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2.9 Social Media Guidelines

This section is intended for those people who are considering using social media channels for promotion of FAO’s work. FAO Staff are encouraged to familiarize themselves and make use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to promote and engage with stakeholders, Members, partners and the general public.

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 official flagship accounts on a select number of the most popular and strategic social media platforms, identified below.  The Office of Communication, Advocacy and Partnerships (OCP) is responsible for maintaining these FAO flagship accounts. No other FAO-affiliated accounts should be created on these platforms. Use of corporate 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, SlideShare and YouTube should refrain from creating their own accounts and instead contact OCP to discuss how to feed information and other content through the existing official FAO accounts. 

Guidelines on sharing information via FAO’s Corporate channels

Clearance for Official Channels

Opportunities to directly use other social media platforms, in particular Flickr, Twitter and Wikipedia, do exist and are discussed later in this document. Before establishing an FAO-affiliated account, you must meet with OCP to register the account, agree on the account’s name, and receive a briefing. 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.

For any questions or requests regarding social media, contact OCP at Social-media@fao.org.