Social Media Policy
Social media and its use at FAO
Social media has become the preferred communications channel and has significantly changed the way we communicate online. Social media tools have made it easy to connect, engage and interact with other people, in many ways making communication an instant and two-way conversation. These tools provide FAO opportunities to advocate and promote its work, engage with stakeholders, and increase the visibility of its work.
FAO is already using social media to share its work, contribute to global dialogue in its areas of expertise, report from events taking place in-house as well as field visits, and most importantly engage in a dialogue with stakeholders, partners, advocates and anyone who is interested in our work.
FAO presence on social media platforms
Like other international agencies, FAO maintains institutional social media accounts on a select number of the most popular and strategic social media networking platforms, identified below. The Office for Corporate Communication (OCC) is responsible for FAO's overall presence on social media. No FAO-affiliated accounts should be created without prior consultation with OCC. Use of institutional accounts allows us to:
- ensure a strong FAO presence instead of a diluted one
- build a large community of followers – which in turn helps promote our work to as wide an audience as possible
- reduce the resource requirements from each individual unit, project and programme to maintain up-to-date individual presence on these channels – followers expect FAO accounts to be active and useful.
Employees or units wishing to communicate via Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube should refrain from creating their own accounts and instead contact OCC to discuss how to feed information and other content through the existing official FAO accounts.
All employees are encouraged to read the ground rules.
Guidelines on sharing information via FAO’s institutional channels
Clearance for Official Channels
Before establishing an FAO-affiliated account in X, you must send a request to OCC. You should be prepared to articulate:
- specific objectives for and benefits of the account,
- your target audience (where are they based, language, etc.) and how the account helps reach them,
- how the account will add value and complement existing FAO accounts,
- what is your content plan for the account,
- what time and resources you will be able to allocate to account management, and
- how you plan to respond if online criticisms or attacks escalate into a crisis.
Creation of institutional accounts in social media platforms such as Vimeo, Picasa, Blogs, Pinterest, ISSUU, PREZI, Instagram, TikTok, Weibo and WeChat is not allowed.
For any questions or requests regarding social media, contact OCC at [email protected].