 Hello everyone and welcome to our weekly workshop. This is Luca from MCD and Kay is from Manila. I'm keeping her in the office a bit late today. Hi everyone. So today we're going to... Oh sorry there is a message. Can you hear us by the way? Can everyone hear properly like is the volume okay? Is it clear? Yes? Yes. Okay. Perfect, so we'll start. We're going to keep the presentation as short as we can because what we want to do is take some questions and discuss with you what are the best ways to use this new platform. I mean it's not a new platform, it's new for IOM. And we hope you find it useful. So today we're going to talk about medium, what is medium and how can IOM make the most out of this blogging platform which was co-founded a few years ago by one of Twitter's first executives who left the company around 2012 to turn this, what you see now, into a 60 million people worth pool of readers according to latest statistics. It's a relatively small company, it only has 50 employees and as of a couple of weeks back they have also turned the platform into, they've created a premium account so it's a free platform but for those who are more interested to get exclusive content with a $5 membership per month you'll be able to access podcasts and more exclusive content from top influencers but that's not something that we're interested in at the moment. So we're going to introduce medium which we believe might be a good alternative for missions that don't have the capacity or enough content to produce a shortened story. So a shortened has been already introduced last year in 2016 and we have had some wonderful stories on our featured on our website and medium operates in a similar way can be used in a similar way. The main difference as we'll see later is that one is embedded, one story, a shortened is embedded on our website, the other one it's an app that you can find on your smartphone. So the way we consume the content is different but both platforms are very useful and we believe that IOM and missions and divisions and departments can make good use of it. So again, maybe you want to take the first couple of slides. Sure. Okay, so like what Luca said, medium is a blogging platform. Everybody on Twitter who has the medium account automatically follows the same account who has the medium account. So for example, on our Twitter account, we have more than 50,000 followers and everybody there who has a medium account automatically will follow us on the other platform. So it's like a prerequisite of Twitter pretty much. So medium is a platform where everybody can tell the story, share it and the best stories are delivered straight to the public in an easy and accessible way. So yeah, like what Luca said, 16 million users ready to meet over there and the good thing about sharing anything on medium is that it is a go-to platform for discerning readers, readers who actually love to read and then readers who are, we call them agenda setting bloggers and influencers. Next slide, Luca. So what kind of stories we should post on our medium account? So this one is already posted there but basically we're gonna post the photo on the slide. It's already online on our medium account if you wanna check it out, so really good one. So what do we post? Photo essay, images, at least five images, but really on this account, on this platform, you don't really need like super really good photos but if you have them, it would be great but without photos, it's also gonna work. So that and then op-eds, short feature stories from the field. So these are technically stories that usually don't go out on shorthand and other platforms because those platforms need photos, videos, et cetera, but for just words and just short stories, you can immediately post it on the medium account. And then human interest stories, profiles covering IOMs, work with migrants, stories that support existing campaigns that's for example, I'm a migrant and teasers of existing content. Next slide. For instance, we had a couple of projects like IOMX, our first piece was produced by them and it was an interesting story about viral video on Facebook, which was, I think, viewed by 77 million people in the Asia Pacific region after which prime minister shared it on his account? Oh, well, my president, like a private page of our flipping president shared it and it became viral in the Philippines as well, so. Yes, sorry. So as we said, medium is, can be the right choice for every single employee at IOM and unlike other platform, it is specifically intended by Kasey to host written content. So even if the audiovisual side of it is very important and captivating because especially the cover photo should be one that grabs the attention, the title and the cover photo should be the one that grabbed the attention of the reader. We really want to emphasize that this is a blogging platform, so the main source will be the story, the content. So we believed in this case for medium, we would like to host stories, as we said already, that are too short to be published on Shorten. So when we have, when we receive at MCDNSU a story that we believe should not be featured on Shorten, we suggest medium as an alternative and it's not because medium is less interesting or because Shorten has more features, but it's simply that Shorten is specifically designed to host longer stories and the way it works, the way medium works instead is, the way the platform works is specifically designed to host stories that, which can be read in no more than three to five minutes. And in fact, at the beginning of each blog you will see that medium suggests how many minutes you will take to read the story. And I hardly see or read a story that will take more than four minutes of my time. So it's designed to basically occupy a few minutes of your days, specifically in the morning or when you have a lunch break or when you want to read a short story, while on Shorten of course we'll have, we could spend up to 15, 20 minutes if the story is very dense. Also in case we don't have enough visual content, so if, as you all see on Shorten, we usually have photo essays and we tend to upload videos. Medium can host videos, but the difference on medium is that each video that can be uploaded needs to come already from YouTube. So we will never probably recommend more than one for each story. The difference that we have on Medium and the only probably feature that we can't find on Shorten and that probably would interest those who