Forum One on Social Media Monitoring and Evaluation at the Global Health Mini-University

At Forum One, we take monitoring and evaluation (M&E) seriously, especially when it comes to measuring the success of digital communication campaigns. While we love data and establishing relevant indicators for initiatives that are sometimes hard to measure, we also love talking about these strategies. So we decided to share our knowledge on how to measure and evaluate social media campaigns at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau for Global Health’s 11th Annual Global Health Mini-University in Washington, DC.

The Global Health Mini-U, held September 30, is an annual event sponsored by USAID in collaboration with the George Washington University Center for Global Health. The goal of the day-long event is to foster knowledge-exchange among global health practitioners and technologists that will benefit future leaders in the field. With over 70 presentations and a keynote address by USAID Administrator Raj Shah, a lot of knowledge flowed through the halls.

For our presentation, I partnered with Vince Blaser, New Media Specialist at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and Tara Sullivan, Director of Knowledge Management for USAID's Knowledge for Health Project, to dispel the myths around new media and M&E. Our presentation grew out of a shared belief that as USAID and its global health projects increasingly leverage social media to connect, collaborate, and learn from stakeholders, the need to develop appropriate M&E plans is more important than ever. We wanted to show organizations can start: first with understanding the metrics used to evaluate social media success, then by establishing appropriate indicators beyond top-level analytics, and monitoring and evaluating the results so that stakeholders can move forward strategically.

Our presentation is below: 

Overall, the Global Health Mini-U was valuable. We shared our insights and also learned from other practitioners working at the intersection of global health and technology – and being chosen as one of the top 10 “pearls” of wisdom at the conference wasn’t too bad either.