Stephen Hale

Evaluating our blogs

Foreign Office bloggers should focus on making sure that their blogs are integrated, personal, real-time, and 2-way. These are the headline findings of our detailed evaluation of the impact and reach of our blogs.

I mentioned a while ago that we were doing some work to evaluate the impact and reach of Foreign Office blogs.

Our aim was to get beyond our regular stats reports to provide a deeper analysis of the reach of our blogs and the impact they have on the people that read them.

Some of our findings were expected, some were unexpected. Some of what we found was an endorsement of what our bloggers were already doing. But there are clearly things that our bloggers could do to improve the reach and impact of their blogs.  

We carried out the work internally (much credit to Rob and Shane),  but we made every effort to just report what the data told us, and in no way game the results. 

Here's a summary of what we found: 

What we did

1. A survey

All our English language bloggers posted a blog entry asking their readers to complete a quick survey. We asked readers a few questions about themself and their blog reading habits. And we asked them to rate a set of extracts from Foreign Office blogs according to how informative, balanced, trustworthy, authentic, appropriate and interesting they found them to be.

2. Metrics

We took a good look at the data we already had, concentrating on traffic, inbound links, and the number and sentiment of comments.

3. Competitor analysis

We wanted to learn from what others were doing. So we thought a bit laterally about who we might regard as competitors or peers of FCO bloggers (Carl Bildt, Steve Clemmons, Norman Geras, Moby...) and compared what they were doing with what our bloggers were doing.

Some conclusions

Some of our findings are particular to individual bloggers. But there were some pretty clear themes in the data:

1. Blogs are 1 tool among many

Our most effective blogs are combined with wider communication and policy activity.

For example, the second biggest peek in traffic to the Foreign Secretary's blog last year was when he posted Forging coalitions with the Muslim world. That blog was complementary to a speech he gave at on the same subject, was combined with outreach to bloggers, and was promoted via Twitter - including real time coverage of the speech and press conference. As a result it generated mentions and inward links from other bloggers and leading websites, increasing the potential influence of the blog entry exponentially.

We found that that this kind of behaviour is common among the peers of FCO bloggers too, who might use Twitter to confirm hunches or check facts with their followers while they are writing blogs, or use physical events or conventional media to promote blog entries or continue the conversation.

Where we found this kind of multi-channel behaviour, we found that it was reflected by both increased traffic, and increased volume of comments. It seems that successful bloggers are rarely just bloggers, and successful blog entries rarely exist in isolation from other channels. 

2. Personal insights and opinions make for interesting blogs

People expect, like and respond to blogs that only the author could write. In particular, they respond to personal insights. And readers comment on our blogs - and rate them highly and return to them - when they agree or disagree with the expressed opinion.

Our survey asked readers open questions about what they liked and disliked about FCO blogs. The strongest theme from the "likes" was around personal insights. And the most common answer mentioned insight into the opinion of the writer. When we asked them what they disliked, readers said they disliked blogs were bland or dull, or that didn't offer enough of the personality of the writer.

What do you like about FCO blogs?

What do you dislike about FCO blogs?

The blog entry that was rated as being the most authentic was $50 shopping spree by Grace Mutandwa, which uses personal anecdote to make wider points. Blogs that just reported events or described facts were rated as being less authentic.

The blog entry that was rated as most interesting was Marwa el Sherbini by Dominic Asquith, in which he expresses a clear personal opinion. In fact, this entry (published at the time in Arabic and English) was the best rated of all the entries we tested across our metrics of informative, balanced, trustworthy, authentic, appropriate and interesting. 

3. Readers want comment in real time

A significant number of people read our blogs every day. We know that stories move on very quickly online. As do as do the opportunities for our bloggers to engage their readers.

More than 20% of readers of FCO blogs say that they read them every day. This is the kind of behaviour we might have expected from readers of technology blogs, where the majority of readers might subscribe to an RSS feed. I didn't expect the number to be so high for our foreign policy blogs, where we know that the number of people subscribing via RSS is a much smaller proportion of the audience. There is clearly appetite for real time content.

When we looked at our peers, we found that there was a clear correlation between real-time blogging, and reader engagement (if we take the number of comments received as an indication of engagement). Those who blog as things happen also receive the most comments. For example, Carl Bildt posted 53 entries to his blog in July - often offering comment on events before they happened - and received more than 400 comments.

4. Readers want conversations

Readers expect our blogs to be 2-way communication. And blogs that reach into specific communities of interest generate the most visible engagement (comments, and inward links).

