small talk 2.0

Let's say you are assigned to a new diplomatic position abroad. Your responsibilities include public relations, or media, or both. What is even more important - you've decided to engage with the new world of social media which you see as a useful tool in your job. I would like to suggest a few possible guidelines on how you can use social media. The tips Iprovide are based on my personal and work experience with the social networks. If you already have experimented with it, please see this post as an invitation for open discussion on the topic. 1. Social media is a useful tool, not an end in itself , for your proffesional puproses. Therefore, the first task is to decide who is your audience and what are its characteristics. It could be people of certain age group, it could be students, it could be your colleagues from local diplomatic corps, it could be an ethnic group, it could be anything you think is important for your country and your mission. You should be very specific wh...

Insightful sppech about green diplomacy by Sec. of State Hillary Clinton: http://ad.vu/bhbp

I'm bringing for your attention an article from LAT about Twitter and how big companies deal with its impact on PR and branding. There are some insights that could be applied in public diplomacy: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-twitter20-2009apr20,0,2701874.story

Dear friends, I would like to introduce to you the virtual reality project that deals with journalism and international affairs. I had a priviledge to meet project's founders, Joshua Fouts and Rita King. And even to give short interview to the virtual world... To say it briefly: this stuff is mind-opening and breath-taking. Simultaneously. http://eurekadejavu.blogspot.com/2009/04/launch-of-journalistic-experiment.html yaron

Diplomats, like anybody else, create their Facebook and Linkedin pages. They even happen to like it... Whenever diplomats participate in the social networking, they do it not just as private citizens. they are always seen as their countries' official representatives. However social networks are non-formal forums, where personal and public areas are interwoven. This condition allows soft influence, as opposed to imposing opinions and positions through the official statements, articles and interviews. On social networks you share your interests, your opinions, your ideas with others, creating your own brand. But because you are still perceived as a person related to the government of one's country everything you share there is relevant to the image of your country. Your own image adds to the image of your country. In the next post you will find a couple of useful tips on upgrading your social networks pages.

Here are some tips by Randy Ingbritsen, from Workforce Solutions at Penn State University: Social networking and Web 2.0 technologies can impact a job search in both positive and negative ways and, in today’s job market, it’s important to make sure Facebook and other tools are not working against you. To tweak your social network: Change the privacy settings on your Facebook profile. The default settings aren’t very private — anyone in your networks can see anything you do unless you make parts of your profile available to only your friends. Review all photos and videos that others have tagged of you on Facebook and remove tags from any that you wouldn’t want a recruiter or potential employer to see. Review comments that friends have left on your Facebook profile and remove anything that you feel is unprofessional. If you don’t want a certain person or people (recruiters, co-workers, etc.) to see any part of your Facebook profile, you can exclude them completely. You can also create tw...

Can diplomats blog? And if yes - why should they? Five years after the social networks revolution - and nobody questions the success of the use of Web 2.0 for diplomatic purposes. Look at all the Facebook pages of the Israel's consulates and embassies, that emerged in US and spread out in Europe. Look at the Twitter press conference hold by NY Consulate, that even was mentioned in Wikipedia article on public diplomacy. The examples are many - yet, wneh we look at the blogoshpere the situation is different. The nature of blogging is expressing the views - as different as they can only be. The nature of representing country's official position is exactly the opposite. Therefore, if as a diplomat you open a blog - what are you going to discuss? Are you going to ask the readers to express their views on this position? Are you going to allow all the views to be expressed without editing? or allow only "good" responses to be published. In both scenarios you are going to loo...