like me are very geeky in terms of social media is that we can feature tweets. So if we are analyzing a specific trend or a specific moment or if you're maybe analyzing, let's say World Refugees Day, one option is on Twitter to create a series of moments. Another option is to analyze perhaps the content and why the campaign went viral by picking up the best tweets of the day and analyzing how the campaign went. And that can be easily done on Medium. So if any of you is currently working on a campaign or wants to present a successful viral video that they had on a specific platform, then a case study could be presented on Medium and we encourage that. A third cluster would be personal experiences, account of IOM staff members. Again, if you have a specific emergency that you're currently facing and you don't have enough time to write a Shorten account, an interesting thing could be as we suggest usually now to record a couple of tweets, video tweets, describing the current situation. For instance, if we're in South Sudan and there is a, and one of your project is delivering 50 million liters of water to a specific community, then what the PI could do is record a couple of videos on Twitter, a couple of short statements from maybe the chief of mission again on Twitter and then create a very nice story with a few photos and a couple of tweets featured on Medium and it could be as short as 150 words. But then the advantage is that once the story is published on Medium, on the global account, it's accessible to everyone. So everyone can share that story on their personal accounts, on their missions account or on their website. If they have one, they can simply copy paste or get in touch with the PI and get the content. Again, quick reactions by a PI spokesperson on a relevant news event. This is really important. In case, for instance, there is an emergency and you don't have access to your website or you don't have access to MCD or OCU because it's a Sunday, an easy option might be to get in touch with us through WhatsApp or email and then we could quickly help to draft a short statement for Medium. And then again, stories of beneficiaries. This is really useful in case you want to discuss migration stories, migrant stories. And I'm not just thinking about, I'm a migrant, I'm thinking about IMX, I'm thinking about six degrees of separation. The project we were introduced last week on human trafficking. I'm thinking about specific stories of beneficiaries. And again, if you don't have enough content and we don't have the time to help you with a shortened story, we're very happy to help you with a more compact story on Medium. Yeah, okay, I guess, I can hear my voice. Yes. Yeah, another one would be, I'm sure some of you have experience in writing a PBN, but it's not going to be, it's not part of the roster that we send globally. And usually the option would be to distribute it locally. One way where we can put some mileage on that is to also make a Medium blog and then post it on Medium and then have more diverse audience than just the local one. And obviously when you do that, you try to direct it on a different way where it will interest people outside of your country. And yeah, so it's also an option for that. Kay, do you want to play in back to this part? Okay, so what are the differences of Medium to the other platforms that we already have? So we already touched base on Shorthand a bit, but let's just talk about Weblog first. So for those of you, I'm sure everybody have heard that we have a Weblog site on the website. So it's where we post all of the blogs from all over the world. Some of you may be asking why we need Medium when we already have a Weblog page. I think the sensible answer to that is, Medium has a ready audience. Like we have people going on Medium every day. And for example, just one post that we did that I posted on the Weblog and then I posted on Medium. On Medium, in a day, it has more than 300 views on Weblog, no shares. So from there, you can see how much this one, you can see the stats. This is also a good advantage, especially for Luca and I. We do the social media audit. You can see how posts are performing every day. And it's hard to get that on our Weblog page, but here on Medium, you can see everything, the views, the reads, recommendation. This really, you can see what kind of trends are happening and what kinds of posts are working and what doesn't. And then help and get those information and eventually help us in our future posts. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, and what else? I think that's the biggest difference with Weblog and Medium is that the audience is there, people are reading, and you don't have to share and share and share just to get people to read whatever is written on the Weblog. Yeah, and it's a comparative advantage that also Medium, unlike the Weblog, is an app. So it gives you comparative advantages when it comes to the layout. It's, and I will show you a couple of photos. Medium is optimized for your smartphone. So when you open a story, you will see that on the desktop, it looks in a specific way, but when you read it on your smartphone, which is the intended final destination, then the layout will be very, very pleasant and very concise. So we really want to try to boost it also because we have access to other medium accounts, including the one managed by the United Nations called We The People. This is the blog managed, a Medium account managed by DPI, and we are very welcome to submit stories, especially when they're linked to the Join Together campaign, or if there's specific stories with a specific interest that might be welcomed by the team in New York. You see the UNHCR and the UN Human Rights Agency have already submitted a few stories, UNDP as well, we might as well do so. Of course, as we explained to you how we're gonna edit and what's the process, the editing process, needless to say, when we submit process to the UN, when we submit blogs to the UN Medium, MCD and OCEO will have to review the content, obviously. But I'll let Kay finish, and then we're maybe gonna show you a couple of stories that they already produced before we go to the Q&A. Kay, you wanna go ahead with the dissemination? Yeah, sure. I think we missed a couple of points on the previous slide. So I think we already pretty much said everything, the difference between Medium and Short-Hand. Medium and PBNs. PBNs, as we know, is our more formal way of presenting data and