterest .............................................................................................................................................. 67

L. Tools for brand accounts workflow ............................................................................................. 68

M. How to deal with multilingual and multinational brands on Facebook ......................... 69


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1. Executive summary

There is currently no social media strategy for the United Nations. This document attempts to provide

a platform upon which to build one. It was written by Joe Mitchell, a social media intern, based on

evidence from existing UN documentation, interviews with UN system-wide social media specialists,

and desk-based internet research on the best practice in the public and private sectors.

This document in 30 seconds

In sum, the UN should aim for a model of corporate social media use in which its staff freely form a

coherent group who discuss the UN’s work and engage with the public in the digital space. Staff

should be empowered with support and training from the Department of Public Information (DPI).

Corporate or brand accounts should remain only where they contribute to a specific strategic goal,

such as being used to highlight the best of staff-produced content and performing a sign-posting role,

helping users find and engage with the UN staff in the field they are interested in.

Our overall vision is that our people will be our voice.

Our mission is to help staff realise this vision through training and support. We aim to create a UN

that is: more human, open and transparent. It will be better connected internally to staff, externally to

stakeholders, and globally to the world’s public.

These aims must be made real through specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely (SMART)

goals, such as: we will train 0.5% of UN staff in good social media practice by 2014. We expect the

outcome to be an a 1000% increase in UN staff using digital media at least 5 times per week by 2014.

A full matrix of objectives, outputs (what we do), intermediate and overall outcomes (the expected

result), along with ways to measure each of these, is provided in section 5.3.

Each section of the rest of this document is briefly summarised below.

Audience

There are at least two billion internet users on Earth. We cannot communicate with all of them at

once. We must segment the audience to make it easier to get our messages across. This segmentation

is partly designed into the world’s population through language use and platform use, but we should

also think about other ways we can segment the audience to improve efficiencies. Section three also

shows that there is a lack of information on what the audience wants from the UN, and that we do not

know enough about global perceptions and knowledge of the UN. As social media use grows over the

next decades to cover the entire world, we must build the data that will help direct us to engage with

the world’s populations on the platforms that they choose, in the languages they speak.

Existing objectives

A review of a range of documentation relating to mandates and suggested roles for communication at

the UN shows a lack of coherent, prioritised and ultimately, strategic, objectives, targets and

measures. The single strategic document found that provides clear goals and an accountability

framework is the Senior Manager’s Compact, which will presumably need to be reviewed for the new


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USG. This represents an excellent opportunity for grasping a more strategic approach for the entire

department.

Suggested Vision, Mission and Objectives

A final set of objectives will be developed with extensive DPI/wider secretariat consultation and buy-

in – a process that should be led by senior management. However, it is helpful to present examples of

what these should look like. This follows the principles laid out in the box above.

Evaluation

New and improved evaluation techniques will be required to monitor the success of our work and to

guide refinements as necessary. This will include simple data gathering, greater use of staff surveys

(or pulling more data from those that already exist) and, more expensively, but essentially for long

term evaluation, comprehensive audience research performed by independent bodies.

Plan for staff social media training

DPI should develop ‘train the trainer’ programmes, a network of UN-system champions, and

constantly make the case for best practice in social media. We must reach out to other departments to

ensure a coherent approach across UN staff wherever they are. Training programmes should begin

with senior staff to seek the right buy-in, providing safe practice spaces where required. Essentially

the DPI should manage a behaviour change campaign, providing advocacy, inspiration, seizing early

adopters and using them to pass on the training to colleagues. DPI could develop a ‘training’ kit for

these champions, such as those who already sit on the DPI social media team. The broad idea is that

the goal to become a social / networked organisation through social and networked methods.

Plan for UN corporate accounts

While we aim to encourage staff to lead digital discussions, ‘corporate’ or ‘brand’ accounts will still

be required during the transition, and in the long term as starting points for the audience and as

amplifiers or highlighters of UN staff communication. Realising this goal will require a

comprehensive audit of social media accounts owned by the UN (not just DPI) and a consolidation

according to the overall strategic goals. Accounts that remain after consolidation must be more

targeted to engage people at the closest possible level, which will require greater use of, and greater

responsibility being devolved to, UNICs and country offices. Each brand account should have a

micro-strategy with individual targets, a content plan, and have one overall supervisor.

DPI’s coordination role across the UN system

While it would make sense for DPI to take a leadership role across the system, it currently lacks the

resources to do this, and the current decentralised system of informal networking is working relatively

well for now. The absence of an authoritative centre may present problems in the long term,

especially as social media use expands. In the short term, DPI could improve efficiencies through

managing system-wide procurement and providing a single-point-of-contact for platform owners (i.e.

Facebook and Google public policy officers).

Next steps

Immediately, DPI should: survey all UN staff, audit all UN social media accounts and start seeking

cross-UN feedback on this strategy.

Within the next three months, DPI should develop a staff training programme, liaise with HR, legal

and senior management to build robust support for strategy.


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Within the next six months, objectives and SMART goals for the next four years should be decided by

USG with consultation with members of the Committee on Information.

Appendices and Annexes

The document provides a range of annexes and appendices that represent the background data that the

document was built upon. These will be useful in creating a more formal strategy.


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2. Background and methodology This attempt to write a draft strategy was inspired by a need to rethink the UN’s Facebook presence,

including producing an appropriate platform strategy. But a strategy for any individual platform

cannot exist without referring to larger overall goals of the UN in social media. These do not exist, so

this document is designed to generate discussion and encourage a move towards more strategic use of

social media, and better strategic communication by the UN overall.

Research was carried out in the forms of desk-based internet research, interviews with social media

practitioners across the UN system, and an examination of particularly successful examples of social

media use from across the private sector (particularly in consumer goods companies) as well as

notable UN agencies and national governments.

About the author

Joe Mitchell was an intern with the social media team in the Department for Public Information’s

Strategic Communications Division from May 2012 to September 2012. His academic background is

in law and governance (BA Oxford, LLM London) and he has worked in the communication and

research fields for range of charities, politicians, media. His most recent job was in UK government

communication strategy in which he worked on a range of digital campaigns and strategic planning.

He joined the UN while undertaking an MA Global Governance at the University of Waterloo

(Ontario, Canada) and is passionate about democratising global governance institutions. He benefits

from both a lack of experience and knowledge of the internal workings of the UN and a clear idea of

what a high quality communications strategy looks like.

He just about scrapes into the sociological/marketing category of ‘digital native’, ‘millennial worker’

and ‘generation Y’.


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3. Audience

3.1. Who do we hope to engage with in social media?

The UN can reasonably claim to serve everyone on earth. As the Department of Public Information

forms the centre of UN-wide communications, it is assumed that we aspire to communicate with all

seven billion people.

For the DPI social media team specifically, this means everyone with a social media profile. These are

called ‘the audience’ throughout the document; though note that this is shorthand for ‘group we want

to engage with’, rather than ‘group we want to receive information’.

There are 2.3bn users of the internet.1 According to comScore, 82% of internet users use social

networking sites2 (this rises to 98% in certain countries

3) – see the image below. However, the

comScore data is only based on 43 countries, a typical problem with commercial data.

Whatever the precise number, there are at least 1bn people on earth who the UN can hope to reach

through social media – and this is growing all the time in developing countries.

3.2. How can we segment this group of people?

Talking to a billion people at once is impossible: if you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no

one. Language, cultural and contextual difference mean that any communications strategy must be

driven by efforts to speak to people as close to their level (of education, of language, of cultural

references) as possible. Thus efforts should be made to segment the audience.

Some segmentation is forced upon us, such as through language groups, time zones, user platform

choices, and so on. We also apply segmentation in ad-hoc fashion. For example, we use our celebrity

ambassadors to highlight particular issues (e.g. ‘youth’).

1 http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/material/pdf/2011%20Statistical%20highlights_June_2012.pdf

2 http://blog.comscore.com/2012/01/its_a_social_world.html Note that they claim that this means 1.2bn use

social networking sites – clearly estimating a vastly smaller internet user population than ITU. 3 http://www.foliomag.com/2011/report-98-percent-u-s-online-population-uses-social-networks

http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/material/pdf/2011%20Statistical%20highlights_June_2012.pdf

http://blog.comscore.com/2012/01/its_a_social_world.html

http://www.foliomag.com/2011/report-98-percent-u-s-online-population-uses-social-networks


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The local UN Information Centres, of which there are 62 around the world, also indirectly segment

our audience into country or region groups, though membership of these groups is not limited,

meaning that our audience may also engage at the worldwide (or headquarter) level.

In order to segment our audience more usefully in order to more appropriately apply limited UN

resources, we need insight into our audience. This includes:

– Which platforms they use

– Which languages they can read,

– What information they want,

– How they want to engage (times, platforms, style)

A first attempt at gathering some of this data is shown below (and annexed where appropriate).

However, a more thorough approach is required. Many large scale private sector organisations

operating globally would commission extensive research – or have an in-house communications

research team – to build the evidence base for the communications strategy. This is a vital step in an

engagement strategy, but the UN does not have any central research commissioning ability – or even a

research team who have the expertise to gather and review publicly available information. UN

agencies may be different.4

3.3. What do audiences want or expect from the UN in social media?

In any conversation, you partly share new information and respond to the wishes of your audience. As

a result, we cannot only be led by what we think should be shared with the online public. We need to

be aware of what people want from our social media presences, and what they want from UN

communications in general.

Again, we lack the robust data or measurement to properly judge this. A full social media audit, in

which online discussion of the UN, wherever that takes place, is monitored for a few days to build a

robust sample, is recommended.

Anecdotal evidence from the public responses on Twitter and Facebook (English) suggest that users

are often ignorant of how the UN works and what it can achieve. This could be one area that becomes

an objective for social media. For example, one goal could be to ‘improve average knowledge of the

UN’ with the corresponding indicator of ‘more mentions of “member states” or “[specific UN

agency]” as opposed to simply “the UN”’, etc.

According to a rough average of data from Pew Global Attitudes survey, in answer to the question

‘Please tell me if you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable opinion

of...the United Nations’, people answered as follows:

o Very favourable: 14%

o Somewhat favourable: 40%

o Somewhat unfavourable: 19%

4 Unfortunately, this question was not asked in the interviews. It could be included in any future round.


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o Don’t know/Not sure: 14%

From a quick read of the data, several countries tended towards very favourable (e.g. Bangladesh),

many tended towards somewhat favourable (e.g. EU nations, Brazil,) others to somewhat

unfavourable (China – worsened quickly, recently).

In terms of social media followers, the DPI social focal point who runs the @UN twitter account

reports that a brief survey of followers of the account suggests that in order of size, the audience can

be broken down into: unknown or unaffiliated individuals, business accounts (inc spam), NGO staff,

other UN staff, media, students, national governments/diplomats. It includes both supporters and

detractors of the UN’s work.

