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Real Time Conversations and UNICEF: Sharing in
2014
Social and Civic Media SectionNYHQ
Introduction
Throughout the year thus far, many offices have done their part to integrate themselves into their fans existing online conversations. This planning by our colleagues not only has led to significant increases in reach for their posts and pages, but also has given fans a chance to further engage and feel like we’re listening to what they’re saying (without needing to ask us). Below are some of the top examples from HQ and country offices. Any of these below posts could be considered ‘best practices’. And remember, when looking through a content calendar, it’s important to remember not only what your office has coming up, but also what your audience will be most inclined to discuss. Not only will this approach score you further reach, but our global page could be more inclined to share your content- always a plus. Below are the examples with insights by their creators as to why they were so successful.
New Years Day
New Years and UNICEF
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"I had only planned to do one Happy New Year's post. But seeing how well it did, I figured, why not do a series? There are so many amazing photos in the database that don't get seen. So, with a new festive font, we whipped up a few of these Happy New Year's posts, trying to represent different regions and posting them when different time zones hit 12am. Happily, they were all equally popular, even though I anticipated our reach would diminish due to how close together the posting times were. And in the end, it helped bump up our PTAT to its highest level." - Lauren Holmes, Social Media Editor, Digital Strategy, DOC
New Years and UNICEF Sierra Leone
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“All over the world, people like to wish each other a “Happy New Year”! New Year’s Day is seen as a festive moment to celebrate and to spend joyful moments with friends and family. It is almost a universal feeling.
With the New Year post, I aimed to tap into that universal feeling of joy, and celebration and the good spirit surrounding it. Ultimately, the secret of good social media posts is to find an entry point by connecting to what people already like whilst at the same time remaining explicit about UNICEF’s mission and achievements.
In addition to the festive aspect, New Year also carries a reflective element: people like to reflect on the past year and make resolutions and wishes for the future. This provided a great opportunity to present UNICEF Sierra Leone’s vision and to call for continuous support and commitment throughout the year. In terms of rhetoric, I have chosen a symbolic and emotional language to help the audience picture and feel the message: “put a lasting smile in the eyes of
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children”, “walk towards their dreams”, etc.…
During New Year, friends come together to rejoice. Therefore, I have chosen a picture showing all UNICEF staff members coming together. This also allowed me to illustrate the unity behind the common mission (“we do our daily best”) whilst inviting the audience to “stay at our side”.
Social media is all about "engagement" - people don't engage with organizations as such but rather with people and with the ideas that organizations stand for. To continuously break down the “black box” of an organization, UNICEF uses its reservoir of incredibly powerful photographs of children. At the same time, I noticed that our social media fans also like, if once in a while, that we “show our face" as staff members. It adds to UNICEF’s human face and makes the organization more tangible and credible in the eyes of the fans."
-Rosmarie E. K. Jah, Reports Officer, External Relations and Advocacy, UNICEF Sierra Leone
Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day and UNICEF Philippines
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“We've been posting about Typhoon Haiyan since November 2013 and we wanted to do something different, a breather from all the emergency-related content. We thought of doing a Valentine's Day postcard design contest. Children and adults can participate – who hasn't created their own Valentine's Day card in school? It was a simple yet inclusive activity with a strong message on a special day: Love for children.
Fans had one week to submit their entries for an online public and staff vote. Fifteen entries were submitted, which received more than 1,600 likes in total. The variety of entries showed different interpretations of the message and made for a strong visual presence on Facebook. A drawing by a 13-year-old boy won the contest and he received a UNICEF souvenirs gift pack as a prize. Fans liked the winning entry so much that they asked where they can buy the postcard!”-Vittorio Paolo Milanes, Communication Assistant, UNICEF Philippines
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Valentine’s Day and UNICEF
“We did some background research on Valentine’s Day and realized that roughly 100 million cards are sent per year. We also knew that on Valentine’s Day, people globally- our fans in particular- would enjoy an opportunity to see some of our most playful images while also having the opportunity to create a virtual card for someone else they care about (friend, loved one, or child) in an easy way. We developed this application with a company called Razur and it took roughly 3 weeks. Not only were we able to help share in on an important conversation like Valentine’s Day with our fan base and show them we were there, but we also were able to help spread advocacy messages around what we work for on a day when other’s might not already be thinking too much about our work. In total the application was visited over 10,000 times and more than 1,000 cards were created and shared- all within the course of a day or so! Here’s a link” -Nicholas Ledner, Social Media Coordinator, Digital Strategy, Division of Communication HQ
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International Women’s Day
IWD and UNICEF Burundi
“In our experience, this type of image of a child looking directly into the camera with a hopeful and warm tone tends to create an emotional bond with the viewer - it’s hard to stay indifferent to the hope that this girl exudes! We had a professional photographer go onto the field in Burundi and shoot a series of this type of photos, each of which we’d imagined in function of the messaging we want to send out on each particular international day. Here we are leveraging on the children as the future narrative, which is something that is universally agreed on. A clear call to action (SHARE) in English tends to maximize reach among international audiences so I like to post this type of image as a teaser the day or evening before to drum up interest and