news to a lot of our readers, and we send this globally, internally and externally. But Medium is, it's still formal, but it's easier, it's catered mostly to readers who doesn't know or are not from our network immediately. So for example, the PBNs, we have a distribution list that we send our things to, and obviously these are people who are in touch with us before or knows about us, but Medium, we try to reach people outside of our usual audience. So I think that's a big difference between the two. Yeah. And I'm just peeking out of the blue. It's also a very interesting platform if you have to showcase data. So for instance, for Missing Migrant Project, it would be a really cool way, an interesting way to present data about the Mediterranean or about even human trafficking with a combination of tweets, videos and photos presented in a more compelling way. So that would be, just today we, I sent an email to all the social media focal points. That was an interesting address here plus live video yesterday, which quoted IOM and was discussing the migration and refugee situation in the Mediterranean. And at the same time, K shared very interesting Medium blog which was of course linked to the Facebook live but presented the data in a very cohesive way. And that's a very interesting one. Yeah, it's like a weekly digest, precisely. So onto probably the most boring part of the presentation but it didn't necessary. So how to get your blog posted on Medium. Okay, go ahead. Well, first of all, you write your blog and then you send it over to MCD Manila and MCD Geneva. And we have assigned them editors who are going to look and see what needs to be done if there is. And then once approved by our editors, we look out and I will post it on the Medium account. And then obviously we're gonna disseminate it to other platforms, Twitter, Facebook and share it with everyone as well. So you can be alerted that there's something new and that you can share it as well on your respective mission and thematic platforms. Yeah, so we're actually gonna need the help of regional communications coordinators to help us in the future to translate all of our blogs in French and Spanish. So we, yeah, that's a long-term goal that Luca and I wrote in the initial proposal that we did is that to have it in three different languages. But now we have it in English, but in the future we are very much looking forward to have it also in French and Spanish. Yeah, it will also depends on how much time the special regional coordinator in West Africa and South America can spend. So we'll have a separate conversation with Juliana from South America, Jorge from Central America and Tej for Western Africa to see if they will have the time not just to translate but to curate posts coming from the region. We're trying to give more space to other languages as well. And hopefully when the regional communication coordinator in Cairo will begin his or her term, we'll be able to perhaps do it in Arabic. But these are all separate conversations that we'll have with the specific offices. So that's it for now. We're gonna just show you a couple of stories that we have already produced and then it's time for Q&As. So just to give you an idea, we've launched the IAM account two weeks ago and we have 10 stories. I think this one could be interesting to show. Actually, I'm gonna show you two stories. One, here we go. This is pretty much a blog that follows a trend which was launched by the World Economic Forum a couple of years ago. They were the first organization to reach five million weekly users because they were using this particular way of creating headlines, five trends of 2015, the four trends of the post-revolution of the post-industrial era, et cetera, et cetera. An interesting way to present perhaps more technical analysis of migration would be to present something like this article which sums up the three recommendations to improve global migration government. This is an article that was written by Olivia here at MCD on occasion of the GCM thematic discussion at Palais. And as you can see, the article, the structure is very, very, very simple. We have access to media library if you don't have, if you have very generic blog on migration, we can ask our photographers to help us with one photo that could be attached to it. And then you see the structure is very, very, very easy and it's divided in three main parts. First one, the second and third recommendation. And what we can do is even now that it's been edited, we can still change the image. So I can work on the size of the image if I want to. I can add another photo. I can add a video from YouTube. I can add a tweet, et cetera, et cetera. And then I can always go back and publish. One interesting advantage that we have on media is that we can tag stories with specific content. So for instance, migration, government, global compact migrants, if I want to, for instance, add United Nations, the program automatically tells me that there are 2,600 other stories that with the same line. So what it means is that once we create, once users create a profile on Medium, they will be able to submit certain interests to the algorithm and they will be recommended specific stories every time they log in to the homepage. So we can only add five tags in total, but by adding the tags, we can make sure to reach more users who are interested in a specific topic. And that's a function we don't have on the website, we don't have on short term, we don't have on the blog, but we have on Medium. So that's a comparative advantage. I think it's comparable to the hashtag system of Twitter. So when you try to look for a topic, you try to look at using a hashtag and then it's all of the tweets using that hashtag is going to be there. So it's the same for Medium. This is another story from the Lost Voice series which was created in a collaboration with the office in Dakar. And this was a story of, you see the structure is very similar to short term, but the story is much shorter. And it's the story of a 12 year old child who was forced to leave his mother and hoping to make it to Europe and then went through some rough experience before being reunited. And as you can see, you have the stories and you can add quotes, you can add links to tweets, you can add links to other articles from Medium or from external sources. So if you have a data report, a PDF file that's on the website that we want people to refer to, you can add it as a hyperlink here. You