social media

After having dabbled in the social media space for some time now, it seems that the World Bank Group has finally jumped in with both feet. No matter where you turn these days, a host of social media initiatives are springing up around the World Bank Group. Internally and externally, words like "Web 2.0", "beta", "pilot", "open source" and "demo" grace the banners of many online knowledge management / collaboration platforms and virtually every unit seems to have a video channel, blog, podcast or "fan" page, underscoring World Bank President Robert Zoellick's recent note to staff to "Make no mistake about it: this is no longer your grandfather’s World Bank. But we need to continue to change."

Here at MIGA — the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency — we've recently made our foray into the social media space as well. MIGA's mission is to promote foreign direct investment (FDI) into developing countries to help support economic growth, reduce poverty, and improve people's lives. We do so by providing political risk insurance in the form of investment guarantees against noncommercial risks like war and civil disturbance, breach of contract, expropriation and more. As one of the smaller members of the World Bank Group, social media works to our advantage in many ways.

Leveraging social media tools like YouTube, Flickr and blogs helps us "get the word out" to a larger audience of investors about what we do and how we can facilitate FDI. It levels the playing field between small organizations like MIGA and gives us the same global marketing and communications platforms as other, larger institutions enabling us to reach a truly global audience.

One of the ways we’re using social media at MIGA is to help investors first find us and then help them understand how we can facilitate the investment process into some countries that could really benefit from it. Sierra Leone is one of those countries. Not long ago MIGA's business development team noticed an uptick in applications for projects in Sierra Leone. We decided to augment those efforts through a focused, coordinated use of social media tools to help generate business inquiries. Not long after combining the collective reach of a) blogs, b) Twitter, c) YouTube and d) Google keyword search ads to find and drive investors to e) a customized MIGA.org landing page about political risk coverage in Sierra Leone, we received an inquiry from an investment intermediary (referring to the customized landing page) asking about MIGA can help them with projects in Sierra Leone.

Online marketing techniques like the above have been used in the private sector for well over a decade so the results are not very surprising. What is interesting however is that they still work - even for a complex, niche product like political risk insurance.

Our recent experience underscores a few points we try to keep in mind:

Have a focused, coordinated approach: use of all the social media tools at your disposal to produce a specific outcome or behavior. In MIGA's case, the desired outcome was to use social media to inform investors about our products and services and drive them to a relevant page on MIGA.org for more information and/ or make a business inquiry.

Avoid "bait and switch": if you're using online advertising (keyword search, banners, links etc.) promoting "Private Equity in Africa", for example, make sure the link in those ads go to a specific page on Private Equity, not a generic welcome or your home page.

Customized landing pages: related to the point above, the "landing page" you drive users to should have sufficient compelling information to continue to lead potential clients to the next step in the customer acquisition process — calling you about your products and services.

Data analysis: before you launch your social media initiatives, make sure you have the ability to capture the impact of the effort on customer care, web analytics software etc. in place to evaluate the impact and measure the results of your efforts. As they say, "If it's worth doing, it's worth measuring" and one of the greatest advantages of social media is that it can be measured.

I've been here in San Francisco for the past few days, and when I haven't been stuffing my face with burritos and Blue Bottle coffee, I've been spending time at the Web 2.0 Summit.

I'll jot down some more coherent and cohesive thoughts about the Summit during my red-eye back to DC later tonight, but for now, I wanted to share a few presentations, issues, and ideas that have jumped out at me during the session so far.

Delivering experiences. Brian Roberts of Comcast spoke about why they've invested so much in content and customer service as well as infrastructure: they're "in business to deliver experiences." Comcast's heavy use of social networks for customer service is just one way they're enhancing the experience for their consumers. A question: how do we in development "deliver experiences" for our stakeholders?

The app economy. Mark Pincus from Zynga had a great presentation where he spoke about how we've moved from a link economy to a search economy, and are now moving towards an app economy, where the social breadcrumb is the primary tool to promote content. He also spoke about ways that social games can be used for social good. A question: can international development be enhanced by using gaming and leveraging these social breadcrumbs?

