New Zealand gets social in Indonesia

The people at the New Zealand Embassy in Jakarta know that social media in Indonesia is bigger than Batman. Our ambassador, David Taylor, tells us how the embassy is leveraging social to promote New Zealand.

 An embassy acts as the gateway for relations between countries.  The ambassador and his or her team pursue their national interests through dealing with government officials, business people, the media or civil society.  They use these interactions not only to advance their country’s agenda, but also to try to understand better the perspective of the host country and advance partnerships that work for both sides.Social media have created a whole new set of tools for doing diplomatic work.  They’ve also opened up communities like never before.The New Zealand Embassy in Indonesia launched a Facebook page in December 2010 – our first post to do so.   As of this writing, we have around 82,000 friends and growing. Why did we embark on this experiment? Every diplomatic mission faces challenges.  They may be about access to the right people.  They may be specific political or trade issues.  They may be about perceptions.  The team at each embassy tries to find ways to address the challenges they face and to make the most of any opportunities they identify.New Zealand has a generally positive reputation, but few people know us that well.  We are a small population located a considerable distance from the major population and influence centres.  We depend on strong trade performance to keep our economy humming.  We do not belong to a regional club like ASEAN or the EU.  We have to work hard to ensure that our voice is heard and to advance our interests.Indonesia is a country that is going places, fast.  It’s the fourth largest population on earth (248 million); the world’s third largest democracy; it has the world’s largest Muslim population; it is the 16th largest economy (around US$1 trillion), projected to be #6 by 2030 (US$9 trillion); and it’s an increasingly important player in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.We need to be close to this, our nearest Asian neighbour.  Indonesians need to know about New Zealand and what matters to us.  We need our trade to work and to grow.  We need to know more about Indonesia and what is important for Indonesians.  Virtually every other country feels the same way.  There are 138 diplomatic missions in Jakarta so there’s always going to be pressure to secure access to the people that count.  The Australians have their largest diplomatic Embassy here (some 125 Australians and a total staff of around 400).  Many other countries have large teams pursuing their interests.The New Zealand Embassy team works hard to get out and about across the range of our interests with Indonesia.  But we have found that Indonesians do not know New Zealand that well.  They think well of us and appreciate the support we’ve given them over many decades through our aid programme, when disaster has struck, and on regional affairs.  If we want to advance our interests around trade, education, tourism, agriculture or geothermal cooperation, we need to make sure they know more about who we are and what our capabilities are.We continue to use what I’d call mainstream tools to get our messages across and to develop greater awareness of New Zealand in Indonesia:  meetings with key people, visits by New Zealand leaders and experts, agreements that allow the two countries to work better together, media interviews, trade and education promotions etc.  But everyone else is doing those same things; many countries have vastly greater resources to deploy than we do. The social media phenomena Indonesia has embraced the internet.   There were around 2 million Indonesian internet users in 2000, up to 55 million in December 2011.  More than most other fast-growing Asian economies, Indonesia leapfrogged the PC phase and went straight to the smart phone.  The desk top computer still has its place in the office, but mobile devices are king:  Blackberries are hugely popular (around 5 million users in 2011), and millions more Indonesians use other smart phones and tablets.  With a great number of options for affordable smart phones (as cheap as US$ 20 per unit) and cheap monthly voice and data subscription fees (as low as US$ 2 per month), now Indonesians can access Facebook through their mobile phones anytime and anywhere. In Indonesia, currently there are around 180 million mobile phone subscribers (about 76 per cent of the population).Social media was a hit here because Indonesian people love to be connected with family and friends and they follow their interests with a passion.  Indonesians tend to be gregarious and to define themselves as much by their circle and community as by the individual – they’re born networkers.When we launched our Facebook page in December 2010, there were 30 million Indonesians on Facebook.  There are now 44 million Indonesian Facebook users.  In 2010, they were number two in the world (having just eclipsed the United Kingdom).  Now they are number four as India and Brazil have also discovered Facebook.   While Indonesian Facebook users represent about 22 per cent of the population, Facebook users represent around 79 per cent of online users.The United States Embassy was the early mover on Facebook in Indonesia.  They launched their page in January 2009 and have invested in growing their base of friends.  They now have around 500,000 friends on Facebook.  At one point, that was more than all the other Facebook pages run by United States missions and State Department.  They demonstrated that Facebook was a way to reach out to Indonesians, to share a rich amount of information, and to represent United States interests and values.  (As well as Facebook, the US Embassy also operates a Twitter account and a dedicated YouTube channel.)I’m delighted to be able to report that the New Zealand Embassy Facebook page is the second most popular embassy page in Indonesia.  We have almost 2.5 times more friends than Australia, the United Kingdom, The European Commission and Finland combined.The demographics are such that a very large proportion of the people we’re connecting to are young, urban Indonesians (13-25).  These are the people who will be running the country and the country’s businesses in the coming period.  They will be the ones potentially interested in New Zealand goods and services.  They will bring their own set of interests and values to government, business society reflecting what they’ve experienced, including through the internet and social media. What are New Zealand’s objectives? At the end of the day, Facebook is a bit like the internet or cable television – there’s a huge amount of information out there.  People are going to dip into the information pool from time to time more often than they will follow a small number of specific interests.So we have tried to use Facebook as a New Zealand channel – a way to highlight things about New Zealand or our relationship with Indonesia or the wider ASEAN region that might educate, inform or engage.   We try and post  5-7 items a week so as not to overdo it with our community.  And we try and cover a wide range of subjects, with a lot of visuals.In this way, we are trying to use Facebook to: 

•  Present New Zealand as a vibrant, tolerant, multi-cultural and diverse country that has a strong commitment to democracy, equality, justice and human rights, and independent foreign policy
•  Highlight the value we place on the relationship with Indonesia (and ASEAN) and show that bilateral ties are longstanding, wide and deep
•  Support key New Zealand interests in Indonesia and provide a portal for information (through posts, links to the embassy website and other New Zealand pages)
•  Build awareness of a specific and distinct New Zealand identity that helps differentiate New Zealand from other  countries and is attractive enough to promote short-term and long-term engagement between Indonesia and New Zealand as mutual partners in achieving the prosperity of the Asia Pacific region.

 At present we understand we reach almost 150,000 people every week through our Facebook page.  As I tell people, it’s like having your own news outlet, telling your story, your way every day.  We take our message direct to the audience and we can engage with them if they wish through comments and correspondence.Over time we’re building up a picture in people’s minds that will hopefully give them greater awareness of who we are and what we represent.  Hopefully, too, we’ll see people following our page take an interest in a visit to New Zealand or education using a New Zealand provider or in working with us in some way.The experiment has cost very little in financial or human resource terms and provides us with a new way to engage in this important relationship.Facebook is definitely working for us in Indonesia.  We’ve connected more widely than we’ve been able to before, particularly with younger people.  We’ve shared a lot of information that we could not otherwise have broadcast so readily.  We are building up a database of visual images and stories that provide a record of New Zealand/Indonesia interaction.  We’ve had positive feedback from our audience.As for what comes next, I think we’ll do more of the same, trying to find new and or better ways to engage Indonesians, off the base of this Facebook platform. [Picture Credit]