can add stories and then you see a video. The only difference you have from short term, well, it's the same, and again, it needs to be uploaded first on the, the platform and then in the room. And here. So you can see the layout is very clean. And as you can see here at the top, the program suggests it will take you three minutes to read the story. So it's less elaborated than short term, but still very, very neat. And the design is clean. And at the bottom you will have, because you have specific tags, you will have recommended reads. And that's why tags become a key feature once we publish. So this is it for now. I think we can open the floor if there are questions, comments, concerns, et cetera, et cetera. Even if you guys have questions, of course, just let us know. If you can, if you can. Yes. Please go ahead. Well, like a first or somebody else wants to jump in, I don't mind. Joe, go ahead. You can go first. R.K. here. Very nice presentation. Well done. And I did start using Medium in Asia Pacific last year. And I, you know, it was very, very easy to use. Very quick way of getting stuff published. But we didn't have any time to invest in it. So we just played around with it and reposted some stuff there. But it was really quite good. So congratulations. Looks good. Just a few comments and a few questions, they may, are probably going to take about five minutes if you don't mind. I think the first thing to say is absolutely crucial if you watch the work, and particularly if you want stuff translated. Is to sell this to the chief submission and to the regional chief submission. I guess that Richard in Dakar will go for it straight away. But I think that we should use opportunities like Chris has this week. I think I'm not sure this week or next when he's presenting to the chief submissions in Asia Pacific to run this presentation to say this is what we're going to be doing. Because a lot of them will be aware of Medium, but won't know much else about it. And I think it will be good. And you already have a nicely populated site to show them. So the key is with the chief submission, if they want to invest in it or to invest time in it, then it will work. And if we don't seduce them early on, it'll just have perhaps wither on the vine, which will be a pity because it is definitely an asset. You mentioned languages. We could see in this region whether there will be a possibility of putting up blogs in Russian. Does Medium allow that? Okay, you can answer that later on. Yeah, I think it will be a really good idea. If when you're signing up for Medium, you get a choice of all the different areas to be in various different, the future is one. Sport is another cyber security, another about 20 or 30 different boxes you can take. And then you're to your news. Could we get touch of Medium, put migration as a theme there for people interested? It's not there now. It's humanitarian there either. So that will be a nice thing to do. So if you would actually subscribe, you can get views on migration. Ted, that it was better for presenting data than short-hand. I'd actually take exception. I don't think we've tried yet to really show our data particularly well on short-hand. But I think short-hand does have a lot more bells and whistles, particularly for showing animated maps and so on. So I wouldn't like to see us giving up on the idea of data presentation. In fact, I'd like to see some people. I actually thought that Dan would be doing that early on when we got into short-hand. We spoke about it, but it never happened. That some of the mapping and ETM stuff could be represented very nicely on short-hand. And again, they can be duplicated on Medium, but you have a lot more to offer, data representation on short-hand than you do on Medium. But I agree Medium is way easier to use. The last thing, yeah, as... No, I think they can't hear you well. Did you get any of that? Yeah, we got it, but Asha was thinking... She just left a comment and she said she can't hear you well. So, Dan, do you want me to summarize what I said very quickly? Please. So, okay. I think we should contact Medium and ask them to put migration as a subject that people could choose the same way they have other subjects. That's one thing. Second thing, crucial to sell this to Chief Submission through the regional directors, particularly at the regional policy forum meetings, such as Chris Lom is doing this week in Bavaria. Queens, if they don't buy into things, they don't happen. So, if they don't buy into things, they don't happen. Thirdly, I asked, can we provide them in Russian? Yes, I think they're in Russian. Like I said, I don't agree that Medium is better for presenting data. I think it's different. I think Short-hand has a lot more tools to visualize data better, but it's not being tried. I hope that we should have time to do that very, very quickly. I think the product is not very simple. I had to come to the clinic and it has been sent to me by DeadPassport. Why not? So, I think that data representation on Short-hand, just yet, I think we should try that again. Medium is definitely cleaner and much easier to use the blogging platform than Short-hand. That's not under question. I'm delighted to be using it. I think it's a great idea. Finally, on autonomy to post, I don't want to get in a situation where I want to post something and I'm told that I can't do it because there's five other things in the pipeline. So, I think we need to either have autonomy for the regional offices as parts of MCD to post when they need or just a good agreement and good information on what's being posted when and why. Okay. I think Kate can certainly share the presentation with Chris and perhaps I can share it and we can probably send it to all regional coordinators after this presentation. Or I can actually just share the PowerPoint with all social media focal points and they can present it to the chief of missions if needed or they can get in touch with us for languages. I think right now the idea was to stick to English, French and Spanish, but probably we can have a separate conversation with regional offices who might need other languages. So, yeah, of course, we can probably discuss how to present in other languages. It's not just other languages, it's specifically Russian because we don't have materials for the global compact discussions available in Russian and the submission in the Russian speaking world are embarrassed by that and the window when they present to