3.4. Where do people get information about the UN?

Most people’s knowledge of the UN probably comes from local media. In the digital space, however,

aside from our social media presences, the following are two important sources:

UN Website

According to Alexa data, the un.org website ranks 3,669 in the world, 4,740 in the US, but it is very

popular in Africa (49th in Benin, 122

nd in DRC etc). Fourteen per cent of visitors to un.org go on to

careers.un.org or inspira.un.org. Six per cent of visitors go on to unstats.un.org. Two-thirds go on to

other sub-domains. Visitors to the website represent 0.04% of internet users (with spikes as high as

0.08%). nytimes.com, for comparison, is around 1%.

The average user of un.org views 3.5 pages (for comparison, this is slightly higher than nytimes.com)

and spends an average of 3.5 minutes on the site.

Relative to the general population, visitors to un.org are more likely to be graduates and to be 65+.

15.3% of the audience comes from the US, 5.9% from India, 5% from China, 5% from Mexico, 4.6%

from France, 3.1% from UK, 2.9% from Nigeria (then Spain, Finland, Germany, South Korea, Russia,

Sudan, Canada, Japan…..).5

Wikipedia

It is hard to get Wikipedia user data. In December 2010, according to unofficial data, we were the

683rd

most popular page on Wikipedia. That meant about 280,000 hits for the month.6 There might be

an easy way for the web team to get us more recent data.

3.5. What social platforms do they use?

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world, but there are several nations in

which competitors have greater numbers of users. ComScore’s 2011 Global Social Media Report

provides useful information on their top 43 markets, including the table overleaf on markets in which

Facebook is not the most popular social network (at 2011).7

5 http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/un.org

6 http://stats.grok.se/en/top

7 On file with the author, or download via registration at

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/it_is_a_social_world_top_10_need-

to-knows_about_social_networking

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/un.org

http://stats.grok.se/en/top

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/it_is_a_social_world_top_10_need-to-knows_about_social_networking

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/it_is_a_social_world_top_10_need-to-knows_about_social_networking


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Assuming that we want to reach all people, everywhere, this shows that there are certain nations and

platforms that we seem to be missing.

A more detailed appraisal of languages, social media platforms, audiences etc in a one-stop

spreadsheet/database of country data would be super useful. As part of the research for this document,

a start was made on building this data (follow this link to the spreadsheet), but data collection on this

scale needs significant resource from an individual or perhaps an impressive crowd-sourcing effort

from across the UN.

3.6. What is social media’s mother tongue?

The digital public space theoretically makes country borders irrelevant in terms of communication and

information. Language, however, still divides the world’s peoples. It is important to know what

language people are engaging in social media so that we can join them. Unfortunately, data on

languages tends only to be provided in terms of nations – there are very few ‘global’ language

measures. Another problem is that literacy, rather than spoken language, is what we need to measure.8

Most widely used languages:

The table below contains a list of the world’s languages sorted by most populous literate populations:

8 This will remain true unless sound-based networks take off (e.g. SoundCloud).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiIDd64kb90cdEdCN2ZqVlpQYmlVcHlXeXdFd2NDN2c#gid=0


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Language Literate population Percentage of the world's

literate population

Chinese (Mandarin) 794,947,565 14.68%

English 572,977,034 10.58%

Spanish 295,968,824 5.47%

Hindi/Urdu 230,560,488 4.26%

Arabic 229,444,922 4.24%

French 220,326,329 4.07%

Russian 194,503,049 3.59%

Portuguese 191,739,619 3.54%

Japanese 126,159,159 2.33%

Bengali 107,897,009 1.99%

German 93,969,555 1.74%

The source document of the table above also suggests that English is by far the most popular

publishing language for books, newspapers, film and web pages. 9

The six official UN languages

The UN’s official languages, not the working languages, are Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), English,

French, Russian, and Spanish (Castilian).10

These ‘are the mother tongue or second language of about

half of the world's population.’11

Thus social media in six languages led by the centre misses out more

than half the world’s population – this does not meet with the presumed goal of talking to everyone.

Even within these large language groups, there are significant differences in national spelling, dialects

and usage etc. For example, American English is not the same as British English. The UN twitter

account attempts to follow the UN style guide, but this could end up satisfying neither reader.

Missing languages

The difficulties of finding robust data on literate populations of languages are demonstrated below, in

a table that presents data different from the table above. The table below shows five countries for

which none of the UN official languages are a mother tongue or a lingua franca. While these countries

may use one of the six UN languages as one of their official languages, it may be that only the

government or a small elite use it, which is not helpful for reaching people through social media. The

data is taken mainly from Wikipedia and Ethnologue, with literacy calculated by the CIA Factbook

statistics.12

9 Lobachev (2008) Top languages in global information production, Partnership: the Canadian Journal of

Library and Information Practice and Research, vol. 3, no. 2 (2008):

http://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/perj/article/view/826/1358 10

Their ‘official’ nature is not given in the Charter, but in Rule 51 of the Rules of Procedure for the General

Assembly. It is not immediately clear why the Secretariat has to follow this rule in non-GA related work. 11

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html 12

Data taken from the working database here, and Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population

http://69.94.137.26/editorialcontrol/index.htm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population


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State First language Population literate in a non-UN

official language

India Hindi etc Approx. 900m (English

speakers est. ~125m)

Indonesia Bahasa etc Approx. 200m

Japan Japanese Approx. 126m

Brazil Portuguese Approx. 163m

Pakistan Urdu etc Approx. 100m

Each of these countries is home to a UN Information Centre, which could take the lead in engaging

with the digital audience in the right language and on the right platform, after being set clear targets

by DPI in New York.13

3.7. What is social media use like across the time zones?

No data was found on social media use (language, platform, etc) by time zones. This would be useful,

because if the time zones split naturally into dominant language groups, this might be an easy way of

targeting specific audiences, based on the various studies of the times of day at which people most use

social networks. This would help more accurate language targeting and decisions as to who should be

running the central accounts. Clearly, time zones are another reason to prefer greater action by local

UN staff and UNICs.

3.8. What about those who don’t have internet access?

The ITU chart below shows the limits of internet access in many countries across the world.

According to ITU’s 2011 statistics, only 2.3bn have access to the internet, leaving 4.7bn without,

though access is growing quickly. This divide between those with access and those without is known

as the digital divide.

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For example, UNIC India could be better resourced, or given greater freedom to act in social media along

with targets to hugely increase their 619 Facebook likes and 2,000+ followers on Twitter to better reflect India’s

52m Facebook users. Total twitter numbers are not available, but top Indian celebrities on twitter - Amitabh

Bachan, Priyanka Chopra, Shah Rukh Khan - each have over 2.5m followers. Socialbakers.com (Aug 2012)


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Other findings from ITU 2011

There are other divides: by gender (fewer women access the internet than men); by education (those

with only primary education are less likely to access the internet); and by rural/urban habitation in

developing countries (rural connections are fewer).

These divides create a risk that engagement through social media may unfairly bias the connected -

through extra opportunities, providing a greater weight to their voices, etc. Those without access may

be left behind – uninformed, not consulted, unable to seek accountability, etc. This effect can be

overstated, given how quickly internet use is growing and the fact that social media is still a long way

from having significant policy impacts at organisations like the UN. By the time it does, hopefully a

majority of the world will have access.15

For this strategy, it is enough to state that social media at the UN must be ready to include newly

online audiences in the developing world, and that resources are not focused too highly upon media-

saturated markets in North America and Europe.

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ITU, 2011 15

There are a lot of campaigns looking to solve the digital divide. Most famously, One Laptop Per Child,

(olpc.org) and the more important infrastructure stuff with ITU, Internet Foundation etc.


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It is also important to note the clear trend of rapid growth in mobile broadband access via

smartphones – currently +40% per year. By 2013, smartphone ownership will overtake PC

ownership,17

and by 2015, 3.2bn mobile broadband connections will exist. At that growth rate, a

social media strategy should prepare for a 90% connected world by 2020.18

The United Nations should get ready to engage with a truly global audience and to focus on networks

that have successful phone-based applications. For example, RenRen and Facebook have specific

low-bandwidth phone versions, e.g. Facebook Zero allows users free access to the simple text version

of the platform - Facebook signed deals with operators to ensure this – and users can pay for extra

data for photos, etc.19

3.9. What does this all mean? How should this data inform our strategy?

The basic analysis of the global digital audience above suggests several things worth taking into

account in any social media strategy. The following sections will draw these elements out further.

Let’s be realistic about what we can achieve. For example, @UN isn’t talking to the world, it’s

engaging with literate English users of Twitter.

There are lots of languages that we’re not communicating in. We should examine the possibility

of using a wider group of languages – using all staff may be the only way of covering these in

people’s mother tongues

Let’s target some of the biggest/easiest gaps first. Instruct and support the UNICs in India,

Bangladesh, Brazil, etc, to reach greater digital audiences.

Let’s find out what big media networks do and learn from them – which networks try to engage

across the world? How do they reach everyone?

In the long term, let’s prepare our work for global social networking via mobile phones.

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ITU, 2011. 17

http://www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com/pdf/40u40_conway.pdf 18

http://www.gsma.com/newsroom/gsma-research-demonstrates-that-mobile-industry-is-creating-a-connected-

economy/ 19

ITU, 2011: 126.

http://www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com/pdf/40u40_conway.pdf

http://www.gsma.com/newsroom/gsma-research-demonstrates-that-mobile-industry-is-creating-a-connected-economy/

http://www.gsma.com/newsroom/gsma-research-demonstrates-that-mobile-industry-is-creating-a-connected-economy/


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4. Existing UN communication objectives There is currently no overall vision or specific objective for social media, which would normally be

provided by management or leaders of the department. Ultimately, these need to come from the Under

Secretary General for Public Information, and form part of the overall communication objectives of

the United Nations Secretariat.

These must be agreed in order to clarify what we’re doing, put our work on a surer footing, prepare

for questions from member states, and work towards achieving the wider goals of the UN.

In the sub-sections below, this document lays out relevant UN documentation that might guide a

vision or mission for social media at the UN and ultimately a list of ‘SMART’ goals or objectives.

‘SMART’ goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound goals. A draft set

will be included as an example in the next section.

4.1. UN system-wide communication objectives

There is nothing in the Charter of the UN that directly concerns communication objectives.

Three aspects of the Standards of Conduct for the International Civil Service (2002) are copied below,

highlighted to emphasise certain aspects:

“Working relations

…

17. It is naturally incumbent on managers and supervisors to

communicate effectively with their staff and share information with

them. International civil servants have a reciprocal responsibility to

provide all pertinent facts and information to their supervisors and to

abide by and defend any decisions taken, even when these do not

accord with their personal views.”

“Relations with the media

34. Openness and transparency in relations with the media are

effective means of communicating the organizations’ messages, and

the organizations should have guidelines and procedures for this

purpose. Within that context, the following principles should apply:

international civil servants should regard themselves as speaking in

the name of their organizations and avoid personal references and

views; in no circumstances should they use the media to further their

own interests, to air their own grievances, to reveal unauthorized

information or to attempt to influence policy decisions facing their

organizations.”

Use and protection of information

35. The disclosure of confidential information may seriously

jeopardize the efficiency and credibility of an organization.

