The following is a blog by Alex Schillemore, Social and Digital Media Manager.
Last week digital communicators from the Middle East, North Africa and our central communications teams in London and New Delhi met in Beirut – a unique chance for everyone to share the excellent work they’ve been doing and look at new opportunities.
One of the FCO’s prolific users of digital, British Ambassador to Lebanon Tom Fletcher, opened the conference by speaking about his latest blog. The Naked Diplomat, he assured us, was no reference to his state of dress, but instead an opportunity to think about stripping diplomacy back to its core and rebuilding it including digital components where it can add value.
The next three days reinforced the value that digital can add to diplomacy.
We heard from the British Embassy in Algeria digital team on how they have developed a popular and dynamic Facebook presence by sharing interesting images and information about the UK alongside their day to day content. Their audience of over 30,000 people means they can engage directly with people on an incredible scale.
The British Embassy in Lebanon told us how they’d promoted the UK in Lebanon to encourage cross-culturalism through a series of events they’d called ‘The Great British Week’, and how using digital had helped them deliver a successful campaign working alongside the private sector. You can watch the Ambassador’s invitation to British week on YouTube.
The UK in Jerusalem Facebook page managed to increase its reach from 3000 to 130,000 by running an event during the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony – an impressive statistic – raising awareness of the UK and encouraging inclusivity.
A tweetup with some of the young Lebanese twitterati was an opportunity to engage directly with future leaders and opinion formers. Their enthusiasm and passion for issues they face was infectious.
Throughout the conference we were tweeting on the hashtag, #digiconflb, and the conference went global.
We had tweets from people working on digital diplomacy all over the world, from Denmark to Canada. You can read some of them and see images from the conference on Storify, kindly put together by Danish diplomat @Karmel80 who followed the event via twitter.
The discussion online was just as passionate as it was in the room – a strong message when we’re currently formulating an FCO digital strategy.