governments, they're being told, why aren't you doing this in Russian? It's an official UN language and explaining that we joined the UN without the obligation to use Russian and Chinese doesn't cut it. So it's not just other languages, it is specifically Russian, I'm asking about. Russian, Chinese and Arabic, probably. Well, not much Chinese and Arabic spoken in my region, so I'll let them fight for their own corner. Yeah, I guess that's again, yeah, we will need to probably also have a discussion with the GCM to see whether they think it's good. I'm sure they do. It's probably also a matter of capacity, but if the office in Russian has the capacity, I think of course. Then getting in touch with medium, I guess, yes, I'll send them an email. There is a tag that we can already use tags, migration and migrants, but probably they could have a feature, yeah, a specific area on the landing page on this subject. Perhaps it's a good idea. And on post, again, I'm not sure about that. That will again, we'll have to discuss with every region separately, because in the end, I think we'd have to keep some sort of control and MCD and OSU and it takes us a few minutes to publish a post, but we'll have to be the ones publishing it, because it needs to be validated. But again, we'll see, we'll probably have a separate discussion. I don't want to see the happening, it happens with Facebook that basically it's while we have the possibility to publish directly, we don't do it because of various reasons. We are also MCD and OSU here and in Bangkok and in Pretoria. We're part of the same team. So if we need to post, then either it's got to be formalized that no one's allowed to post except HQ and Geneva, or it's got to be a little more democratic. We'll see about that. I think it's just a matter of having the content validated by the editors. Do you have Itai, Manila and then Olivia here in Geneva? And then of course we have Chris in Bangkok and here and Chiara in Pretoria is that we do the work at MCD in the field and if our work is going to be edited in Geneva, that's another conversation and that's something that the Chris and I and Nanod and Chiara need to talk about. We'll talk about it separately and see what the best solution is. We meaning the region coordinators, not we in Geneva. In MCD, OSU and regional coordinators together we'll talk and find a solution to this issue. But sure, let's discuss it. Let's find the best solution for everyone and for each language, especially the official languages of IEM and the UN to have their space if possible and if the capacity is there. Certainly, that's something to keep in mind and to as soon as possible. Let's do a lot more. I mean, it has to be done kind of ad hoc in Russian, particularly for World Days. And so we managed to do a really nice job for the materials on World TV thanks to IEM Moldova. So the ideas around and make that accessible to all the Russians of the world. Yeah, no, of course, of course. Thank you for this question. We'll probably take the conversation to maybe emails and email thread with all the regional coordinators as well as Leonard and Tai from MCD and OSU. Jorge has a question as well. Yeah, I'm on camera. Just a couple of questions about... It's been on camera, camera. You can see. Hi. So you were mentioning that the audience of your medium account is linked somehow to your followers on Twitter or did I just understand? Some of them, some of them, those who are following us on the global account who have a medium account are automatically connected. Oh, okay. Those who have an account are medium and follow you. Not me. Well, follow IEM Global. Yeah, and then we can collect, I mean, we can gather more followers and through the stories and through partnerships, for instance, by writing stories on the UN account or on We The People. Or by, for instance, co-authoring a story with other UN agencies or the ICRC. Most UN agencies do have a medium account by now and we can co-author with them. Because you were mentioning that you were comparing the type of impacts of medium story compared to the weblog entry and doesn't mean that you have much wider visibility on medium because basically once you post something on medium it goes automatically into the Twitter account and then you have to share it. We share it. Something you have to do. So we share it. We probably share a couple of them. I mean, the most relevant one can be shared also on Facebook depending on the quality. But it's the same processes for shortened stories. When we have shortened stories, we are 100% sure that the photos attached, the videos attached are good quality. If the story on medium is relevant we have a high resolution photo of a migrant. Of course, if it's an institutional event, it might be for Twitter. But even if it's related to the global compact we can find photos, generic photos of migrants and migration on the web, on the media library and then use them. And then in that case it could be featured on both Twitter and Facebook or even prepped up in maybe three points and posted on other platforms. We can also create Instagram stories and link them to the medium account. So in case we have a series of interesting photos for each medium story or even just one good photo we can take and basically crop the photo to fit the screen. Portrait, yeah. And then the story on Instagram which will last for 24 hours can be linked to people can swipe up and be more, yeah, read the article directly on medium. So that's a third possibility. Yeah. And then my second question was about the tagging system because when we're talking, for example, to LHD about drafting PVNs it's important for the PVN to feature automatically on our web pages to have the proper tagging, right? But I see that there's a list that's quite long and also some of the thematic tags are overlapping. So we have integration and then you have migration and integration and then you have something else that relates to it. So I wonder if you're going to pretty much replicate the tagging system that you have for the PVNs onto medium or you're gonna come up with a completely new tagging system. You're gonna try to sort of create. I think it's better here to be as simple as we can. So to use the tag migration as much as we can and then to link it, for instance, if it's human trafficking, also looking at how popular each tag is. So maybe depending on the story, we can try different tags. Like we come up with 10 words and we write the words you see here. We