Our survey results suggest that our blogs are stimulating real engagement. Our readers are  having conversations as a consequence of reading our blogs. In particular, 66% of readers of FCO blogs said that they had discussed our blog entries offline. This appears to be an endorsement of the choice of blogging as a medium for our diplomats: by blogging they are stimulating conversations, on and offline.

We also asked readers what they expected in response to comments posted on our blogs. 34% of readers said that they didn't expect a response at all. Of those that did expect a response, 29% expected the author to respond personally, and 37% said that they expected a representative of the FCO to respond, although not necessarily the author.

We can see from the metrics that the blogs that are most commented-on are entries in which the author addresses issues that are already the subject of online debate. The most commented-on blogs from the Foreign Secretary last year were those about Sri Lanka, and we can see similar peaks when he blogged about Georgia, and Iran.  

Traffic to the Foreign Secretary's blog, overlaid with volume and sentiment of comments 

Some practical recommendations 

We've turned these themes into some practical recommendations for our bloggers. Our advice isn't the same for every blogger, but we are using our findings to encourage our bloggers to be personal (say things that only they could say), real time (if it takes days to draft or check the facts then it's probably not a blog), integrated (with other things they're doing on and offline), responsive (responding to comments), and targeted (writing about things that people are already talking about online).

Posted at 02:48 06 February 2010 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[5]

Foreign Office blogs refresh

I've mentioned before that we plan to refresh the look and feel of our blogs in line with our website.

There are a few things ahead of blogs in the queue (including our 250 embassy sites), but we've started the work.

If you're interested in this stuff, you can take a look at our initial wireframes (below). These are based on: some work we've done to identify and prioritise user goals, our evaluation of the impact of Foreign Office blogs, known issues with our current interface, and our own (me, Shane, Rob) personal prejudice.

We think we need 4 main templates:

1. a homepage for individual bloggers, displaying the most recent blogs
2. a blog entry, displaying comments and a form
3. a homepage for blogs.fco.gov.uk
4. an alternative homepage for themed blog aggregators (eg: blogs.fco.gov.uk/climate)

But we realise that we need to do a few other things differently, including:

- improving the user journeys between our blogs and our other content
- provide our users with alternative ways to find what they're after
- integrate other relevant web content better, particularly for those bloggers who have wide social media profiles

This will be an iterative process. I expect lots of red pen on the wireframes before you see any changes on our blogs. We haven't tested any of this yet, and we won't have got it right first time. But my aim is for our blogs to have a facelift early in 2010. If you have a view please post a comment.

NB: we are not reviewing our technical blog platform as part of this work - we'll do that separately. And it's not about the impact and reach of our blogs - I'll post more on that soon. It's solely about branding and the user interface.

Posted at 16:49 15 December 2009 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[7]

Help us to make our blogs better

We're doing a some work to evaluate the impact of Foreign Office blogs.

We want to know what our readers like and dislike about our blogs, what you’d like to see diplomats writing about, and how you respond to the tone and style of our current bloggers.

I'd be really grateful if you'd take a few minutes to complete our short survey: 5 minute survey

I'll publish our findings - including the results of the survey - here.

Posted at 16:47 01 September 2009 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[0]

An interview with a real digital diplomat

If our digital diplomacy project is to really succeed, we need to demonstrate that diplomats and policy officials can use the tools of digital engagement to help deliver foreign policy objectives. 

We won't have succeeded if all we achieve is the clever integration of the latest social media tools into nice looking web content.

That's why I often cite John Duncan as our best example of digital diplomacy in action. John is the UK Ambassador for Multilateral Arms Control and Disarmament, and he uses digital engagement tools to help him do his job. He blogs (and microblogs) about his work, and he is an active social media consumer.

John has been in London this week, to take part in an Arms Trade Treaty event. I took the opportunity to ask him about his experiences as a digital diplomat. Here's the video:

Transcript: 

Stephen Hale: I am here in King Charles Street with John Duncan. He has agreed to talk to me about being a digital diplomat. John is an an ambassador. He does a serious job. But he writes a blog. He updates his Twitter followers using his iPhone, and I want to find out why.

Caption: What do you do? 

John Duncan:  I'm the UK Ambassador for Multilateral Arms Control and Disarmament, based in Geneva. But it's roving ambassador role so I work right across the world from Dublin to Wellington to New York. And so I've used digital diplomacy as an addition to what we do in a traditional sense and found it to be a real multiplier.

Caption: Does this replace traditional diplomacy?