International civil servants are responsible for exercising discretion in


18

all matters of official business. They must not divulge confidential

information without authorization. Nor should international civil

servants use information that has not been made public and is known

to them by virtue of their official position to private advantage. These

are obligations that do not cease upon separation from service. It is

necessary for organizations to maintain guidelines for the use and

protection of confidential information, and it is equally necessary for

such guidelines to keep pace with developments in communications

technology. It is understood that these provisions do not affect

established practices governing the exchange of information between

the secretariats.”

4.2. Secretary-General’s Five-Year Action Agenda

SG Ban Ki-moon has established five ‘generational imperatives and opportunities’: ‘sustainable

development, prevention [of violent conflict and economic shocks], building a safer and more secure

world by innovating and building on our core business, supporting nations in transition and working

with and for women and young people’. The ‘enablers’ of these elements are: ‘harnessing the full

power of partnership across the range of UN activities’ and ‘strengthening the United Nations’.

The full text of the SG’s Five-Year Agenda includes several references to connectivity, collaboration

and social norm development, all of which are inherent in the nature of social media.20

Specifically,

social media can play a role in ‘mapping, linking, collecting and integrating information from across

the international system,’21

and is an inexpensive, effective tool which could help ‘build a modern

workforce supported by a global Secretariat that shares financial, human and physical resources,

knowledge and information technology more effectively.’22

4.3. UN Competencies for the Future

The UN has three core staff values: integrity, professionalism and respect for diversity. These should

be observed in social media practice.

The ‘core competencies’ include: communication (the first priority); teamwork; planning and

organising; accountability; creativity; client orientation; commitment to continuous learning; and

technological awareness. The first and last of these are particularly relevant to any social media

strategy and for guidelines to staff so are re-iterated below:

Communication:

- speaks and writes clearly and effectively

- listens to others, correctly interprets messages from others and responds appropriately

- asks questions to clarify, and exhibits interest in having two-way communication

- tailors language, tone, style and format to match the audience

- demonstrates openness in sharing information and keeping people informed

Technological awareness:

- keeps abreast of available technology

- understands applicability and limitations of technology to the work of the office

20 http://www.un.org/sg/priorities/sg_agenda_2012.pdf 21 Ibid. point 2, page 6. 22 Ibid. point 2, page 12.

http://www.un.org/sg/priorities/sg_agenda_2012.pdf


19

- actively seeks to apply technology to appropriate tasks

- shows willingness to learn new technology23

Broad staff adoption and effective use of social media tools would demonstrate both of these

competencies. As such, the UN should consider making social media use an official part (perhaps

requirement) of the recruitment, training and appraisal of UN staff.

There are also several ‘managerial competencies’, of which ‘empowering others’ seems the most

relevant for this strategy. Social media is an empowering tool, giving staff members a voice to take

part in a global conversation, and empowering them at work by demonstrating that management trust

staff to speak on behalf of the organisation.

4.4. Committee on Information

The Committee on Information is the group of General Assembly members who help direct the UN’s

communications’ work. The mandate of the General Assembly’s Committee on Information is to: 24

continue to examine United Nations public information policies and

activities, in the light of the evolution of international relations,

particularly during the past two decades, and of the imperatives of the

establishment of the new international economic order and of a new

world information and communication order;

evaluate and follow up the efforts made and the progress achieved by

the United Nations system in the field of information and

communications; and

promote the establishment of a new, more just and more effective

world information and communication order intended to strengthen

peace and international understanding and based on the free

circulation and wider and better-balanced dissemination of

information and to make recommendations thereon to the General

Assembly.

In the spirit of this mandate, social media can certainly help achieve a more just world information

order – it gives all people with access to the internet a voice, ends monopolies on information and

creates democratic, horizontal space for communication. There are many examples of new voices on

Africa emerging through social media, as well as examples of social media by those not free to better

disseminate information.25

Committee on Information session 23 April 2012, New York

At this meeting of the CoI, speakers commended the ‘common strategy’, ‘joint communications

products’ and ‘coordinating’ role of DPI for the Rio+20 conference.

23

Used a hard copy of this Annan-era document, but it may be available online. 24

http://www.un.org/en/ga/coi/about/bg.shtml [emphasis added] 25

E.g. Africaisacountry blog, Calestous Juma, the Ushahidi people, etc., and all the emerging social media

leaders in North Africa.

http://www.un.org/en/ga/coi/about/bg.shtml


20

One speaker, addressing the Committee on behalf of a large group,

underlined that new information and communications technologies

and social media not only enabled the United Nations to carry out

numerous activities in a more cost-effective and environmentally

friendly manner, but also paved the way to connect with new

audiences, such as young people. The use of new media helped

people in the Middle East to break through the barriers of censorship

and repression, call out for justice and demand democratic change.

On internal communication, an area which can be greatly transformed by social media, one speaker

advised the

promotion of greater internal communication, networking with

relevant United Nations agencies and coordination with civil society,

business and other relevant groups in order to function better with

existing resources.

Social media allows for better networking between staff across agencies and time zones. This could

be through Unite Connect, but often it is easier to use public platforms for non-confidential material.

As many staff will use public platforms already, this approach would require fewer new registrations,

fewer extra passwords to remember, fewer problems logging in from outside headquarters, etc. It is

simpler for staff and therefore more likely to be used, and because the platforms are public, they are

ultimately more transparent. The UN Teamworks platform (owned by UNDP) is already a useful

semi-public tool with 33,000 members. Private internal groups can be set up by UN staff on that

platform.

Committee on Information’s draft resolution for GA67

After the debate, the committee adopted the following draft resolution for the GA in September 2012.

Excerpts from the resolution are copied below as further elements that a social media strategy must

consider. Fuller excerpts can be found annexed at the foot of this document.

…a culture of communications and transparency should permeate all

levels of the Organization…

…the overall mission of DPI is to strengthen international support for

the activities of the Organization with the greatest transparency…

…a culture of evaluation and to continue to evaluate its products and

activities with the objective of enhancing their effectiveness…

… urges the Department of Public Information to encourage the

United Nations Communications Group to promote linguistic

diversity in its work, …

…the Department of Public Information must prioritize its work

programme…to focus its message and better concentrate its efforts

and to match its programmes with the needs of its target audiences,

on the basis of improved feedback and evaluation mechanisms…


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…equitable treatment of all the official languages of the United

Nations…

…requests the Department of Public Information to contribute to

raising the awareness of the international community of the

importance of the implementation of the outcome documents of the

World Summit on the Information Society [re ‘bridging the digital

divide’]…

…that information in local languages has the strongest impact on

local populations…

4.5. Department of Public Information objectives

‘The Department of Public Information (DPI) was established in 1946, by General Assembly

resolution 13 (I), to promote global awareness and understanding of the work of the United

Nations.’26

Its mission is to ‘communicate the ideals and work of the United Nations to the world; to interact and

partner with diverse audiences; and to build support for peace, development and human rights for

all.’27

The outgoing Under Secretary-General’s personal objectives (in the Senior Manager’s Compact with

the UN Secretary-General) are the only goals found during research for this document that actually

provide measures for accountability. An example is given below. The incoming USG will have an

excellent opportunity to redraft these objectives and stamp his authority on department.

In the free form section, in which senior managers are invited to establish how they will meet such

goals, the outgoing USG writes:

28

26

http://www.un.org/en/hq/dpi/about.shtml 27

Modified to become active tense.

http://www.un.org/en/hq/dpi/about.shtml


22

The new USG might similarly commit to make strong efforts in personal use of social media as part

of his leadership of the department.

4.6. DPI Strategic Communications Division (SCD) priorities

This division establishes ‘communications priorities’ for the UN as well as annual campaigns. The

annual campaigns for 2012 regard June’s Rio+20 conference and the ongoing post-2015 development

programme.

These combined priorities are loose instructions for the following year. For example:

Sustainable Development: The UN Conference on Sustainable Development

(Rio+20) will be a major focus of work for the entire UN System during the first half

of 2012. In the lead-up to the conference, “The Future We Want” campaign, launched

in November 2011, will aim to generate a global conversation on that theme, to build

public awareness and support for sustainable development.29

These priorities are not strategic objectives as such, because they lack clear measures of success.

Further documentation:

Other relevant information is annexed and should inform the full strategy.

28

http://iseek.un.org/LibraryDocuments/1940-201102171145134231334.pdf (this may not be public

information? But it should be.) 29

UN Department of Public Information, 2012 Communications Priorities. Dec 15, 2011.

http://iseek.un.org/LibraryDocuments/1940-201102171145134231334.pdf


23

5. Suggested vision, mission and objectives for social media at the

United Nations This section takes account of the half-goals and unclear-objectives mentioned above, and suggests

ideas for a coherent, complete vision statement for the UN in social media as well as strategic

objectives of what we want to achieve in this field.

This is a draft document, these goals are suggestions only. To ensure their sustainability, any

objectives need to be debated widely among DPI staff, and bought-into by those staff who will try to

meet them. Ultimately the objectives must be approved, led and monitored by the leaders of this

department.

5.1. Comparing models of corporate social media

This subsection models different social media structures in large corporations, taken from work by

Jeremiah Owyang of Alterian, a web research company.30

Currently, the large number of UN accounts and the lack of cohesion between them reflects an

‘organic’ style (Diagram 1). This reflects the fact that social media use has developed with no real

strategic vision, with several departments pursuing their own ill-defined goals and vision, passing on

information as and when they individually see fit.

Instead, the vision of the UN in social media should be to achieve a ‘holistic’ style. This model

reflects a staff who are active in social media and are aligned in the same direction with similar but

personal voices, engaging in a consistent, but unforced, fashion.

Creating a ‘holistic’ approach to social media will require considerable training, and, vitally, a crystal

clear vision and strategy from the top, to ensure that staff members understand the collective goal that

they are working towards.

There is a risk that the UN, as a bureaucratic organisation (in the literal sense, not the normative

criticism), will take a ‘centralised’ approach (Diagram 3). This is would be a response unfit for the

21st century, which would deter staff from engaging and would require the sort of rigorous control that

the UN probably does not have capacity for. If there is to be a step between organic and holistic, that

step should be the ‘multiple hub and spokes’ model (Diagram 4).

30

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/04/15/framework-and-matrix-the-five-ways-companies-organize-

for-social-business/

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/04/15/framework-and-matrix-the-five-ways-companies-organize-for-social-business/

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/04/15/framework-and-matrix-the-five-ways-companies-organize-for-social-business/


24

Organic: “Notice that the dots (those using social tools) are

inconsistent in size and one set of employees are not directly

connected to others.

Positives: looks authentic; multiple conversations gives consumer

choice.

Negatives: inconsistent, one side of organisation doing opposite to

other side; multiple different tools; lack of security.”

Holistic: “Notice how each individual in the organization is socially

enabled, yet in a consistent, organized pattern.

Positives: taps entire workforce, authentic, consistent

Negatives: requires executives that are ready to let go to gain more, a

mature cultural ethos, and executives that walk the talk.”

Centralised: “Notice that a central group initiates and represents

business units, funneling up the social strategy to one group.