only have up to five tags. We can try each of them and see what their reach is and then we take the top five and we just use these. Yeah, okay. So that would be easier. But maybe we should try at least on this platform because it's a very generic one. We could maybe best to stay away from very technical tags. So if it's a story about a child who was mauled in Libya, we look at human trafficking, migration, child, children, United Nations. You have the five. Yeah, we can try maybe 10, 15 words and see. You see, every time I write, you see, migrating. That's what I'm trying to know. I'm adding a tag now. Ah, you see how? You see. I know if I use data migration, I only have 53 stories. So it's very unlikely to pop up on your own page. But if I, that migration, that's the most popular. So I will go for migration. Let's see children. Again, children. Yeah, you see, that's the most popular one. Children stories, children write. I suppose human rights would be quite popular as well. Right. So it won't be necessarily the way you do it for the PVNs? No, it's not. Depending on what's the popularity of each tag. Okay. I think it's better that way. All right. Let's look. Any other questions? No? We have a question from Sasha. Can it be done without Twitter? I mean, let me find it. Yes, we can. I mean, are you asking if you can have a medium account without the Twitter account? Because if that's your question, ah, okay. We are not encouraging missions to open. Actually, we would prefer not to have other missions opening their own medium account. What we want is to have an official account where everyone publishes their story. It's way better, and it helps skip because we won't have... It's hard to grow many accounts, you know. So let's just focus on one and make sure that it does well. Yeah. No other agency has more than one account. That's why part of this slide was how to submit a story because we want to host them on the official account. It's the same as Short-End. The old Short-End stories are hosted in a specific place on the website. And also, by the way, we're going to have a special place for a medium on the front page of the website. So on the front page below, you will see... Oh, it's there already raised telling me. So there, you will see the migration blog, and then WebTabrey, IOM videos, and then the medium blogs. And then some of the blogs on the WebLog are also going to appear on Medium or vice versa. I am going to make sure that the stories are not the same so we don't want the same feature on the WebLog tab and then the same one on the Medium one. So we're going to make sure that maybe look every week we try to change it up a bit and make sure that all of the Medium blogs are being featured on the front page. And then Long-Term Plan, yesterday I was talking to our website people here and Long-Term Plan is to maybe have a specific page on the website only for Medium, just like what Short-End has on the website as well. The mission wants to start to block them and need another platform, but not necessarily. I mean, for the time being, we would prefer not to have other Medium accounts, but we also understand that some missions have their own website. And some missions, like for instance, Helsinki do speak in Finnish. So in case a mission has a specific need, we can discuss it separately, whether it's a good idea or not to have a Medium account. It would also depend on the amount of content. If you want to have a Medium account in Finnish with one story every year, then probably it's better not to invest too much. But if you intend to blog regularly, we can discuss it. It's, of course, let's send us an email and then we can see whether it's worth your time or maybe it's better just to translate that post in English and have it appear on the global page. It's mainly a problem of reach. It's a trend that we've witnessed. It's like having too many channels at the mission level is not necessarily the best idea, especially when IOM is still a quite unknown organization. And that's why centralizing the content can be more beneficial for everyone. But of course, if you have a blog in the language that's not spoken by many people, then of course, we can see whether it's a good idea to have the blog in another language. But you will have to produce lots of content. So you have to see the capacity of your mission. If you have someone who can author, et cetera, et cetera. So maybe take some time to think about it and then discuss with your chief of mission and then we can, for each case, we can have a separate discussion. Don't know if that answer your point, your question, Sanna. Okay. Yes, it does. Thank you very much. Oh, your mic was on. Sorry. No, it's on, yeah. Do you have another question, Sanna? No, not really. But I can get back to you on this issue. Sure. Any other questions from the participants? Feel free to don't be shy. Is there anything that you didn't understand? Some more concerns that you have or questions about short-term suggestions. The main idea was, the main idea behind the blog, behind Medium was also to, we know that the blog doesn't have many big visits and that's also because our website is not very easy to navigate. So it really takes time to find the blog. And so having a Medium thumbnail featured both at the top of the website at the, in the news desk and of course having this global account where everyone can basically post content and have content available for everyone else to just share could be a more interesting way to reach out to a wider audience. Do you plan to shut down the blog in the future? We'll see. Maybe not shut down, but if we shut the blog down in six months, perhaps we'll find that we have to find a way to migrate the most relevant stories to Medium so that we don't lose the content. And of course, if we shut down the blog, if that happens, all stories will be archived. We're not deleting them because I know there's been a lot of time invested in so we would probably try to find a way to keep the most relevant stories. We'll see, it's not in the, it's not a question we have the moment. For the time being, is there a type of story that you would prefer people use the blog for? Sorry again. At this time, is there a type of story that you would prefer featuring on the blog as opposed to Medium or right now, everything goes on Medium as long as it's blog-ish? I would prefer Medium, but I understand, for instance, if you have a, let's look. Let's go on the website. For instance, a