The Importance of Blogging

Blogging can be an immensely rewarding experience for companies and organizations. When used correctly, a blog can create greater brand awareness and engagement with its target audience. One of my favourite things about blogs are the discussions that come out of the posts; sometimes the comments section is better than reading the blog post itself. 

I believe international development blogs are important in a different respect to a corporate blog. I’m not saying one is more important than the other, just that their objectives are slightly different. More often than not, the purpose of an international development blog is to bring light to and discuss stories that are not often reported in mainstream media and the sharing of thoughts and ideas form an important part of these blogs. In this sense, engagement with the audience is very important for a successful international development blog in order to generate discussion, and many of the popular blogs thrive in this area. With that being said, there are some areas where international development blogs in general could benefit from a few tweaks.

1. More Personality

Even though there’s always plenty to read and most blogs are updated on a regular basis, the general nature of international development is quite serious. One thing that I find lacking is personality to these blogs. It would be nice to see these blogs add more personality to the mix, maybe by adding some humour or satire to their blogs.

2. Inspire

Most matters relating to international development are fairly heavy and negative, and in the comments section everyone’s a critic. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to read something nice once in a while? That’s why I think it would be beneficial for these blogs to incorporate more positive content in their posts to help inspire people to make a change in the world

3. Short and Sweet

International development is such a broad topic and there is so much information to share about all facets of the subject. It’s certainly a complex subject as well, which means that many blogs have incredibly long posts. I’m talking essay-style long. To keep readers more engaged and interactive it would definitely be worth condensing some of the material. 

So in the name of taking my own advice, I’m going to keep this post short and sweet. In the past several weeks, I’ve learned the importance of blogging and creating two-way conversations with audiences. The benefits of using blogging as a social media tool can be outstanding, reaching so many users around the world to help connect and share ideas. 

Habitat for Humanity: Tracking Social Media Impact

Habitat for Humanity: Tracking Social Media Impact

Habitat for Humanity is an international non-profit organization that plays a great role in working towards a world where everyone has a safe and decent place to live. Thousands of volunteers come together to help build homes for those in need, with Habitat for Humanity helping to build or repair over 800,000 houses over the years.

Habitat for Humanity has an active social media platform, and has a presence on sites ranging from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, to Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and their Habitat World blog.

Tracking social media platforms can be useful for organizations to help evaluate their social media efforts and to understand how the organization is being perceived on social media. This week, I’ve decided to review two tracking tools, HowSociable and Social Mention, that can help Habitat for Humanity gauge how they are being received on social media. Using examples of conversations found through these tools, we’ll be able to evaluate the sentiments of Habitat for Humanity.

In order to get started, we need to assign some values to evaluate the sentiments towards Habitat for Humanity. A score of -1 will be given to negative comments, 0 will be given to neutral comments, and finally a score of +1 will be given to positive comments.

The following chart was taken from HowSociable and shows that Habitat for Humanity has a brand impact score of 5.8 (out of 10) between June 9, 2014 – June 16, 2014. This number indicates the level of activity around the brand in a given week from across 36 different social media websites.

Now let’s take a look at some of the conversations going on about Habitat for Humanity.

Conversation #1

Sentiment: 0

Conversation #2

Sentiment: 0

Conversation #3

Sentiment: +1

Conversation #4

Sentiment: 0

Conversation #5

Sentiment: +1

Conversation #6

Sentiment: 0

Conversation #7

Sentiment: +1

Conversation #8

Sentiment: +1

Conversation #9

Sentiment: +1

Conversation #10

Sentiment: 0

So what does this all mean?

In the end, the sentiment grade for my sample of conversations regarding Habitat for Humanity was +5. There were lots of positive conversations about Habitat for Humanity, people thanking them for various reasons. Many conversations were also updates on projects and events so I rated those as neutral.

One last screenshot will show you what conclusions came from Social Mention:

Overall, it seems that Habitat for Humanity has an average presence in social media and most of the sentiments are neutral.

 

Happiness Economics

Happiness economics is a new field emerging in international development that focuses on understanding what makes each person happy and tailoring development policy to promote personal wellbeing. Christian Kroll discusses this topic further in his article “What makes people happy and why it matters for development”.

The UN released a report last year that found Canada to be the 6th happiest nation in the world! So what makes you guys happy?

 

Top Ten International Development Blogs

With the topic of this class being social media, I thought it would be a nice idea to share with you some top international development blogs. There are plenty of interesting international development blogs out there, but I’ve compiled a list of my top ten favourite sites to visit. Without further ado, and in no particular order, let’s get started.

1. Africa is a Country 

Africa is a Country is an ironically named blog that features a collective of scholars, writers, artists, filmmakers, bloggers, and curators who together produce online commentary, original writing, short videos, and photography.