Information networks. Evan Williams of Twitter was adamant: "Twitter is not a social network, but an information network." He stressed that different tools provide different features to target different audiences — and are used by different people in different ways. One way he sees Twitter being used is to provide front-line information and service to consumers (a bit like @WorldBankNews?). A question: what other "social" networks can be leveraged as information networks to provide better access to development knowledge?

Complete openness. Jeff Immelt of GE echoed concepts we hear every day, but it was nice to see a leader of a global company say it: "complete openness with constituents," along with complete transparency and the ability to take in stakeholder feedback and criticism, is key to any organization these days. A question: what are we doing, as international organizations, to stay relevant through openness and transparency?

Outside voices. Dan Rosensweig from Guitar Hero hinted at something that we've been thinking about recently: people don't want to simply access good content, but want to contribute to that content. A question: how are we in the development sector allowing people to contribute to our development knowledge, and how are we letting the people affected by our work contribute to our results narratives?

Mobile. Lots of things going on in the mobile sphere. In fact, instead of writing anything here, I'll have an entire post on mobile up later next week.

Here are a few links that were mentioned at the Summit that piqued my interest:

• Bing Real-Time Search: Relevancy-ranked Twitter integration.
• Google Social Search: Enhancing search through your social network.
• MagCloud: Magazine and publication print-on-demand services.
• Your Flowing Data: Visualizing real-time data in interesting ways.
• Aardvark: Getting answers from people who have them.
• GE Vscan: Portable, affordable ultrasound machines.
• The Progress Project: Using mobile technology to change lives.
• MakerBot: 3D printing and creation.
• CellScope: Using mobile phones for medical diagnosis.
   

Expect more coherent thoughts in the next few days. In the meantime, check out some of the presentations from the Summit on the live stream or on the news and coverage page.

Blog reader Vickesh, after reading my last post about the choice between different video communities on the web, pointed me in the direction of a recent article in the New York Times about the difficulties of providing web services to developing countries and still making a profit.

Of particular interest? The decision by Veoh to stop offering video to users in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe because of high bandwidth costs:

"I believe in free, open communications, but these people are so hungry for this content. They sit and they watch and watch and watch. The problem is they are eating up bandwidth, and it’s very difficult to derive revenue from it." -Veoh Chief Executive Dmitry Shapiro

Read the full article for a lot more examples from other services — Joost, Facebook, Youtube, etc — that weigh in on both sides of this discussion.

As someone that thinks about online strategy here at a global organization like the World Bank, this discussion is particularly important to me. One question that I keep asking myself: how we can provide content and engage in conversation that is happening across the web while also being accessible to a diverse international audience?

The fact that our global economic reality can make it hard for content communities like Veoh to deliver accessible content in certain parts of the world wasn't always a consideration in my answers to that question, but now I guess it should be.

(Photo by Trevor Samson, from the World Bank Flickr account.)

The blog has been up and going for a few weeks now, but it was only this week that the Youthink! blog officially went live. It's definitely worth checking out.

A quick primer for those of you that haven't heard much about Youthink! over the past few years: Youthink! is the World Bank’s website for youth. The site aims to inform youth on development issues, and inspire them to get involved. A 2006 Webby Award winner, the site has continued to evolve and now contains a section for educators and most of the content is now available in French, Spanish, and Chinese.

The blog is the next step in the evolution of the Youthink! site. Bringing together seven young bloggers from across the world, the blog features posts about topics as wide-reaching but impactful as climate change to the financial crisis.

The first batch of Youthink! bloggers are:

• Stacy Alcantara, Philippines – Youth Coordinator; Active Citizenship Research
• Christine Cassar, Malta – Director, People for Change Foundation
• Nicholas Lembo, USA – MA Candidate; International Development
• Nate Miller, Benin – World traveler and public health professional
• Saptarshi Pal, India – World Bank International Essay Winner, 2008
• María Rodríguez, Colombia – Director; Red de Generación de Oportunidades Sociales (Social Opportunities Generating Network)
• Joao Felipe Scarpelini, Brazil – Youth Activist; Peace Child
• Saadia Iqbal, USA – Youthink! Editor

Drop by the Youthink! blog and let some of the young bloggers know what you think about their ideas and perspectives. And if you have any questions about the blog or any recommendationsto make it even better, let me know. I'll be sure to pass along the message.