story as this one, because it's for World Environment Day, would probably have a much better reach on Medium, but it pretty much depend on the cover photo. Put it off. This is illegal. I think it's part of a project. You was trying to, they were trying to explore, to explain to kids how climate change, environment and migration work. So I guess the choice will be pretty much depending on the content. And also if you have, as I told you before, and on Medium, you can add tweets, you can add more JPEGs, it gives you more options. So depending on how complex the story is, even if it takes you just three minutes to read it, you can go for both. But I think it would be nice to focus on developing Medium and see if actually the stats confirm that we get more views. And we are looking now at the last three months of reach for several of the tools that we are using. So we're gonna look into the blog. And I know from OCU that the blog has virtually no visits unless we post articles on the news desk or on our other platforms. But even for the news desk, we're doing an auditing now to see how many clicks we have, et cetera, et cetera. So we're trying to optimize every channel. So we think this might be a platform that gives each story more visibility with wider audience. If we see that in six months, it doesn't work well. We'll see what we did wrong or we'll see whether there was a mistake on our side. But I mean, right now, I think the stories that we had already, some of them had a much wider reach than stories on the blog. Of course, it depends on the content too. Yeah. But I really like this way. Yeah, also to add to that, if you can compare the blog that you were looking at earlier, the environment one, immediately you can tell that it's something that you can also put on medium but on a different style because there it starts with our work in the UN Migration Agency, ION. And in our medium platform, you're gonna try, it's not just gonna be just about our work, starting with ION, blah, blah, blah. So it's generally, migration obviously, so it's not just maybe what kind of content but also the style of writing will be different from the blog to the medium account. And probably what we'll do in the next few weeks will be a second or third, I think there was one already at the beginning of the year but maybe another round workshops with Joel or Olivia who can better explain how to write or creative writing. This one by Britain for the GCN, this blog was really successful because it was simple and it used the same structure that the WF created for their successful blog a few years ago. There is an interesting, yeah, for instance, five fact about world migration or five fact about migration, even if you have like a series of bullet points about interesting facts from that your mission knows, your division knows about, I don't know, human trafficking, et cetera. If we have access to good individual content, we can create an interesting story on medium and it certainly reaches good results. So they call the list of course, right? Yeah, yeah, they're done. It basically seduces your brain for like a millisecond more than the title that you might have on the other blog, what that is. But we'll work on that. Amazing. Any other question? No, the BuzzFeed, was that one? Yeah. Should I call my camera? I have a main. You hear me? Yes. No, on the Facebook and Twitter, a small description, you're in the blog, okay, I am in the blog. You hear me? But along about us, but just a sentence description. Is it Chen or or Joe? Both of you are speaking. Oh. Not very clearly, Joe. Well, like swapping the microphone, there's no else I can do. Yeah. As you can see. As we try. Off, see if that makes a difference. Any improvement? Any? Okay, well, I'll be quick. Obviously, I was a big fan and a big user of the blog and I would be sad to see it go, but to all things, they're in season. It would be good course to have it on medium because there's, you know, there's a lot of things you can pick out and sound bites you can take for other things that are there. Shame to lose a body of work. And the stress is that we still, again, I'm coming back to it because it's what the missions want, not necessarily what MCD thinks the missions want is somewhere to publicize their activities and their corporate stuff, their boring stuff and their non snappy millennium focus big day business showing off their missions. In a classic case is the stuff in Georgia, which was very much old style, Soviet information campaign, photographs were staged, and yet it brings tens if not hundreds of hundreds and that need to be represented there. I think that, you know, again is your vision medium is somewhere that we can use this type of boring stuff or is your vision of medium directly what's going on on Facebook, but just with longer articles? I can't hear very well, I don't know what the question was. Hey, did you hear what, did you hear? I think what Joe was asking is, for example, you know, for more formal or traditional meetings or important events that is happening in the missionary regional offices, is medium the, could be another platform to post that because, you know, usually on Facebook, we don't post those things anymore. I mean, I would be terribly sad to see these things on Facebook, but perhaps the PBS are a good idea or on, they could be... Yeah, people can see that, but I mean, we're trying to represent what the missions want as well, not necessarily what Facebook wants. We've had this discussion before, it's not been resolved. And I don't want to see that straight away, another channel is tailored to, which is not going to be something the missions particularly want. You know, Chris Long brought this up again with the branding guide on the call on Monday. You know, we have to start doing what the missions want because otherwise they'll just ignore what we do and it's giving them stuff they don't necessarily want or use. We've got a very, very small place in the world of IOM and we know we have to do what the clients want. The clients are the users and not necessarily the missions because you can have... A little bit different, a little bit different. I'm not sure what we're doing here. There's the missions, we don't get... No, no, please, let me finish one second. What we try to do, for instance, on the global platform, we try to understand it might be difficult to be replicated by all missions because many of them are understaffed. And that's why I understand that some