UN social media strategy draft aims to engage global audiences

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.

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Towards a UN social media strategy Joe Mitchell @j0e_m

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)
52
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 countries3) – 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

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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, 122nd 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

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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).

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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

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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.

13
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.

14
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.

15


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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.

16
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.

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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

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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.

18


- 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.

19


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…

20


…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.

21


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.

22


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/

23


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.”

24


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

25


- 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.

26

Output of social media team by 2014 Intermediate outcome by 2015 Overall outcome by 2016
Objective
(and measure) (and measure) (and measure)

Identify and train early adopters, encourage them to
‘pass it forward’ (0.5% of UN staff trained 0.01% More staff in digital space (% of UN
trained in training; ensure all depts. and system staff with a digital account on an
covered, maintain list of x-UN champions) open platform, used 5 times / week)
All-staff training, lectures/team explanations (x Better known UN individuals (>100 Culture change – staff empowerment
number of sessions etc) UN staff with personal follower (e.g. 10% in positive response to ‘do
Mentoring programme set up (uptake by x% of all counts of > 5,000) you feel engaged or empowered’ by
staff) staff in response to HR staff survey)

Greater public awareness of
individual roles at UN and structure
Staff as voice of
of UN etc (e.g. 10% increase in
organisation Better corporate accounts (number of global opinion poll ‘I understand the
Mergers or reduced corporate accounts (numbers of languages or nations covered by UN’)
accounts) UNIC-led corporate accounts;
internal coherence of DPI accounts Transparency: a higher score in
Branding advice (how to use the logo, what to write in (% of accounts branded and labelled independent accountability measures
a bio) (docs, ready-made kit of backgrounds, correctly etc) (e.g. One World Trust’s global
‘twibbons’ etc produced) accountability framework)
Corporate accounts taking their
Training, guidance and branding for UNIC run pages content from individuals (% of
(number of sessions, documents) content shared by corporate accounts
that is new (i.e. the content is now
mainly repostings from individual
staff))

27


Increased use of social media for Better informed staff (survey on
Better internal Training for senior leadership – advocating why social internal communication (number of awareness of work of other system,
communications media works for internal productivity (x training internal interactions) instances of co-working, ‘how well
across depts. and sessions, x managers using open platform to engage
Reduced email burden (number of do you feel you know what’s going
system internally)
emails) on outside your department?’)

Increased use of social media for
external communication (number of
Training for staff (x training sessions, x staff using) external interactions) Greater knowledge sharing
Better external
throughout UN network, missions
communications to
Renew, reshape, refocus all corporate accounts Reduced email burden (number of and CSOs (survey of awareness?
traditional
(number of accounts, fewer, better accounts) emails) Tricky one to measure)
stakeholders
(missions, NGOs) More coherent brand presence (% of
corporate accounts using branding
correctly, etc)

Better engagement More public interaction with staff
Training for all staff (x% of staff using open platforms Greater public knowledge of UN
with the global (number of followers, number of
to engage) goals; better understanding of UN
public to increase reposts etc)
Increased training / advice to UNICs (number of structure (opinion polling, public
understanding and More language use stuff (number of
training sessions, survey data) research)
support followers of other language accounts)

28

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.

29


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:

30


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.

31


 They follow the UN accounts – sometimes militantly

Yes, all that I can find
Yes, but only those relevant to my
work

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).

32


 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.

33


 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.

34


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

35


 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

36


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.

37


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.

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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.

39

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

Who uses this 955bn people. Very young, Unknown Women, older Journalists, newshounds
platform? American, UK,
Brazil

What is its Microblogging, Connecting with Artsy cool stuff Behind the scenes? Image-sharing platform To provide one page round up
purpose? sharing news ‘friends’ sharing of x-platform social media
photos stories

Why should we use
it? (Link to overall
objective)

What content
should be shared?

Who provides that
content?

Comments /
engagement?

What is our To increase our Reach 1m users by
SMART goal for number of replies Dec 2013.
this platform? by 10%

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.

41


8.5.3. Workflow diagram:

Platform (and responsibility)

Google Hootsuite Public platforms
Spreadsheet
(Small admin (One person to
(All UN staff, team) sign off)
with training)

42


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,

43


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.

44

UN social media strategy draft aims to engage global audiences

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