Positives: Consistency, brand control

Negatives: Very inauthentic”

Dandelion: “Notice how each business unit may have semi-autonomy

with an over arching tie back to a central group.

Positives: Individual business units have some freedom along a

common central approach.

Negatives: requires constant internal coordination and maybe

excessive noise.”


25

A holistic model in social media will change the way the department approaches campaigns. Instead

of event-related branded accounts, we would seek deliberate shifts in the focus of staff, who would

personally publish about their work in these areas, and we would shift the focus of the corporate

accounts to signposting to and highlighting the work of staff in these areas. We would not create more

Facebook pages.

Further, UN staff would become the first port of call for questions from the digital community. We

will come to expect staff across the UN to proactively engage in global debates. The best content or

most interesting or heated discussions will bubble up through the digital networks of UN staff, and

will be translated into different languages and presented to wider audiences based on the demand

judged by the local and HQ corporate ‘brand’ accounts.

This vision would require extensive and intensive education and training across the UN for all staff

and, which may be more difficult, a shift in cultural attitudes and behaviour. The role for a central

departmental team in this model is to become champions and experts, providing support for the rest of

the people in the wider UN system.

5.2. Suggested vision, mission and objectives for UN DPI social media team

Vision statement

Our people are our voice: UN staff will engage a global public through social media in a coherent way

Mission statement

The UN social media team’s long term mission is to train, prepare and support UN staff to lead digital

conversations on their own specialist subjects. Corporate accounts - the UN ‘brand’ accounts at HQ

and in the field offices - will showcase the best of our staff’s work and act as a signpost to ensure the

public can engage with the relevant staff.

Objectives

We do this to create a United Nations that is:

- human;

- more open and transparent;

- better internally connected, across departments and the UN system, improving internal

productivity,

o which reduces email, and

o improves knowledge management;

- better externally connected to professionals in civil society, member states and the private

sector; and


26

- better connected to the world’s public, to generate greater support for, and understanding of

the work, achievements and limits of, the UN.

5.3. Turning objectives into SMART goals

The list of objectives above needs to be transformed into SMART goals to ensure clarity and

robustness.

This is in table form on the next page. These are suggestions; there must be debate over the

specificity, relevance, achievability, measurability and timing of any such goals.

27

Objective Output of social media team by 2014

(and measure)

Intermediate outcome by 2015

(and measure)

Overall outcome by 2016

(and measure)

Staff as voice of

organisation

Identify and train early adopters, encourage them to

‘pass it forward’ (0.5% of UN staff trained 0.01%

trained in training; ensure all depts. and system

covered, maintain list of x-UN champions)

All-staff training, lectures/team explanations (x

number of sessions etc)

Mentoring programme set up (uptake by x% of all

staff)

More staff in digital space (% of UN

staff with a digital account on an

open platform, used 5 times / week)

Better known UN individuals (>100

UN staff with personal follower

counts of > 5,000)

Culture change – staff empowerment

(e.g. 10% in positive response to ‘do

you feel engaged or empowered’ by

staff in response to HR staff survey)

Greater public awareness of

individual roles at UN and structure

of UN etc (e.g. 10% increase in

global opinion poll ‘I understand the

UN’)

Transparency: a higher score in

independent accountability measures

(e.g. One World Trust’s global

accountability framework)

Mergers or reduced corporate accounts (numbers of

accounts)

Branding advice (how to use the logo, what to write in

a bio) (docs, ready-made kit of backgrounds,

‘twibbons’ etc produced)

Training, guidance and branding for UNIC run pages

(number of sessions, documents)

Better corporate accounts (number of

languages or nations covered by

UNIC-led corporate accounts;

internal coherence of DPI accounts

(% of accounts branded and labelled

correctly etc)

Corporate accounts taking their

content from individuals (% of

content shared by corporate accounts

that is new (i.e. the content is now

mainly repostings from individual

staff))


28

Better internal

communications

across depts. and

system

Training for senior leadership – advocating why social

media works for internal productivity (x training

sessions, x managers using open platform to engage

internally)

Increased use of social media for

internal communication (number of

internal interactions)

Reduced email burden (number of

emails)

Better informed staff (survey on

awareness of work of other system,

instances of co-working, ‘how well

do you feel you know what’s going

on outside your department?’)

Better external

communications to

traditional

stakeholders

(missions, NGOs)

Training for staff (x training sessions, x staff using)

Renew, reshape, refocus all corporate accounts

(number of accounts, fewer, better accounts)

Increased use of social media for

external communication (number of

external interactions)

Reduced email burden (number of

emails)

More coherent brand presence (% of

corporate accounts using branding

correctly, etc)

Greater knowledge sharing

throughout UN network, missions

and CSOs (survey of awareness?

Tricky one to measure)

Better engagement

with the global

public to increase

understanding and

support

Training for all staff (x% of staff using open platforms

to engage)

Increased training / advice to UNICs (number of

training sessions, survey data)

More public interaction with staff

(number of followers, number of

reposts etc)

More language use stuff (number of

followers of other language accounts)

Greater public knowledge of UN

goals; better understanding of UN

structure (opinion polling, public

research)

29

6. Evaluation The tables above include a measure for each of the goals listed. This section describes the methods of

collecting these measures. All activity is online, so ideally all the digital statistics would be easily

collected, recorded and monitored. With the limited resources of DPI, however, there are other

approaches, such as sampling, that may be able to give a picture.

It will be important to gather benchmark data before the strategy is enacted.

For staff training:

- measure the number of staff on digital media (this should not be too vast a number), add up

follower count or try to measure ‘influence’ with one of the many commercial tools available,

- measure a sample of the total staff’s engagement internally, externally and with general

public (take a sample of a few particular depts. offices etc),

For the platforms owned by DPI:

- measure the quantity of engagement

- number of followers, average no of RTs replies etc

- independent evaluation – socialbakers / Klout score etc.

For long term outcome measurement, related to both ‘staff as voice’ and improving the corporate

channels, there needs to be better polling of the global public, which will be expensive but vital to

understanding success.

Again, as this document is a draft, this evaluation plan is not developed precisely. A stronger

evaluation plan should be attempted when fleshing out the price goals and targets for the UN social

media team over the next few years.

Shared metrics across the UN system

This is mentioned in section ten, but evaluation metrics should be the same across the UN system.

Any evaluation plan for this social media strategy must use such metrics.


30

7. Realising our vision – part one: staff training From the general vision and objectives laid out above comes the need to design a plan or tactics for

meeting the strategic goals. This section provides one example of such a plan – starting with analysis

of those whose behaviour we are trying to change, then a recap of our goals for these people, then the

methods we will use to try to reach those targets.

7.1. Baseline research on staff and social media

An informal survey was produced using Google Forms and Spreadsheets and sent to all DPI staff over

the summer of 2012.

The results of this survey are obviously helpful for DPI, but it really needs to be extended to all UN

secretariat staff, and then agencies (in a more robust, expertly-designed fashion). As at August 2012,

UNDP had borrowed the survey to use for all UNDP staff. These are extremely easy to prepare and

take a few minutes per staff member to fill in. Analysis can be performed immediately. This is a

useful tool that should be used regularly.

The data we have on DPI staff is analysed below. It can hopefully be assumed that DPI staff are more

likely to use social media than an average member of secretariat staff, so this should be taken in to

account in reading the following notes:

Responses received numbered 137. The breakdown of age and job level of those who took the survey

is as follows:


31

That those aged between 20 and 29 are the smallest block (especially when interns are taken into

account) might present cause for concern when thinking about the use of new technologies.

The vast majority of DPI respondents use at least one social media platform

Of the 12 (8%) who don’t use them, only six (4%) had never used them – half because they were not

interested and half because they had privacy concerns. Of those same 12, three said they were not

interested in social media training, four said they did not have time, three said they would maybe

undertake training and three said they would be interested in receiving training as part of a group.

DPI respondents check their profiles regularly, particularly Facebook and Twitter

Of those who answered, precisely half of the responders checked a social media channel within the

last two hours. Another 26% had checked one within the last day. Facebook (86%), Twitter (56%),

YouTube (29%) and LinkedIn (28%) were the most popular channels, with smaller audiences for

Google+ (16%) and Flickr (12%).

DPI staff also use a variety of other platforms

The number responding that they ‘checked their YouTube account’ seems high, but may reflect a

large number of accounts owned by UN Information Centres. There is also a surprisingly high number

of Tumblr users, given the platforms reputation as having a very youthful (i.e. 15-20 yrs) user base.


32

They follow the UN accounts – sometimes militantly

Happily, a high number of staff follow UN accounts – the vast majority follow at least one or two –

with many following them all, and almost equal number following all those relevant to their work.31

English is far and away their most popular language for using on social media platforms

This is one of the most interesting findings – English is the most popular language for use on social

media platforms. There are no respondents who claim to use Arabic or Chinese as their primary social

media language. This might reflect flaws with the survey design (it was perhaps easier to read /

complete if you were a confident English user?) or reflects the dominance of the language in the

digital space.

Other languages used included Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese and Turkish.

31

The ‘other’ refers (I think) to those who didn’t answer the question (because they don’t use social media).

Yes, all that I can find

Yes, but only those relevant to my

work


33

Most staff are using their second language for social media

When asked if the language above was their native tongue, however, only 40% answered in the

affirmative, showing that people are choosing to engage in English in spite of it not being their mother

tongue.

Staff disconnect their work and personal lives online

Only a minority of staff use their social media profiles for professional activities ‘often’ or

‘sometimes’.

Of those who answered ‘no’ or ‘other’, the vast majority (75%) said they ‘prefer to keep work and

social life separate’, and 20% said it was ‘not appropriate’. These are the views that must be

challenged if the UN is to use social media to its advantage. Only small percentages thought it was not

allowed or not interesting for their social media network – both positive signs.


34

DPI staff are well aware of the social media team and guidelines

Awareness of the team (red) scores better than awareness of the guidelines (green/yellow).

There is a very strong demand for training in this area

Only a tiny proportion of staff said they would not be interested in, or didn’t have time for, social

media training. In contrast to the author’s practice of trying to do one-to-one sessions, DPI staff said

they would prefer group training sessions (‘yes, as part of a group’ as opposed to ‘yes, with a mentor

dedicated to me’). In the free-form comments section of the survey, many people wrote of their need

for more training across the board on digital communication.

Staff are well-equipped with latest tools, making social media use even easier

Nearly 90% have a smartphone and nearly a half have a tablet computer. For training purposes

therefore, it can almost be assumed that staff could all bring one device with them to a session.


35

The full results of the survey are available from the author.

7.2. Our people objectives

Any plan would then suggest SMART goals – these might be borrowed directly from section five

above (vision, mission, objectives) or these could be more precisely aligned to the issue of staff

capacity / achievements. For example, goals could look like this:

- 5% of field staff will have a personal-professional digital profile by Jan 2015

- 10% of HQ staff will have a person-professional digital profile by Jan 2015

- At least 10 accounts from staff in each official language by Jan 2015

- At least 6 of the most popular platforms covered by Jan 2015

- At least 100 UN staff with personal follower counts of >5,000 by Jan 2015.

