Two weeks ago I left Liberia and moved back to Germany. My next project: developing “Social Media in Emergencies Guidelines” for a UN agency. It’s a project I’m really looking forward to, particularly since the focus is not fundraising but on story telling, advocacy and outreach.
Archive for the ‘Strategy’ Category
I think of information management a little bit like of logistics: You don’t notice it if it works smoothly, but it has a massive impact if it doesn’t work. But, unlike with logistics, many people are so used to IM being crap that they think that it cannot be improved. Let me tell you: good information management is possible, it’s not even difficult, and it can do lots to improve humanitarian aid.
A while ago I posed the social media staff guidelines that I created for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Since then, I have been asked by a few organizations to talk about the process of getting there. It seems that more and more organizations see the need and usefulness of having such a document. Below you find a presentation I have given on two occasions on that topic. At the bottom of my previous[...]
Based on our experiences in Samoa and Haiti, I’m trying to come up with best practice for how to organize tweeting staff in a disaster context so that there is a maximum benefit for the organization. These are my thoughts:
To say that the last days were“intense” would be an understatement. From the minute the earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement pulled out all stops to help the people on the ground.
Communications is only a small part of that response and social media an even smaller part. Nevertheless – here are my observations:
I have been using Flickr for about two years to increase visibility of the work of Red Cross Red Crescent. Today, I’d like to share some of the lessons I’ve learned.
Given how obsessed everyone was with how social media helped elect Barack Obama, I’m surprised that I haven’t read more reviews of this book: “Yes We Did – An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand” by Rahaf Harfoush, which gives an excellent overview over how the Obama campaign used social media to mobilize people to donate time and money. Harfoush (@rahafharfoush) was a volunteer with Obama’s new media team. She describes the different tools that the campaign used[...]
One of my projects over the last few months was to write and get approval for social media staff guidelines for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). I’m sharing them because I hope that they will be useful to other organizations who are working on similar documents.