JD: Well I think that there are things that we would do normally. I'll give you an example. In multilateral diplomacy there's a lot of coffee shop diplomacy, where people will go and ask: "what's the UK position?" and they want it quietly, not in the public speeches that may last 10 or 20 minutes, they want a quick snapshot. And what I've used the blog for is to actually have that conversation virtually. So people have become used to going to the blog to find out what is a snapshot of the UK view in the way that we might have a coffee shop conversation. So it's replacing something that we actually do, and I probably have less coffee shop conversations as a result, but I think that's quite productive.

Caption: Do diplomats read blogs?

JD: I think now people are much more familiar with this sort of technology. It's true that there are some traditionalists who would still prefer to have that coffee shop conversation. But I don't think it replaces the working lunch longer conversation. It's a very quick snapshot: what is the UK thinking on this particular issue?

Caption: Who reads your blog?

JD: Well it's always difficult to get a feel for that. It's interesting that it's being used as a public information tool by people rather than for comments. There are the cognoscenti who come in and ask very detailed and complex questions. But most of the readers I'm aware of are colleagues, both in the Foreign Office but also in multilateral communities. I'm aware that many delegations from Iran to Ireland are reading it regularly. And if I get something wrong they will pick it up and say "you didn't get that right" so they are using it as a public information tool.

Caption: Do you read other blogs?

JD: Well I certainly read the comments, although I said there aren't that many - its much more a push factor rather than a pull factor. And yes I do read other blogs and I've used Twitter as a way of finding through into people who are saying interesting things on the issues that I'm following professionally.

Caption: Is Twitter appropriate for diplomacy?

JD: Well it's a very new tool and I think it's finding it's own way. There are people who seem to spend their time explaining what they're doing like "I'm stuck in a lift". I'm not sure that's a particularly useful use of the medium. What I've used it for is as a marketing tool for the blog and it's been spectacularly effective in terms of going into the press. I've had press interviews as a direct result of that, I've had media comment which is quoting Twitter, worldwide. So as a media tool and a marketing tool for the blog, then yes I think it is effective.

Caption: How do you find the time?

JD: Well I think we all have moments of the day when we have down time. It can be when you're in the car or on the train. Or even when I'm in my meetings or listening to speeches - of course many of these are written and I can read a speech in 5 minutes and it probably takes 20 to speak. And then what am I doing? Well I can use that time. I can go on to my laptop or the iPhone and find out what other people are saying and also comment on the issues that interest us. So I'm using the down time more productively than I could do otherwise.

Caption: How can we help others do this?

JD: Well I think we have presumed competence as ambassadors, but I think that we do need to get some training on this. I'm quite prepared to take risks and explore this with the digital diplomacy team. But I'm very conscious that it's easy to make mistakes, particularly easy to make mistakes if one is using Twitter because it's much shorter and snappier. And you have to preserve that authority of an ambassador, you can't undermine it. So I think some training on mistakes and things to do and how to actually use this new medium in a productive way, I think that's the best thing the Foreign Office can do.

Posted at 13:09 17 June 2009 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[1]

Summit bloggers make history

The London Summit broke new ground for digital media. I feel sure that the debate that took place in blogs and forums influenced opinion around the world in the lead up to and during the summit, and that digital debate has contributed to the way in which the outcome of the summit has been received.

We've played our part, running the UK government web presence, but a lot of the debate has taken place spontaneously elsewhere. I've been really excited about the work of G20 Voice, bringing 50 bloggers from 22 countries to the summit venue. I played a very small role in helping to make some connections, so I know that the 50 bloggers owe their place at the summit to the vision and perseverance of Shane, Karina and the rest of the G20 Voice coalition. Their legacy will be that it will probably seem perfectly natural for bloggers to have similar or greater access to the next summit.

And it almost passed me by, but I think there was a historic moment for blogging in the Excel Centre when Richard Murphy - one of the G20 accredited bloggers - was called to ask the Prime Minister a question.

Here he is asking it:

And here he is reflecting on the moment afterwards:

Posted at 01:04 04 April 2009 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[5]

FCO bloggers the best in the world

Great to see our Zimbabwe bloggers listed in the Sunday Times top 100 blogs in the world. It's well deserved recognition for Philip and Grace (alongside Paul Daniels, Paris Hilton and Richard Madeley among others)  who've been telling stories that only they could tell from our embassy in Harare for the last year.

Posted at 14:18 15 February 2009 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[1]

Why would a diplomat blog - some theory and the future

Back to blogs, and why diplomats should use them.