7.3. How to go about realising the objectives

In meeting these goals, planning must account for the choices of an individual staff member - what

affects their use of social media for professional purposes? The work of the department should help

encourage staff digital engagement by shifting the individual, societal and structural elements that

affect behaviour so that they align more favourably with social media use. For example:

Individual incentives / disincentives

o Increase perceptions of benefits of social media at work

Show success stories of individuals and depts., and external reports from

other bureaucracies (such as US State Dept, UK FCO, etc.)

Incentivise for individuals (make social media an element of HR appraisal

processes)

Help people recognise that in the way everything digitised (information,

communication, banking) – so will staff and their work

o Reduce perceptions / fear of social media in the UN context

Remind people why the UN must be public in its work


36

Remove the fear: provide safety nets, safe practice spaces and lead by

example; or ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ – again, lead by senior

management example

What’s the worst that could happen? Set clear guidelines, show how senior

leaders will be prepared to defend staff use of social media as long as

guidelines were followed (prepare ready-made responses and plans if things

go wrong, etc)

Individual capacity and knowledge

o Establish how-to knowledge with all staff

Extensive training programme, which should be an essential part of staff

development; use the ‘early-adopters’, train them as peer-trainers, set up

network of x-UN champions.

Show a clear vision of what we want to be achieved by a certain time – make

sure all staff understand their collective responsibility, at whatever level;

share this strategy widely.

Establish the ability to ask anonymous questions / make suggestions (or

again, use a safe practice area – maybe Unite Connect?)

o Empower staff – demonstrate trust in individual staff

Show them that there is individual support from senior leaders

Again, provide the safe practice spaces and internal Q&A space

Give every member of staff a copy of guidelines (must be carefully written to

enthuse and encourage – create the assumption that this is something they

should be doing – and at the same time reminding not to share damaging

stuff)

Social norms

o Create the idea that social media for work is the norm

Staff training should include case studies of success (US State Dept, UK

FCO, UNICEF etc)

Create informal competitions across DPI for most followers gained, best

tweets, best picture shared online, etc.

Publicise how many UN staff are on twitter, and get these people to

champion it in meetings etc.

The USG for DPI, and eventually all senior leaders of the UN should join

social media platforms and use these to engage with staff – highlighting the

best staff content and work, sharing information, etc.

Structural factors


37

o Make sure there are no physical barriers to accessing social media platforms

Ensure staff have access at work (this generally seemed good – but work with

OICT) and in the field (more difficult, but use SMS services provided by

various platforms)

Encourage people to use their smartphones and tablets for work (check with

IT security)

Start checking social media profiles of people who apply for jobs at the UN –

if people are applying for communication jobs without knowledge of social

media, they should be turned down. Eventually, we should expect everybody

who applies to the UN to have strong knowledge of social media.


38

8. Realising our vision – part two: UN branded accounts

8.1. General

The overall vision is to encourage our people to engage in the social media space. Currently there is a

range of brand accounts, many of which should be merged into a small group that makes a clear offer

to the general audience. Then individual staff should have their own accounts where they interact with

people on more detailed material.

As a first step, an audit needs to be carried out to map all the accounts run by the department, which

should then be reviewed according to how they meet the overall strategy. An audit like this could be

crowdsourced by staff. Those platforms that do not meet a clear and specific goal, or work towards

one that is met somewhere else, should be merged with other accounts or dissolved to ensure that

departmental resources are spent most effectively.

The second step, assuming that the USG for the department has the right to direct other departments’

communication efforts, will be to map and reorganise accounts anywhere across UN HQ. This will

obviously cause concern as people may regard accounts as ‘their turf’, but the benefit to the public

should over-ride this. In order to strengthen the brand of the UN in digital media, more consistency

and clarity around corporate accounts, wherever they lie in the UN system (or particularly at UN HQ)

is required, and logically this responsibility lies with the USG for information and communication.

This can be done sensibly, sensitively and with the consultation of all departments, based on a shared

vision of where we need to be as a collective UN.

The mini-vision for the corporate accounts is to run smarter digital communications where our

audience are. So we go to them on the platforms where they are. We offer a really easy-to-understand

simple range of social media platforms to engage with. We recognise that we’re competing for

attention with our audience’s actual friends, and a thousand other brands. We reach them on their

terms.

8.2. Which platforms should DPI use?

The choice of platforms used by DPI (and the other UN departments) to manage accounts must flow

from a clear understanding of what we are trying to achieve and what audience we’re trying to reach.

For example, while new social networking platforms are invented regularly, we should not feel the

need to create a presence on that platform without considering which overall strategic goal it would

help meet. While it may be appropriate to register the profile names of UN, United Nations and so on

in the different languages, it is possible just to leave a ‘holding notice’ while the department evaluates

whether the platform suits its overall strategy.

It is not essential to have a presence on every platform. It is more important to have high-quality

engagement on a set group of platforms.

Each platform should have one go-to person who has total responsibility, even if the content is

provided by a wide number of staff members.


39

8.3. Languages and local focus

A comprehensive brand plan needs to be worked out re worldwide account management, making sure

the UN is reaching large non-English-speaking audiences and audiences not using typically US-based

channels for digital engagement.

The obvious partners with expertise in how to reach local audiences are the UN Information Centres,

who have the local knowledge and experience to maximise local reach in the appropriate language(s).

There will need to be a comprehensive UNIC account audit and an understanding of the audience (see

section 2) to lead a restructuring in order to use resources most effectively.32

The end product would be a range of ‘UNin[Country]’ digital accounts, using the appropriate

platforms and language as dictated by their local audience.

There should also be an effort to ensure that a native speaker of the language used for the account has

final sign off on posting messages, to ensure correctness.

8.4. Platform use

The next page demonstrates the sort of matrix of the channels used that could be established to outline

the corporate accounts. A detailed breakdown for each platform should be developed (as in Annex L),

which would explain the user base of that platform, how the UN currently uses it, the strategic goal

that use of the platform meets; the long-term vision for that platform; smart goal(s) for that platform;

risks with the platform (and mitigation); and possibly some examples of successful platform use by

similar organisations. The simplest ‘microgoal’ would be something such as ‘to improve our

readership by 20% in 6 months’ or ‘to answer 10% more of the queries we receive’, etc. Examples are

provided in the table below.

32

This UNIC audit may already exist with the Information Management Unit in DPI.

40

Twitter Facebook (UNIC) Tumblr blogs.un.org Pinterest Storify

Who uses this

platform?

955bn people. Very young,

American, UK,

Brazil

Unknown Women, older Journalists, newshounds

What is its

purpose?

Microblogging,

sharing news

Connecting with

‘friends’ sharing

photos

Artsy cool stuff Behind the scenes? Image-sharing platform To provide one page round up

of x-platform social media

stories

Why should we use

it? (Link to overall

objective)

What content

should be shared?

Who provides that

content?

Comments /

engagement?

What is our

SMART goal for

this platform?

To increase our

number of replies

by 10%

Reach 1m users by

Dec 2013.

Ultimate

responsibility /

signoff

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8.5. Content plan and workflow for accounts managed by DPI

8.5.1. Content plan

Once an overall strategic goal is established, content could be planned for each account, including

guidelines as to the sort of content that the corporate accounts will share, thus helping staff to get

reposted - helping staff to help the social media team (see below).

Currently, the DPI social media channels publish campaign messages, major news, Secretary-General

related, events, the best of the rest of the UN, behind the scenes, and general education about the UN

system. In terms of engagement, we answer questions where possible, but lack resources to

proactively do this.

A content plan might look like a days of the week calendar, or a large overall calendar of events and

upcoming themes, with links to copy, film, audio and photography content.

8.5.2. Workflow and work tools

Currently social media copy for the English language accounts is mostly written by one staff member

with input from interns. Relevant content is prepared for updates every few hours (twitter), every day

(Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus) and less often for other accounts (blogs, Tumblr). This is based on

what material the team thinks is relevant and new, and suggestions are taken from other DPI staff

working on particular campaigns. A shared Google Spreadsheet is used to map out the immediate

week ahead and longer term events, then a free single-user copy of Hootsuite is used to input the

material and publish on a time-scheduled basis.

In the other languages, a member of the web services section is responsible for each of the Facebook

pages in the 5 other languages, and two members of the Chinese web services manage the popular

Weibo account.

In the short term, Google Doc access should be widened to all UN staff (perhaps DPI only, then all

staff post-training), and restructured to make it user friendly and easy etc. Hootsuite Enterprise edition

should be purchased (see Annex L on reviewing the various social media management tools), which

would come with a set number of administrative seats for writing and editing the actual platform

content. These administrators (interns, DPI staff, and selected UNIC staff in other time zones) can

take content from the shared Google Doc, re-write if necessary, and schedule it in Hootsuite. The DPI

social media focal point can remain as a ‘superadmin’ with ultimate approval signoff.

For the channels that cannot be managed using Hootsuite (tumblr, pinterest etc), as well as local brand

channels, an overall account manager should be appointed and should be widely known to DPI and

wider UN staff. It should be their responsibility to meet the micro-goals set for that account (such as

increasing the audience), keep it on message (as appropriate to the channel) and promote the use of it

as befits the channel (e.g. explaining to other staff, working across the UN to get the content relevant

for that platform).

In the long term, staff will be managing their own social media profiles, and can proactively reach out

to the corporate channels for republishing. Corporate account owners will also actively seek out the

best of staff content.


42

8.5.3. Workflow diagram:

Platform (and responsibility)

Google

Spreadsheet

(All UN staff,

with training)

Hootsuite

(Small admin

team)

Public platforms

(One person to

sign off)


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9. DPI’s coordination role across UN system

9.1. General

If DPI is the central communications body for the UN system, then it would make sense for DPI to be

doing much of the coordination and knowledge sharing in social media. The aim would be for DPI to

become the hub to the spokes of the different agencies. Currently, however, this may be beyond the

department’s limited resources. At the moment the system is working with various agencies taking a

lead.

However, the current practice presents several risks:

- smaller agencies will get left behind

- lost opportunities for collaboration

- increasingly difficult challenges as social media evolves

- land-grabbing (fighting over the same audience with different campaigns) among the top

agencies – a poor use of resources and a disaster

This risks should be monitored over time and senior leaders should be prepared to act in the event that

they are realised. The department monitors the cross-UN system to some extent through the UN

Communications Group (a meeting of directors of communication from across the UN system) and

through the department’s close links with the Office of the Secretary-General.

9.2. Procurement

It would be helpful if there was one central body with the responsibility to bring the system together

to save money on social media tools like Hootsuite. In 2011, some of the UN system grouped together

to receive a substantial discount on Hootsuite Enterprise. That offer will not be repeated because not

enough UN members joined the group. More central professional procurement support might have got

this done better. DPI should work with legal and procurement to come up with other cross-UN offers.

