An organization such as TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) needs no introduction. Founded in 1974 currently headed by Dr. R K Pachauri TERI is one of the most respectable name in the world when it comes to issues related to energy, environment and sustainable development.
It is our great honor to be able to partner with TERI for the social media coverage of the 11th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS) being held from 3rd to 5th Feb 2011 at the Taj Palace Hotel, New Delhi.
Actions – Blog, Twitter, Photography, Short Interviews etc.
To begin with we have created a DSDS 2011 Live Blog which is being updated with short notes on and pictures of the conference proceedings in real time. We are also running the live tweets on behalf of TERI on TERI’s twitter handle @TERIIN.
We have kept the language of the live blog very simple so that even a layperson with no background on issue of global sustainability is able to immediately connect with the blog and identify him/herself as a stakeholder.
We have also integrated the TERI’s Twitter stream with the blog so that people reaching the blog can start following TERI on Twitter. At the moment TERI has only 6 followers, twitter integration is likely to increase the follower count.
It has been Samyukta Media’s continuous efforts to keep pushing the limits of social media usage by nonprofit sector in India. This is the first time such a big organization has opened up to the idea of live blogging of their event. And we hope this sets an example.
This is a significant step not just for our business and TERI’s brand, but also for the cause of social media usage by nonprofits.
Why Live Blog?
It is not unknown that closed conferences, seminars & summits are always perceived as elite events and the common, ordinary every day youth never takes interest in the issues and causes discussed in these events. While a corporate conference on capitalist issues may not have much significance for the common youth, in a conference such as DSDS which is about sustainable development, energy and resources, every individual is a stake holder. And therefore it is important to have an open, social and democratic approach.
This approach is ensured by giving access to the conference proceedings and highlights to the online audience by using social media tools like live blog and tweet.
Sure there is always a live stream and perhaps the mainstream media also will give an extensive coverage to a certain event, a live blog however has its own significance.
Impact at the end of Day 1
Neither TERI nor DSDS had any social media content before the live blog went live. There is plenty of online content which are strictly informative in nature but not interactive or social. TERI has a very extensive corporate website which is the first results on Google key word search for ‘TERI’. For DSDS they have a micro site. But there was no blog or other social media presence.
Interestingly, the Google Search results for by key word DSDS or DSDS 2010 or DSDS 2011 are occupied largely by a non English language entity probably related to entertainment field. Before our blog went live, the whole of page one and page 2 of the search results were occupied by results related to this entity, which even has Youtube content.
It was a challenge to make space in the search pages, but in the last 24 hours, the TERI Live Blog created by us have pushed down the said non English blog and have taken the first position when searched for ‘DSDS 2011 blog’ and fourth position when searched for ‘DSDS live’
The DSDS 2011 Blog went live on 2nd Feb evening around 7 pm and we started sending live updates from the conference hall starting this morning. By the end of Day 1 of the summit, which is less than 24 hours of its going live, the blog has already received around 350 hits.
Most of the blog traffic has come from the DSDS micro-site and social networking places like Twitter and Facebook. Only a handful of traffic came by searching key words related to the conference.
TERI’s follower count on Twitter increased from 6 to 15 in about 12 hours. People also started sharing and recommending the blog URLs on twitter.
This was just a quick impact assessment at the end of 1st day of the conference. One day is too quick to judge the complete impact of any action on social media, as the full potential of a blog is only realized in the long run.
At this point we do sincerely hope this live blog adds great value to TERI’s social media presence.
Samyukta Media 
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