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traffic, and then follow up with some deeper content the next day. In the case of IWD 2014, the next day we posted a Q&A between a girl child journalist and a girl member of the National Forum for Children (in French). We know highly shareable content in English can maximize our visibility internationally, but we also need some more localized, in-depth content to cater to various audiences, including the diaspora.” - Eliane Luthi Poirier, Communications Specialist, UNICEF Burundi
IWD and UNICEF Argentina
“Basically it is the type of successful content our fan page enjoys: social issues. International Women's Day, in Argentina always has an impact, but there is always much debate because in many cases people celebrate it superficially, without the value that the day has. We did not use # FelizDia, and gave a more thoughtful treatment (using the UN action).” -Natacha Carbonelli, New Media Specialist, UNICEF Argentina
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“Hugh, our community manager, informed all of us that within roughly 10 days we’d hit 3 million fans on Facebook. We quickly put our heads together and thought of some of the best approaches possible to thank our fans for liking our page. I went to school with a close buddy who now works for an independent ad agency and asked him if his agency might be interested in helping us devise a quick video we could post as a thank you. They were more than willing to help and suggested 6 different concepts to our team after I shared with them a quick brief describing the situation and providing additional context to why 3 million fans was so important. We chose our favourite idea out of the 6 and within 2 days, they provided the video back to us. Basically it’s a video with a counter going from zero to 3 million with audio that has children’s voices getting louder and louder as the number rises. Nothing too ground breaking, but fans seemed to appreciate it! Here’s the link” -Nicholas Ledner, Social Media Coordinator, Division of Communication, HQ
100,000 Fans and UNICEF Middle East and North Africa
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“Reaching 100,000 fans on Facebook was an opportunity to share some good news; refreshing in a region with a level 3 emergency. We actually reached 100,000 just when we had a lot of press coverage of a major report on Syria, so we waited a couple of days as it would have felt wrong to post something fun and happy right then. I wanted to do something different from our usual posts (which tend to include graphics and powerful photos from the field), so I opted for a video made in the office to mix it up a bit. It was important to celebrate and thank our fans in the post, and a good opportunity to tell people about our work across the region. Real-time content like this is great because people like spontaneous. If you have a good idea it doesn't matter too much if it looks homemade; it's the simplicity and the timeliness that counts. After the Syria report it was a race against time to post the video before we hit 101,000 - we didn't make it, but I don't think that matters too much!”
– Jess Wright, Social Media Specialist, UNICEF Regional Office for the Middle East & North Africa
3 Years Polio Free and UNICEF India
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“This post shows that when you combine robust data with good photos and graphics, the result is much more appealing for the audience. As you can see in the screen shot attached, the outreach was quite good and people commented and shared extensively.
The other element that made this post work well was the patriotic achievement. The fact that India has achieved something that was impossible to imagine some years ago makes people feel proud and motivates them to comment and share. Creating content that sticks in your mind but also appeals to your heart is crucial. This is a lesson learned for us.
This particular infographic was tweeted by Bill Gates, and this gave us a great number of impressions. Thanks to this we were trending topic on Twitter in Delhi for some hours.”
- María Fernández Ruiz de Larrinaga, Communication Specialist, UNICEF India
3 Years of War in Syria and UNICEF
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“We planned for this campaign approach in advance by liaising with the Miami Ad School and Ogilvy Dubai to create a profile image with the call to action for our fan base to change their profile image to our own for a symbolic 3 day period of time to match the amount of years the fighting has been occurring in Syria- 3 years. The approach was championed and led within the Middle East and North African region but over 55+ other country offices globally also adopted the image and spread the campaign via social media to support this symbolic time period.” -Krystel Abimeri, Special Events Coordinator, Division of Communication, HQ
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Sporting Events
Sochi and UNICEF Ukraine
“We monitor the most popular hashtags to integrate into existing online conversations. With the interest to Olympic Games #SOCHI2014, we posted this picture. It was very relevant for the Olympics’ fans while the photo itself fits #thisability UNICEF initiative and promotes our message of a more accessible world to people and children with disabilities, so everyone can dream big.
One of the most motivating messages we always emphasize on our page is that limits exist in our mind only. Our audience shares our opinion and actively engages with this kind of post, especially when pictures are as emotional and dynamic as this one. This photo depicts Canadian Olympic gold medallist skier Alex Bilodeau in Sochi making the final stop at the end of the mountain, immediately running over to his brother and pulling him from the wheelchair and embracing so that they could celebrate together. We said on our page that it’s probably what the meaning of the life looks like – doing impossible for those who have less opportunities. 60% of our page content belongs to this type of engaging successfully our followers.”
-Veronika Vashchenko, Communication Officer, UNICEF Ukraine
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Conclusion
Online users are a busy bunch. Not only do they have our pages to consider when scrolling their news feeds, but they have 70 + other brands, on average, contending for likes, comments, and shares (on average per Facebook user); and with such a crowded space, it’s essential for content to stand out to them and make them take notice. The best way for doing this is simply to create relevant content for their lives, content that links to what their friends are currently talking about and sharing, and information that speaks to them because they already feel somewhat familiar with it. This is the essence of real time content creation and the examples above prove to be some of the best examples coming from country offices and HQ as of 2014. Incorporating our efforts into these streams of trending topics will not only make our reach jump- thus increasing significantly the performance of our content- but it will also make us as UNICEF stay relevant in the eyes of all online users, no matter if they are a fan yet or not.
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