9.3. Liaison with owners of platforms

Another useful role for a central body would be to coordinate the relationships between the UN

system as a whole and the major social platforms. This would be in order to inform the rest of the

system about upcoming platform changes, and to collate requests or questions to the platform in order

not to overwhelm them with requests for help from every part of the UN system. It makes sense for

DPI to do this as the most centrally positioned department. The department could also work to

leverage senior UN officials in the event that requests need to be made to specific platforms on the

UN’s behalf, such as renaming Facebook pages.

9.4. Knowledge sharing

Currently this is working relatively well in a decentralised way: there is a shared email list, an online

platform and monthly meetings. The UN social media emailing list goes to the social media

professionals in the system and is almost entirely used to promote campaigns. Monthly cross-UN

meetings, which include permanent missions are well-attended by New York –based agencies, but not

by non-New York agencies. There may be a separate Geneva based social media meeting, but if not,


44

efforts should be made to videoconference or record these meetings to ensure better cross-UN

working.

UNDP provides access to its TeamWorks platform which works relatively well – it has 35,000

members in total, the social media group has 262 members and is largely made up of UNDP staff in

the field, but the information shared is relevant to all. With a more concerted campaign to encourage

staff across the UN to engage on this platform and to update their profiles with photos and more

information about what they do, TeamWorks would grow in value. Unfortunately, tools that could be

especially useful, such as the Wiki (the most popular page on the site) can only be edited by UNDP

staff – somewhat undermining the point of a wiki platform. This perhaps can be changed at the UNDP

end.

9.5. Shared evaluation metrics

There needs to be some effort to agree upon shared evaluation practices and metrics across the UN

system, in order to compare like with like. This should not be too difficult given the digital statistics

we use – but depending on the use of different tools, ‘impressions’ etc may be counted differently. In

order to share what works, it would be helpful to agree on standards early on. There may already be

some informal agreement on this – but the department could take this and formalise it as UN social

media evaluation standards.


45

10. Next steps

This document has attempted to outline how the UN could be more strategic in its use of social media.

Throughout the document it has outlined the data that we need, how a strategy would be envisioned

and how plans would be made to meet it. But it is only a draft and the suggestions made are the

suggestions of one intern. At this point, a full working strategy should become the responsibility of

the senior managers in the department.

This last section, therefore, details what should happen next for senior leaders to establish a more

strategic approach to social media at the UN. The end goal is a more robust strategy, easily

translatable into goals and things to do now. This needs to happen swiftly.

1) Immediately :

a) initiate survey of UN staff on their use of /views on social media (can be based on the existing

survey of DPI staff)

b) initiate a UN-system wide social media audit to do two things:

i) find out how many UN-branded accounts exist, what their aims are, and who is engaging

with them,

ii) find out where the audience we want to reach are, where people discuss the UN and what

their views are;

c) begin work with legal and procurement offices to invite social media software providers to

chat about UN system offers (e.g. Hootsuite);

d) start work with legal and whoever else to initiate Facebook negotiations for

facebook.com/unitednations (and all other languages);

e) devise a draft strategy with colleagues across DPI; have one senior leader take responsibility

for its production, but perhaps turn it into a Google doc or individual Google Docs so that all

staff can edit or comment on it;

f) share this database on national language/platform use/etc., and start collecting more data to

build a robust business case for global digital engagement.

2) Within the next three months

a) complete a draft strategy, and run presentations etc in order to publicise it - seek wide

feedback;

b) rework that draft as appropriate following further survey results and feedback;

c) gain approval of that draft from HR, legal, and senior UN leaders;

d) develop a training programme and staff guidelines as appropriate, which could include

training kits or templates and train-the-trainer courses;



46

3) Within the next six months

a) meet with a members of Committee on Information to consult and seek feedback on the

departmental goals;

b) decide upon, and gain senior approval of, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-

bound objectives;

c) initiate peer to peer training system and iSeek social media guidance, across departments and

fields;

d) consider how to research audience in greater detail; collect data for directing more effective

use of stretched resources; (perhaps through partnerships with digital media companies, rest

of UN system for commissioned polling and research);

e) plan for some of the broader, more challenging strategic goals, such as devolving more power

down to UNICs and establishing strong local digital content provision;

f) turn this strategy into a living document – owned by directors across several departments

with responsibilities to keep it up to date; overall ownership by USG.

4) In one year’s time

a) resurvey UN staff;

b) redraft the strategy as appropriate.


47

Appendices/Annexes

A. DPI Structure33 The Department consists of the following divisions:

The News and Media Division produces and distributes United Nations news and information to the media around the world. It provides logistical support to journalists covering the UN and maintains a constant flow of news in six languages through the UN News Centre on the web. It provides coverage of UN meetings and events - including press releases, live TV feeds, radio programmes and photographs - and produces and distributes radio and video documentary and

news programmes about the United Nations. Director: Mr. Stephane Dujarric The Outreach Division consists of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library as well as offices that work with non-governmental organizations and educational institutions and that market United Nations publications. The Outreach Division also organizes special events and exhibitions on priority issues, sponsors an annual training programme for journalists from developing countries, and develops partnerships with private and public sector organizations to further the aims of the Organization. The Division organizes the guided tours programme at UN Headquarters and public speaking engagements for UN officials and responds to inquiries from the general public. It also produces the Yearbook of the United Nations.

Director: Mr. Maher Nasser The Strategic Communications Division develops communications strategies and campaigns to promote United Nations priorities and coordinates their implementation within the Department and across the UN system. It develops information products to publicize key thematic issues, targeting, in particular, the global media. It provides programmatic and operational support to the global network of UN Information Centres, as well as strategic communications advice and support to the information components of peace operations. The Division also serves as Secretariat for the General Assembly's Committee on Information and the UN Communications Group (for more information, please see Partnerships - UN Communications Group). Director: Ms. Deborah Seward

33

http://unic.un.org/aroundworld/unics/en/whoWeAre/aboutDPI/structure/index.asp

http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/

http://www.un.org/ga/coi/

http://unic.un.org/aroundworld/unics/en/partnerships/communicationGroup/index.asp

http://unic.un.org/aroundworld/unics/en/whoWeAre/aboutDPI/structure/index.asp


48

B. Information on UNICs34 Information Centres are part of the Department of Public Information (DPI). At present, there are 63 Information Centres, Services and Offices worldwide.

The network of 63 United Nations Information Centres are key to the Organization’s ability to reach the peoples of the world and to share the United Nations story with them in their own languages. United Nations Information Centres (UNICs) are the principal sources of information about the United Nations system in the countries where they are located. UNICs are responsible for promoting greater public understanding of and support for the aims and activities of the United Nations by disseminating information on the work of the Organization to people everywhere, especially in developing countries.

34

http://unic.un.org/aroundworld/unics/en/whoWeAre/index.asp

http://unic.un.org/aroundworld/unics/en/whoWeAre/aboutDPI/index.asp

http://unic.un.org/aroundworld/unics/en/whoWeAre/index.asp


49

List of UNIC locations:

Accra

Algiers

Almaty

Ankara

Antananarivo

Asmara

Asuncion

Baku

Bangkok

Beirut

Bogota

Brazzaville

Brussels*

Bucharest

Buenos Aires

Bujumbura

Cairo**

Canberra

Colombo

Dakar

Dar Es Salaam

Dhaka

Geneva

Harare

Islamabad

Jakarta

Kathmandu

Khartoum

Kyiv

La Paz

Lagos

Lima

Lomé

Lusaka

Manama

Manila

Maseru

Mexico City**

Minsk

Moscow

Nairobi

New Delhi

Ouagadougou

Panama City

Port Of Spain

Prague

Pretoria**

Rabat

Rio De Janeiro

Sana'a

Tashkent

Tbilisi

Tehran

Tokyo

Tripoli

Tunis

Vienna

Warsaw

Washington D.C.

Windhoek

Yangon

Yaoundé

Yerevan

* The United Nations Regional Information Centre in Brussels, Belgium, covers 21 countries in Western Europe.

** The Information Centres in Cairo, Mexico City, and Pretoria, where there are high concentrations of media outlets, are

responsible for working strategically with Centres in neighbouring countries to develop and implement communications

plans to promote United Nations priority themes in a way that has special resonance in their respective regions.


50

C. Notes from UN Communications Group

At their ninth annual meeting (Beijing, 2010) the United Nations Communications Group (a group of

senior management from across the UN sytem) published a background paper entitled ‘Using Social

Media in the United Nations context (UNCG/2010/8)’.

The paper acknowledged that:

social media is meant to be a dialogue

social media requires interaction and a significant investment of time

It suggested plans for a SM campaign as follows

Determining clear and focused objectives.

Identifying primary and secondary target audiences.

Determining which platforms are most used and most effective for target audiences and their

access to different connection services (Internet, cellular connectivity), cultural and language

or physical restrictions.

Considering the benefits of joining ongoing established campaigns organized by partners or

related organization with the benefits of creating your own campaign.

Defining how the social media initiative supports and will be integrated into ongoing and

future communications and strategies.

Identifying short- and long- term resources (personnel and financial) needed to support and

sustain the social media activity.

Eliciting senior management support which may include official support, establishment of

budgeted resources, senior-level social media training and departmental coordination.

Improving staff expertise through training, education and/or the defining of new staff

positions dedicated to social media and online communications.

Establishing capacity requirements for project and long-term maintenance.

Identifying success indicators and follow-up activities.

Evaluating risks and drafting mitigation strategies, including internal cultural challenges.

It recommended rules for content:

Be accurate, objective and impartial.

Reflect the views and opinions of the Organization.

Use appropriate language and tone. Offensive and/or politically-sensitive references to

individuals, peoples, countries and groups are prohibited at all times.

Adhere to relevant and related language, ethics, harassment, discrimination and copyright

guidelines, and be grammatically correct.

Avoid discussions related to internal issues such as sourcing, reporting of unpublished stories,

personnel matters, and untoward personal or professional matters involving colleagues.

Refrain from criticizing others or those who take issue with official United Nations positions.

Avoid endorsing external sites, even when they are related, or inadvertently conveying

endorsement.

Abide by the policies of the particular website they are using in conjunction with other

applicable policies.


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D. Objectives from the Committee on Information’s draft resolution to

67th GA These excerpts show the difficulties with the sheer volume of objectives, the lack of clarity or

prioritisation by member states of their ideas for DPI. They suggest no timeframe in which a strategy

could actually be embedded. A mandate which changes yearly will not lead to efficient, competent

work. States also show a lack of agreement on the value of social media. The mixed messages from

the member states on social media are a further problem for the department.

The full text is available here.

