This blog post first appeared on blogs.fco.gov.uk on 19 November 2008

Back to blogs, and why diplomats should use them.

A large part of what we do offline in the Foreign Office is engage and influence audiences in support of UK foreign policy goals.  Diplomacy is not just about states talking to states. And often the issues we work on (like climate change or counter terrorism) can’t be solved by 1 state talking to another.

The internet provides us with the means to engage and influence audiences all around the world. And blogs are 1 tool that diplomats can use to talk informally with their target audience about specific foreign policy issues.

The culture of blogging helps us to talk about our work in new ways. We don’t want to use blogs to make policy announcements or deliver official messages (we have other online places to do that). But blogs do allow us to:

• open up issues for wider discussion when we don’t necessarily have all the answers
• add depth, context and a personal angle to the issues we’re working on
• engage in conversations that we know are taking place elsewhere on the web

So that’s the theory.

I think that our blogs are delivering some of the above now. But here are some of the things we’ll be prioritising in the next few months to use our blogs better:

1. Encourage a wider range of voices on our blogs. Because we want to use blogs to talk about our work in different ways, and with different styles and tones of voice.

2. More niche blogs, with well defined objectives, linked to specific projects or campaigns. Because the web is about niches, and it’s within niches that blogs can have real value. We want our bloggers to reach their particular target audiences (rather than to generate general-interest traffic).

3. Blogs that are integrated into active online debates. Because we’re more likely to engage in a way that is useful to us on issues that people are already talking about online.

4. More blogs in languages other than English. Because if we want to influence local audiences, it makes sense to do it in the language they speak.

The other thing we need to do of course, is learn from others. So I’d be interested to hear what you think, particularly if you think there should be a 5th or 6th priority that we’ve missed.