Apparently, the State Department is really, really concerned about the number of people that “like” it on Facebook:
Ostensibly web-savvy State Department employees spent $630,000 to earn more Facebook “likes,” in an effort that struggled to reach its target audience, according to a searing Inspector General’s report from May.
Between 2011 and March 2013, the department’s Bureau of the International Information Programs, tried to boost the seeming popularity of the department’s Facebook properties by advertising and page improvements. But the results weren’t so good, leaving the Inspector General with no choice but to send a frank message to the bureau’s Facebook gurus: You’re doing it wrong.
“Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as ‘buying fans’ who may have once clicked on an ad or ‘liked’ a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further,” reads the Inspector General report.
Ultimately, the spending was successful in artificially increasing apparent popularity of the bureau’s English-language Facebook page from 100,000 likes to 2 million. But the IG said the bureau’s target audience is older, more influential individuals; not the kind of people who spend hours online liking government Facebook pages, in other words. “What is the proper balance between engaging young people and marginalized groups versus elites and opinion leaders?” asks the IG report. It also didn’t help that in 2012 Facebook tweaked the mechanics of its News Feed, making static fan pages less prominent in users’ feeds. (Last year, a number of news organizations also suffered similar engagement issues from such tweaks)
The IG report stings — especially because the Bureau of International Information and Programs is supposed to be Foggy Bottom’s epicenter of online savvy. The bureau includes groovy-sounding divisions such as the Office of Innovative Engagement, which evangelizes on the “importance of using online engagement to drive offline, person-to-person activities and events.” The bureau’s stated mission is to be Foggy Bottom’s “foreign-facing public diplomacy communications bureau” and supports its “growing social media community that numbers over 22 million followers.”
With war in Syria, revolt brewing in Egypt, and the Korean Peninsula always a tinderbox, I’m glad to see that the guys at Foggy Bottom have their priorities straight.