2. Social Media for Good 

Social Media for Good is run by a self-employed communications expert who has helped humanitarian organizations and NGOs to solve their information management and communications challenges, including the effective use of social media.

3. Global Voices Online

Global Voices is an international community of bloggers who report on blogs and citizen media from around the world. More than 800 bloggers and translators around the world work together to bring reports from voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media.

4. Blood and Milk

Blood and Milk is run by Alanna Sheik, who has been working in international development for a decade. She believes that international development should be implemented by professionals who know what they are doing, and that it should be efficient, effective, and evidence-based. Her blog is full of lots of practical advice as well.

5. Poverty Matters   

Poverty Matters is the Guardian UK’s Global Development Blog. It collects blogs from several partners, including Global Voices, and offers readers a wide range of blog posts. It has a large and varied audience so the engagement level is quite high on this blog.

6. From Poverty to Power 

From Poverty to Power is a conversational blog written and maintained by Duncan Green, who is the strategic adviser for Oxfam UK. He offers his personal thoughts on issues relating to international development.

7. Social Media for Development

Social Media for Development brings those who are interested in social media usage for international development together in one space to discuss effective ways to use social media in the venue.

8. Chris Blattman 

Chris Blattman is an associate professor at Columbia University in the department of Political Science and the School of International and Public Affairs. He is also an adviser to the International Rescue Committee and the World Bank, and has many interesting thoughts and discussions on his blog.

9. Owen Abroad

Owen Abroad is run by Owen Barder, who is a Senior Fellow and Director for Europe at the Center for Global Development and an Associate of the British Institute for Government. He blogs about development and runs a podcast called Development Drums.

10. Project Syndicate 

Project Syndicate has provided readers with original, engaging, and thought-provoking commentaries by those who are at the forefront of the world’s economic, political, scientific, and cultural policy. Contributors include former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics.   

Happy reading!

   

 

 

 

Transparency

Transparency. Characterized by visibility and accessibility of information, especially concerning business practices. It’s about how much you share while trying to build or maintain a positive reputation for your organization. It’s about sharing information that represents the behaviours and values of your organization. It’s about telling the truth and keeping an honest dialogue going.

For organizations with a social media presence, transparency is vital. If social media’s goal is to create on-going, lasting relationships with people, there must be a level of transparency in order to create trust and maintain these relationships.

As Lida Citroen discusses in her blog post Social Media Transparency: You are what you post, being the same person online and in the flesh is important to achieving transparency. All social media accounts should match how you would be in real life because when people see a disconnect between what you say you believe and how you act, then distrust and suspicion build.

Ultimately then, it can be said that transparency is important to social media practices so that organizations can build trust and facilitate long term relationships with people. Social media is a tool and so it has to be used properly in order for it to function. If transparency is not present, then the tool is not being used properly and it will not be effective. Transparency is there to create harmony between what you say you’ll do and what you actually do. Trust is key here. Without trust there can be no positive relationship between organizations and consumers.

This is not to say that we need to disclose absolutely everything. Transparency should also be relevant to the subject matter, what someone ate for breakfast is not relevant to the social media campaign of a major organization.

Transparency plays an important role outside of social media as well. I’d like to connect this topic with international development, because after all that’s what this blog is about. 

In terms of international development, transparency is crucial to the effectiveness of any development policy. Let’s take foreign aid as an example. Canada’s foreign aid policy aims to help people living in poverty in developing countries by supporting initiatives that are sustainable, have impact, and achieve results. The government has chosen three priority themes to focus on: increasing food security, securing the future of children and youth, and stimulating sustainable economic growth. 

The funding for these initiatives comes from the taxes that we as citizens pay and so it’s important that the government is transparent so that we can see that we know our tax dollars went where government said it was going to go.  We need to trust that the assistance is actually going to initiatives that are helping people, rather than ending up in the hands of corrupt leaders and elsewhere. It also allows citizens of developing countries to better understand what aid their country is receiving, so they can hold their governments accountable as well. In order to create transparency, the Canadian government established the Aid Effectiveness Agenda, which provides Canadians with regular reports on the plans, activities, and results of the initiatives. 

All in all, if an organization is open and honest, a transparent relationship will evolve and everyone will benefit in the end.

 

 

 

 

Introductions

Hi all,

Welcome to my blog. My name is Anna Switzer and I am passionate about international development. International development is a loaded word, but have no fear – for those of you who aren’t familiar with this topic my intention is to bring you up to speed on some issues that are facing international communities. I stumbled upon international development in my undergraduate days at the University of Calgary and I haven’t looked back since, eventually going on to pursue my MA at Uppsala University. My goal with this blog is to share thoughts, ideas, and stories about international development and I encourage everyone to engage in positive, thought-provoking discussions.

Cheers!