Emphasizing that the contents of public information and

communications should be placed at the heart of the strategic

management of the United Nations and that a culture of

communications and transparency should permeate all levels of the

Organization as a means of fully informing the peoples of the world

of the aims and activities of the United Nations, in accordance with

the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter of the United

Nations, in order to create broad-based global support for the United

Nations,

Stressing that the primary mission of the Department of Public

Information is to provide, through its outreach activities, accurate,

impartial, comprehensive, balanced, timely and relevant information

to the public on the tasks and responsibilities of the United Nations in

order to strengthen international support for the activities of the

Organization with the greatest transparency,

…

General activities of the DPI

8. Requests the Department of Public Information to maintain its

commitment to a culture of evaluation and to continue to evaluate its

products and activities with the objective of enhancing their

effectiveness, and to continue to cooperate and coordinate with

Member States and the Office of Internal Oversight Services of the

Secretariat;

… urges the Department of Public Information to encourage the

United Nations Communications Group to promote linguistic

diversity in its work, …

13. Reaffirms that the Department of Public Information must

prioritize its work programme, while respecting existing mandates

and in line with regulation 5.6 of the Regulations and Rules

Governing Programme Planning, the Programme Aspects of the

Budget, the Monitoring of Implementation and the Methods of

Evaluation, to focus its message and better concentrate its efforts and

http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N12/336/84/PDF/N1233684.pdf?OpenElement


52

to match its programmes with the needs of its target audiences, on the

basis of improved feedback and evaluation mechanisms;

Multilingualism and public information

19. Emphasizes the importance of ensuring equitable treatment of

all the official languages of the United Nations in all the activities of

the Department of Public Information, whether based on traditional

or new media, including in presentations to the Committee on

Information, with the aim of eliminating the disparity between the

use of English and the five other official languages;

Bridging the digital divide

22. Requests the Department of Public Information to contribute to

raising the awareness of the international community of the

importance of the implementation of the outcome documents of the

World Summit on the Information Society

Network of United Nations information centres

23. Emphasizes the importance of the network of United Nations

information centres in enhancing the public image of the United

Nations, in disseminating messages on the United Nations to local

populations, especially in developing countries, bearing in mind that

information in local languages has the strongest impact on local

populations, and in mobilizing support for the work of the United

Nations at the local level;

E. Status, basic rights and duties of United Nations staff members

(ST/SGB/2002/13) Relevant sections. Copied from UNCG/2010/8.

Regulation 1.2 (e)

By accepting appointment, staff members pledge themselves

to discharge their functions and regulate their conduct with the

interests of the Organization only in view.

Regulation 1.2 (f)

While staff members’ personal views and convictions,

including their political and religious convictions, remain inviolable,

staff members shall ensure that those views and convictions do not

adversely affect their official duties or the interests of the United

Nations. They shall conduct themselves at all times in a manner

befitting their status as international civil servants and shall not

engage in any activity that is incompatible with the proper discharge


53

of their duties with the United Nations. They shall avoid any action

and, in particular, any kind of public pronouncement that may

adversely reflect on their status, or on the integrity, independence and

impartiality that are required by that status.

Regulation 1.2 (h)

Staff members may exercise the right to vote but shall ensure

that their participation in any political activity is consistent with, and

does not reflect adversely upon, the independence and impartiality

required by their status as international civil servants.

Regulation 1.2 (i)

Staff members shall exercise the utmost discretion with

regard to all matters of official business. They shall not communicate

to any Government, entity, person or any other source any

information known to them by reason of their official position that

they know or ought to have known has not been made public, except

as appropriate in the normal course of their duties or by authorization

of the Secretary-General. These obligations do not cease upon

separation from service.

F. World Summit 2005

At the World Summit 2005, the General Assembly adopted the 2005 World Summit outcome, which

included the paragraphs below.

Secretariat and management reform

161. We recognize that in order to effectively comply with the

principles and objectives of the Charter, we need an efficient,

effective and accountable Secretariat. Its staff shall act in accordance

with Article 100 of the Charter, in a culture of organizational

accountability, transparency and integrity. Consequently we:

…

(f) Strongly urge the Secretary-General to make the best and most

efficient use of resources in accordance with clear rules and

procedures agreed by the General Assembly, in the interest of all

Member States, by adopting the best management practices,

including effective use of information and communication

technologies, with a view to increasing efficiency and enhancing

organizational capacity, concentrating on those tasks that reflect the

agreed priorities of the Organization.


54

It is likely that the GA was referring to basic IT stuff – rather than SM, but clearly the objective’s laid

out are made more achievable through social media , esp the ‘culture of organizational accountability,

transparency and integrity’.


55

G. Interviews with social media practitioners in UN system

Who is your target audience?

1. It’s easier to target the general audience. With Facebook algorithms the way they are, it’s

important to reach as many people as quickly as possible. Segmenting by location results in

less engagement. This is one area where SM is behind email.

2. En/Fr/Es are our working languages. Our Spanish audience is large. We are a decentralised

agency, with offices around the world – each local office is in charge of local communication

and uses the local language. The corporate accounts are mainly for our Western donor

countries, media, NGOs and act as a force multiplier for the local accounts.

3. Our agency has a more specialised audience than many, which makes targeting them easier.

We engage mainly with journalists in our field and a relatively specific industry – both

workers and owners.

4. While obviously it’s better to have a target audience, it’s very hard to identify one for our

agency. Instead we aim to be a content curator across our policy area and hope to be of

general interest. We’re also very event focussed.

5. Member states, both donors and recipients. The private sector, CSOs and the general public.

So we have to balance our content to be generic enough for the public, but not too superficial

for our authority audiences.

What is your overall vision for social media?

1. We need to decide what SM offers. Brand awareness isn’t great in donor countries cf. the

field. We’re learning how to use SM for advocacy. Trying to build a strong brand, much more

cost-effectively than advertising. We’re building a community of people who really care

about our issue.

2. We aim to make our agency transparent, human and personal. We share stories and engage

with our audience, skipping traditional media. We aim to position our staff as thought leaders

in their field.

3. Not discussed.

4. SM should complement the other work we do – should be timely and effective. Identify what

you can’t do with trad media, and use SM to fill the gaps.

5. To meet the broader comms objectives of the organisation in terms of broadcasting, but to go

beyond that and create transparency.

What are [agency’s] overall communications objectives? What are the objectives for social

media?

1. AwarenessEngagementDonate/Help – some kind of concrete action. Fundraising better

thru email.

2. Social media strategy forms part of our overall communications strategy. We publish a wiki

of policy and guidelines that constantly evolves over time. One goal is to train all staff in

using social media responsibly.

3. We are currently drafting a SM strategy. Our main aims are profile-raising and making sure

the specific divisional messages are promoted.

4. We aim to raise awareness about our issues; create better mobilisation for advocates, and to

improve our networks with peers and partners, especially at events such as Rio+20.


56

5. We’re trying to raise awareness and transparency around what we do. We aim to increase our

reach (boosting press office), to engage in a conversation on our top priorities, and increase

advocacy on women’s issues.

Do you have a staff policy? Are any of your senior officials using SM?

1. Growing field presence, ‘action reporting’ such as tweeting from Ugandan refugee camps.

We make up for the lack of resource by encouraging volunteers and champions. These are

people we’ve trained, or who are already SM enthusiasts. Works especially well in East

Africa, we have plenty of people in the field who can tweet for us. We have a policy official

tweeting from Rio. Our Director of Comms tweets. And our Exec Director will be on twitter

soon.

2. We use the specific guidelines same as DPI, but it’s all in the wiki. We managed to get our

DG involved, she enjoyed the interaction, the direct feedback – was a bit of a lightbulb

moment, and now she is a regular tweeter. Think the important thing to recognise is that it’s

not necessarily Twitter that is everyone’s channel. Some people like more time – so they

should blog.

3. Senior official use is limited. There is a generation gap, a lot of people don’t know how it

works. We have presented to senior mgmt, and there are concrete successes – wherever we

have a great SM story we share it.

4. We have guidelines for staff. We make use of volunteers from across the organisation for

livetweeting/blogging events. Awareness of SM internally is growing – esp when senior

management showed up to our evangelist events! Senior mgmt supported my wish for a

twitterfall at our annual meeting – was great, we had Paul Kagame and Bill Gates involved,

we used unfiltered tweets (but had a mitigation strategy in case of abuse). People loved it. We

used an outside contractor to arrange the set up in the room.

5. Not yet. We started quite closed, trying to establish a global voice, now we’re opening up to

allowing staff and regional offices to create their own presences. Some country offices have

difficulties with access etc. No senior officials yet. We are planning training, lunchtime

sessions, etc. Overall, however, the guidance already exists in the HR docs and in the Code of

Conduct for Int’l Civil Servants.

How do you decide which channels to use?

1. Not discussed

2. We test all the channels as they catch on. Each performs something of value. For example,

Google+ affects your search engine ranking, so we post our web stories on their in order to

create a higher ranking for the website. LinkedIn helps us advertise jobs, attract and engage

with experts, etc.

3. This is driven by the content we have. We produce a lot of presentations, so Slideshare was an

obvious choice, for example.

4. Not discussed.

5. We use all the main channels. We have a G+ because we feel like we have to be there or we’ll

be punished in the Page Ranking.


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Day-to-day: How do you manage the production of content? (teamworking, responsibilities etc)

[Where asked, all SM staff said that they sat with other communications staff]

1. We have three community managers : DC, Bangkok, Rome, in order that we can cover the 24

hour day. They know their stuff. Horizontal workloads, but if had more staff might think

differently (i.e. one channel per staffer). We try not to use hootsuite etc and do as much as

possible by hand.

2. I publish much of the English material, our language experts write the language accounts. We

see ourselves as a hub for all staff. We use Hootsuite Enterprise, where I am the SuperAdmin

and there are 10 other admins who get different levels of access to Approve, Edit, etc.

3. I am the focal point for SM – so I’ll republish as much as possible from across the other

comms team. Find Hootsuite very good, esp for Twitter.

4. We have a few people who all have access to the accounts and publish away. For events, we

ask people to use their own accounts, then we signpost and RT via the corporate accounts. We

use the free versions of Tweetdeck and Hootsuite as management tools.

5. For Twitter, we use Hootsuite enterprise. We have 20 users around the world who feed stuff

into the system, which I try to approve within 24 hours. We divide tasks around hq – to check

the website for latest news, to monitor the media for interesting content, and we invite the

country offices to send in project news. Plus we run twitter live chats. This generates a fair

amount of content, but we’re not a content-creator. Facebook is done manually.

Evaluation and monitoring

1. Use Tweetdeck for monitoring. Various applications for analytics (e.g. Buffer)

2. We use Radian6 – it takes time to learn, but is the best tool for reputation monitoring, finding

influencers and multipliers and the shifts in the social debate. We also use the analytics in

Hootsuite, Hashtracking and Socialbro. We look at the web traffic too.

3. Use the Hootsuite analytics, but only have the basic free version, so not great. We also use

YouTube, Facebook and Google Analytics to produce media reports after a campaign.

4. We don’t have the resource to do this properly. We produce Tweetreach reports after annual

events, and we try to storify content more regularly. But the cost of something like Radian6 is

prohibitive. Could a centralised buying group reduce the cost?

5. We haven’t found the perfect tool – using Twittercounter, Hashtracking and Crowdbooster

simultaneously. Good for key influences, impressions and so on. Senior staff like to see

numbers, though to what extent are they realistic/accurate? Not convinced by Radian6 – not

very user-friendly and don’t trust/need sentiment analysis. We don’t produce regular reports,

but feed into the campaign/event reporting.

