Posts Tagged: FCO

Getting the digital debate going on #Londoncyber

Statistically, there’s (almost) certainly a correlation between chandeliers and successful diplomacy. I might not be able to prove it, but over the years, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has conducted its high-level business in high-ceilinged rooms, chandeliers all a-glitter above the men in suits. So the upcoming London Conference on Cyberspace is a very differentRead… Read more »

International and hyperlocal – taking the message to market

Occasionally, I’m asked to do presentations and discuss what the Foreign Office does, digitally speaking. The fact I never get asked twice by the same people is something I prefer to gloss over. What I try and get across in these explanations of strategy is that if we’re trying to communicate, we have to takeRead… Read more »

What a football club can teach the Foreign Office about social media

It’s not often that Joey Barton crops up in international diplomacy. For those who don’t know him, he’s a premiership footballer, currently with Newcastle United (though not for much longer). Talented, but bogged down with ‘anger management issues’, he’s in dispute with his employers for tweeting about internal issues. Transfer-listed and made to train onRead… Read more »

Is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office a brand?

Talk of government departments as ‘brands’ makes many civil servants uneasy. If they wanted that sort of talk, they’d go to Hoxton, not Whitehall. Yet when the concept of, for example, the FCO as a brand comes under some threat, then there’s a different kind of uneasiness. That uneasiness includes me – earlier this week,Read… Read more »

The Foreign Office on Foursquare

The regular reader of these chunterings will have noticed a pattern. How you decipher that pattern is up to you. Where I see the ‘dissemination of relevant content through all available channels to established audiences across the digital sphere’, you might see ‘obsessive bandwagon jumping, ticking off social media trying to look trendy’. Either way,Read… Read more »

The rules of engagement on social media

Digital diplomacy is a two-way street – once an organisation like the Foreign Office is publishing news, comment, and policy information on the internet , then it needs to learn how to listen and respond too.At ministerial level, this is a problem of opportunity and timetabling more than anything. Opportunities for participation on television andRead… Read more »

Learning to relax about (new) apps and (old) government brands

You’ll have noticed the drift towards freeing up the information of the UK’s Foreign Office for others to use – the feeds, the API, the social media, and so on. Getting our travel advice especially into the sites, widgets, pages, applications that others are using is hugely important. We have to take this stuff toRead… Read more »