A large part of what we do offline in the Foreign Office is engage and influence audiences in support of UK foreign policy goals.  Diplomacy is not just about states talking to states. And often the issues we work on (like climate change or counter terrorism) can't be solved by 1 state talking to another.

The internet provides us with the means to engage and influence audiences all around the world. And blogs are 1 tool that diplomats can use to talk informally with their target audience about specific foreign policy issues.

The culture of blogging helps us to talk about our work in new ways. We don't want to use blogs to make policy announcements or deliver official messages (we have other online places to do that). But blogs do allow us to:

• open up issues for wider discussion when we don't necessarily have all the answers
• add depth, context and a personal angle to the issues we're working on
• engage in conversations that we know are taking place elsewhere on the web
  

So that's the theory.

I think that our blogs are delivering some of the above now. But here are some of the things we'll be prioritising in the next few months to use our blogs better:

1. Encourage a wider range of voices on our blogs. Because we want to use blogs to talk about our work in different ways, and with different styles and tones of voice.

2. More niche blogs, with well defined objectives, linked to specific projects or campaigns. Because the web is about niches, and it's within niches that blogs can have real value. We want our bloggers to reach their particular target audiences (rather than to generate general-interest traffic).

3. Blogs that are integrated into active online debates. Because we're more likely to engage in a way that is useful to us on issues that people are already talking about online.

4. More blogs in languages other than English. Because if we want to influence local audiences, it makes sense to do it in the language they speak.

The other thing we need to do of course, is learn from others. So I'd be interested to hear what you think, particularly if you think there should be a 5th or 6th priority that we've missed.

Posted at 14:58 19 November 2008 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[4]

Why would a diplomat blog - history

Thanks for your comments on my last post. It's been an interesting week for our blogs - they've had wider attention than usual, and some may have questioned our approach as a result.

I said I'd make the case for why diplomats should blog. So, here's a quick history of Foreign Office blogs to start:

We launched our blogging platform in September 2007 by commissioning 6 bloggers who represented a good cross section of Foreign Office work.

We wanted our bloggers to tell stories, using a personal, engaging tone of voice, reaching out to new audiences, bypassing traditional media, inviting and responding to comments.

We've had a steady turnover of bloggers since then. The Hansard Society have evaluated our approach. And having proved the concept within the Foreign Office, we opened up the blogs over the summer so that any member of staff with a valid business reason could start an official blog.

We do have some rules, and we provide guidance. So we insist that our bloggers think hard about what they are trying to achieve and who their target audience is before they begin. And we ask them to commit to posting regularly and moderating comments every day. We don't tell people how to write - I don't think there's a right way to blog - but we do offer tips on effective use of the medium.

We've learned lessons from the blogs that haven't really worked. But some of our blogs have been fascinating: Sherard Cowper Coles set the tone, filming video blogs from the mountains of Afghanistan, our blogs from Zimbabwe are always interesting, and Mark Kent is demonstrating how to use blogs to engage a local audience in Vietnam.

Having demonstrated the potential value of blogs, my sense is that we now need to do more to integrate our blogs into the process of diplomacy. I'll return to how I think we can do this.

Posted at 10:25 10 November 2008 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[5]

Why would a diplomat blog?

Our blogs have received some attention in the UK press in the last few days, first in the Observer and then the Telegraph.

The articles take a well intentioned and well written blog about one of the more interesting roles in the Foreign Office (a "floating" diplomat filling urgent roles in our embassies around the world) and use it to make a wider point about the global financial crisis, highlighting the - undeniable - attractions of a short posting to our small High Commission in the Seychelles.

In troubled economic times such as these, Government officials might be forgiven for trying to portray an image of hard work and frugality. Not, it would seem, Marianne McCurrie, a roving diplomat with the Foreign Office...

I don't know Marianne, but I think she would have been surprised to have made national newspaper headlines, particularly as her blog actually answers many of the rhetorical questions the articles pose about the nature of her work.

She knows (as I, and other FCO bloggers do) that by writing a blog - by adding your thoughts, your name and your photograph to a public facing website - you make yourself a public figure in a way that government officials have never really been before. Our blogs probably do make us fair game for columnists, even if we usually have quite niche target audiences (potential recruits to the FCO in Marianne's case, the social media community in mine).

So why would a diplomat blog? Why would a government official expose themself in this way? What is to be gained by posting regular personal refections, presenting them in chronological order, and inviting comments?

I'll set out in my next few posts how we're using blogs in the Foreign Office, and why we think it's worthwhile. I'd like to hear your thoughts too.

Posted at 08:09 05 November 2008 by Stephen Hale  |  Comments[10]