have to produce specific content. And I know most Facebook pages are used in various ways, not necessarily to post stories about beneficiaries, but what we do is mostly trying to understand who the followers are and what their interest is. So for instance, I know on the global platform on Facebook if I'm posting a photo of a migrant profile from the Asia Pacific region, chances are that the reach will not be quite relevant, unfortunately, because the majority of our followers are from May 25 to 34 from Iraq, from the United States, Italy and other countries. So we have to balance between content that users want because otherwise we'll post things that they don't necessarily like or want to follow. But then every mission has different priorities. So on their Facebook profile, they will post meetings if they think so, of course. Yeah, yes, and we've had this discussion, but I mean, for your creating channels of communication that are not of interest to the missions or to the chiefs of mission, who are the ones that run the missions? And that's why I said early on that we have to get them on. I mean, fantastic if you can get five million people signed up to a Facebook channel. That's great, we're getting our word out. But it's got to be from my point of, and I knew as a communicator, I congratulate you on that and it's great. But from my point of view here, and from Chris's point of view in Bangkok and Kiara's presumably from Victoria, we're serving the missions and we have to get their news out some way and just posting a picture of, you know, a cute picture on social media, doesn't particularly for the band. They're not going to engage with us as their communication resource if we're not giving them what they want. And if you're creating a new communications channel, ala Medium, and perhaps closing down the blog, which was useful for parking stuff and for giving us a web link that we could then use on social media channels in the absence of being able to use on Facebook. If you are creating these, there has been an understanding of what the things that we for it actually want. No, we're not closing the web for the time being. We were just, that was potentially an idea, but it depends on the reach and the blog stays there for now. We're just trying to nurture the, boom. Same way we did. And the blog was only useful for me, for creating a link that I can then use on social media. Because I can't get the day-to-day work of the missions publicized on IOM social media channels because it's not what you want. And it's difficult then that editorial control is ruled by what tickles the Facebook algorithm rather than what our pay masters actually want. But Joe, that's I think where the mission accounts, individual accounts go in as well. Those are also really good channels to post things that are even more relevant to that region as well. Yeah, but it doesn't get the support of the main global IOM. And it's creating more diffuse and fractured communications. Anyway, we're not getting rid of the blog if that was your concern. So we keep posting articles on the blog. A very small part of my concern. I'm just a very, very small part of what I'm talking about. I'm not sure if this is obviously this isn't the right time to get the message across, but I have put in writing before. I know you can't hear me that well. But I do have concerns about editorial direction and who we are actually creating content for. I guess this is also a conversation that maybe we should have with Leonard and the tie in copy because K and I are not really leading the two departments. We're just. I'd like to have it. I think meeting is fantastic and could be fantastic, but I would not like to see it being ring fenced. You know, for. Just just for social for clicks before it could be a really useful communications channel. First off, it's not going to get that many likes. It's not and and and reasons. It's not only about that. It's about influence. And we, you know, we seem to be selling that down the river a bit. OK. Get this up and running. And I know I wholeheartedly supported. You've got my entire backing. But there's also negotiation on it as to what it's used for. And it would be great to organize, you know, a wider call with it would be great to have people Yara on calls like this as well. I don't know why they're not there today. I mean, we hardly see regional coordinators when we have workshops on social media. We have like six and almost never had. Regional coordinators attend. So it's good to have you here today. But we had we've had plenty this year and we've been discussing Instagram stories and Facebook lives and others. And we'd like to see more participation, of course, to get more input. So it's good that you attended today. And yeah, I've got the points written down so we probably can continue the conversation with Leonard and it as well and see what's the best way of use this platform and other platforms as well. And I can wonder if I can suggest formally that no, people would have been a long time in the organization and have responsibility for several countries and that work directly with with with chief submission that can sell this. I think they understand. OK, I'm going to I'm going to do mail. I'll stop now taking too much. Did you say you're going to write an email? I think it's easier because you're not getting one, you know. Yeah, sorry, but the audio is really bad. But Joe, rest assured that the concern is being taken. It's already, you know, right on the mind when I'm going to make sure that it's going to be addressed soon. Thank you, OK. Any other questions from participants? No, no. Well, we hope you'll find it useful. So we'll we'll continue publishing on on on shorthand on this new platform, medium and on the the the blog. So we are not. So if it wasn't clear, we are not we are not we are not shutting down the blog. We're trying to. To promote this new platform. So we're going to share the presentation with everyone. And if you need any any support or if you want to have a symbol in a conversation with your chief of missions to promote the platform or the use of the platform, please, please include us and we'll be very, very glad to assist. Or if you don't want to include us directly, just get in touch with your regional coordinator and they will be certainly equally helpful with with the cause. So thank you very much for everyone participating. We'll we'll stop the recording now and have a nice day. OK, thanks. Thank you, Joe.