Successes

1. Organising and delivering a Google Hangout with CNN anchor was a learning experience.

Great that it actually happened.

2. We’re still learning, and SM has huge potential, but some successes have been our live

events, esp. livestreaming with the DG (10,000 viewers) and took questions from the online

audience.

3. We’ve done well from a standing start – in a year gained 5,000 followers from nothing.

Getting a lot of positive feedback from industry, and from journalists (esp as we also now

produce video content for them).

4. The twitterfall at our annual meeting, and also our offline/online press conferences which we

streamed and invited questions.

5. Some good campaign outcomes – we brought voices from outside Rio to the conference

through SM and the audience liked it – high reach for Rio stuff. Had other campaign


58

successes which are all due to the planning and preparation beforehand. We have some very

good influencers who bring a lot of attention to our work (Nicole Kidman, Shakira etc).

Something not gone so well / lessons learned

1. Hoped we would get more views for our Google Hangout.

2. It’s not for everyone, there is a generation gap – some people are born communicators, others

are not. Do some press teams still fear SM?

3. We’ve tried to reach certain influencers without much luck.

4. We tweeted too much from live events – so we parcelled this out to individuals and then RT’d

the best. We all need more management support, and better leadership on social media.

You’ve got to use believers! No point trying to teach/encourage people who aren’t interested

in using these tools, i.e. don’t add it to people’s job descriptions.

5. Content is king. We get sent some stuff which just isn’t suitable and other staff might not

really understand why. We had an event at which someone tried to hijack the hashtag – but

you just have to outnumber them with more relevant tweets.

Additional comments – on UN system as a whole, on the future for social media in international

organisations, etc.

1. Going forward, we want to get real people on real events, and use corporate accounts as

amplifiers for those. Esp on Twitter. UN system could try coordinating a shared calendar

better. Get a lot of emails with suggested tweets that aren’t appropriate to our followers, but if

something worked out well and intelligently, it could be powerful to have a whole system

pushing at the same issue.

2. Focus and support champions who then convince their colleagues. Clear guidelines help

everyone to understand the power of SM and the associated risks. Must remember that we

work for 193 states. Need to cooperate and coordinate with others to help build community.

3. How we reach audiences in Asia is a challenge for all of us

4. We sometimes struggle with relations with the press officers. Could we get a common licence

for certain tools (Radian6, Hootsuite) for use across the system? In general – it’s a battle, but

got to encourage people to feel the fear and do it anyway. We’re supposed to be reaching a

new generation – this is their world. How long before we have a twitterfall in the General

Assembly? What do we need to do to strengthen SM efforts and make it central in public

meetings?

5. DPI should definitely take a coordination role – being the focal point for tool selection,

procurement etc.

Interviewees: Silke Von Brockhausen, UNDP; Beatrice Frey, UN Women; Karine Langlois, IMO;

Roxanna Samii, IFAD; Justin Smith, WFP. Thanks for your time.


59

H. Data on literacy, first and second languages, social media platform

use

See this Google spreadsheet. Note the figures highlighted for countries in which a majority of the

population are not first-language literate in one of the six official UN languages.

Data is patchy and its improvement is something DPI should be supporting with research funding.

The main sources were the CIA World Factbook and the Ethnologue guide.

The spreadsheet is open and editable by anyone. Please update it if you find better/new data. Please

note where you got the data from (use a comment for each cell).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiIDd64kb90cdEdCN2ZqVlpQYmlVcHlXeXdFd2NDN2c

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html

http://www.ethnologue.com/info.asp


60

I. The US State Dept model (staff numbers in brackets)35 This is included in order to gain some relatively similar comparison of how a bureaucracy manages its

social media work. Note the staff numbers in brackets, e.g. the Office for Audience Research has 10

full time members of staff.

“Chart 1: Ediplomacy nodes at State and staffing levels, by organisational area (+ indicates considerable

ediplomacy work outsourced to external partners).” (p.6) Total FT equivalent = 175.

35

http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/revolutionstate-spread-ediplomacy

http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/revolutionstate-spread-ediplomacy


61

“While the above chart follows State’s organisational chart, the chart below breaks the same ediplomacy nodes

down by principal work program and objectives according to the conceptual framework set out above. The

following section will examine the work program of each of State’s ediplomacy nodes under the eight different

work programs.” (p.6)

“Chart 2: Ediplomacy nodes at State, by work programs” (p.7)

Broad goals for e-diplomacy (as understood by Lowry Institute author, not by State Dept)

“1) Knowledge management: To harness departmental and whole of government knowledge, so that it is

retained, shared and its use optimised in pursuit of national interests abroad.

2) Public diplomacy: To maintain contact with audiences as they migrate online and to harness new

communications tools to listen to and target important audiences with key messages and to influence major

online influencers.

3) Information management: To help aggregate the overwhelming flow of information and to use this to better

inform policy-making and to help anticipate and respond to emerging social and political movements.

4) Consular communications and response: To create direct, personal communications channels with citizens

travelling overseas, with manageable communications in crisis situations.

5) Disaster response: To harness the power of connective technologies in disaster response situations.

6) Internet freedom: Creation of technologies to keep the internet free and open. This has the related objectives

of promoting freedom of speech and democracy as well as undermining authoritarian regimes.”

7) External resources: Creating digital mechanisms to draw on and harness external expertise to advance

national goals.

8) Policy planning: To allow for effective oversight, coordination and planning of international policy across

government, in response to the internationalisation of the bureaucracy.”

62

J. Giant spreadsheet of everything This is an alternative way of showing a strategy. This is the sort of table that should be able to be filled in and given to staff as a quick reference guide.

Short term:

Overarching

UN or DPI goal

Social media

SMART goal

Audience

insight needed

Tactics (what

do we do)

Responsibility

and input (who,

when)

Output

(number of

tweets, blogs

etc)

Intermediate

outcome

(metrics:

followers, RTs,

replie)

Overall

outcomes

(measure of

change)

Long term:

Vision Objectives Work required Result wished

for

Responsibility Output

(measure)

Intermediate

outcome

(measure)

Overall

outcomes

(measure)

63

K. Micro goals for each platform

a) Twitter

User base: Twitter has around 150m active accounts. According to the Oxford Internet Institute, ‘the

top six tweet-producing countries (for geo-coded tweets, in absolute terms) are the United States,

Brazil, Indonesia, the UK, Mexico, and Malaysia.’36

Description of platform

UN current use

Strategic goal that use of this platform meets

Long-term vision for this platform

Micro SMART goal(s) for this platform (what does success look like?)

Risks of using this platform

Mitigation

Successful examples of platform use by similar organisations

36

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/where-do-the-worlds-tweets-come-from/259201/

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/where-do-the-worlds-tweets-come-from/259201/


64

b) Facebook

User base


UN current use





Mitigation



65

c) Weibo

User base


UN current use

Weibo is somewhat unique, as its users are almost entirely based in China. The UN account managed

by the Mandarin language web team. Currently the UN account has 2m followers in China.





Mitigation



66

d) UN blogs platform (blogs.un.org)

User base


UN current use





Mitigation



67

e) Pinterest

User base


UN current use



Micro SMART goal(s) for this platform


Mitigation



68

L. Tools for brand accounts workflow a. Publishing

Platform Hootsuite buddymedia Syncapse Crowdbooster

Description

Pros

Cons

Costs

Used by

b. Monitoring (realtime alerts etc)

Platform Netvibes Tweetdeck buddymedia Thinkup

Description

Pros

Cons

Costs

Used by

c. Analytics/evaluation

Platform Socialbro Radian6 buddymedia Syncapse Hootsuite Thinkup

Description

Pros Attemps to

analyse

language

used by

followers

Cons

Costs

Used by


69

M. How to deal with multilingual and multinational brands on

Facebook

It is generally thought that one page per country is the best solution, as it is the only way to really

account for linguistic/cultural differences.

This article suggests using one mother-page and then child-pages. The exemplar is Starbucks, whose

‘mother’ page has 30m likes, and comes with a small 'International' app, which lists all their national

pages in the appropriate native language. It’s simple and effective.

The alternative is using one page where the static information is written in all six languages and then

the posts are delivered according the user’s location or language. You get a less-detailed data

breakdown with this approach. UNICs managing local pages for multilingual countries might opt for

this approach.

What does this mean for the UN Facebook page(s)?

Option A: One central facebook.com/unitednations page delivers worldwide content 24/7. We

attempt to segment audiences by language relying on user/facebook data.

+ Allows for cross-country conversations (for those who know English)

- A small army would required to manage this via DPI/NY

Option B: Six pages (one for each language) maintained by the UNIC(s) most appropriate for the

language.

+ Allows better timed / more culturally relevant posts.

- Would place too much work on certain UNICs?

Option C: One global UN account, and then an account for each UNIC (where Facebook is used).

DPI/NY could decide how much power would be delegated to the UNICs through a Dealer/Franchise

platform like Syncapse’s. Or everyone could work collaboratively, with DPI/NY providing clear

objectives to, and monitoring of, UNICs’ use of their platforms, using data shared across the entire

network (e.g. thru a different Syncapse platform).

+ Maybe best use of resources

- Not very ‘united’ nations

The overall conflict that has to be resolved

The question over how to manage branded Facebook accounts hints at a wider problem in social

media. There is a conflict between wanting to encourage cross-cultural dialogue and wanting to be

culturally/linguistically relevant, which drives engagement.

http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/advertising-promotion/internet-marketing/MAR_ADP_INM/697760-12403486

http://searchengineland.com/going-glocalmanaging-a-brands-global-social-profiles-on-facebook-39500

http://www.facebook.com/Starbucks/app_142063194423?ref=ts

http://syncapse.com/platform/franchise/

http://syncapse.com/platform/


70

Further reading:

Syncapse platform presentation on global facebook strategies; Inside Facebook : Global/regional

pages ‘likes’ count; Inside Facebook: Local pages outperform corporate pages;

Starbucks Facebook page – an astonishing 30m likes (it’s easy to like a luxury good). This is the

global page, but it includes a Facebook app that links to national brand pages for a lot of different

countries, all tailored to that local market. Although our world is very different, this model seems to

make sense for our Facebook presence.

Cf. Western Union’s facebook page – a single global page, but confusingly mainly targeting US

customers. They do engage with a worldwide audience. They promote their competitions and advice,

but don’t use it for customer service. The number of likes and engagement is not great.

http://www.slideshare.net/cherwenka/global-facebook-strategies-syncapse-deck-5236844

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/05/24/facebook-testing-globalregional-fan-pages-that-share-a-single-like-count/

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/05/24/facebook-testing-globalregional-fan-pages-that-share-a-single-like-count/

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/03/30/local-facebook-pages-outperform-corporate-pages-in-terms-of-reach-engagement-percentage-study-finds/

http://www.facebook.com/starbucks

https://www.facebook.com/WesternUnion

towards a un social media strategy (for printing)

Documents

social media use

social platforms

social media team

people objectives

social mediastrategy

social medias mother

joe mitchellour people

suggested vision