Taking our social media presence to higher heights. Thank you @unsocial500, @gaurisalokhe, @mongkolroek, @Nancy_Groves #kmers #globaldev

Some argue that social media has brought us closer and others claim that it has made us more lonelier. 

I think it is fair to say that social media is now part and parcel of our daily lives. And like any technology, it has, to some degree, changed the way we conduct business and interact with each other.

Over the last seven years, as a development worker and as an early social media adopter, I’ve been advocating for mainstreaming this new communication paradigm in our business and core processes.  

I have used and seen how my colleagues across the United Nations Agencies, the International Financial Institutions, the NGO community and grassroots organizations have used these channels to raise awareness about the challenges and opportunities facing people in developing countries. 

I was lucky enough to learn from well designed and well choreographed social media strategies - be it during crisis such as the Haiti earthquake, drought in the Sahel, Ebola; be it to for events, and campaigns such as the International Year of Family Farming, Rio+20, #post2015, #whatdoesittake, #2030now.

I learnt from the more savvy how to better engage with the audience to harness the “wisdom of the crowd” and I was fortunate enough to be able to put my new learning and knowledge to practice.

As an earlier adopter, I saw first hand how different organizations embarked on this journey. Joining forces with my fellow early adopters, we consistently and continuously enticed our respective organizations to embrace this new communication paradigm. We  created our own “virtual community” where we shared our experiences, successes and challenges.

We used each other as sounding boards and peers when faced with challenges. After each big or small success, we collectively celebrated. And in the spirit of reciprocity we shared our achievements with each other

One of the many uphill battles that we fought together, was convincing our colleagues to use social media channels and their personal accounts to talk about and share snippets of their work. You can imagine the joy and satisfaction of those of us who over years have been fighting this battle to see our efforts being recognized in the UN Social 500 list. 

I must admit that having our names amongst "the most influential men and women who are promoting, discussing and describing the work of the UN on a daily basis via their own social media channels" finally gave us the boost that we were looking for. A big thank you to the @unsocial500 folks for compiling and maintaining  the list.

Thanks to the work and commitment of the wonderful folks on this list, today the United Nations not only has a solid social media presence, but more importantly all those closely involved in this communication stream have a superb support network.

With the mainstreaming of social media in our work, I believe today the United Nations is more UNITED than ever. A decade ago, asking UN agencies to collaborate and contribute to each other’s campaigns may not have been a trivial undertaking. 

Today, when the UN family embarks on a campaign, all the various agencies chip in and participate. This is made possible thanks to well-crafted social media advisory packages which provide all the necessary assets (messages, precanned tweets, precanned Facebook updates, infographics, images, links, videos) including the license to adapt the messages. As a result, we are in a better position to amplify each other messages, avoid doing propaganda and reach out to a diverse audience.

A good case in point was the 22 March World Water Day celebration. A decade ago, all the UN agencies and IFIs  would have celebrated this day “on their own” thus hardly benefitting from each other’s experience, let alone the “wisdom of the crowd”.

The 2015 #worldwaterday was indeed GLOBAL. Our UN Water colleagues did an amazing job of bringing everyone together to share facts and figures about water scarcity in developed and developing countries. Unworthy’s Twitterchat  was a great example of partnership between and among profit and non-profit organizations to raise awareness about challenging and important global issues.

This is just one of the many instances of social media’s unprecedented multiplier effect for development! As a result, in a time and age where we need to deliver more with less and where there is a pretty tight competition for resources, mainstreaming social media in our core business has allowed us to amplify each other messages, raise awareness about different developmental issues, engage with and involve the audience.

Thanks to all the folks in the support network for paving the road to success. I am sure together, we’ll be able to design and implement many more innovative campaigns and take our social media presence and agenda to new and unexplored heights.