International Organizations on Social Media 2023
The past twelve months haven’t been easy for social-media managers worldwide. The rebranding of Twitter to X, the changes on the platform — from the loss of the blue badge, to paying for verification and Tweetdeck — have kept community managers on their toes to say the least.
There is a palpable uneasiness with the tone of the platform. While organizations are wary of the antics of its new owner Elon Musk, there hasn’t been any notable X-odus yet. However, it is fair to say that social-media teams are seeking alternatives. With every change on X, new platforms such as Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads have gained traction as organizations try to re-build their community and re-engage their audience on a different platform.
In our study, we analyse the social-media activity of 106 international organizations and the personal accounts of their leaders on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X and YouTube as well as Bluesky, Mastodon, Snapchat and Threads. The study includes multilateral organizations, leading non-profit and non-governmental organizations, and their chief executives.
The Most Followed International Organizations
The 10 most followed organizations are in a league of their own. Almost all have more than 10 million followers across all platforms combined.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is by far the most followed organization, with 73 million followers and subscribers on all platforms combined. UNICEF is in second position with 57 million followers, followed by the United Nations which clocks up an audience of 40 million followers and subscribers. The World Economic Forum and the UN Refugee Agency complete the Top 5 list with 26 and 13 million followers respectively.
Given the potential size of the audience, Facebook is one the most important social networks for international organizations. The 102 institutional Facebook pages have a combined following of 150 million followers and the median average of followers per page stands at 330,000.
X remains the second most important network. The 106 institutional accounts have a combined following of 124 million, with a median average of 212,319 followers per account.
LinkedIn is not far behind: 97 organizations have an official LinkedIn page and all pages combined have a total of 55.8 million followers and a median average of 194,415 followers per page.
The combined total number of followers on Instagram is higher at 71.7 million, but the median average per account is only 75,789. All institutional and personal accounts combined have a combined following of 440 million on all networks.
The Most Followed Leaders of International Organizations
Dr Tedros Adhanom, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), is the most followed leader of any international organization with 4.17 million followers on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X combined. Christine Lagarde, the President of the European Central Bank is in second position with 3.76 million followers.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Director General of the World Trade Organization and António Guterres, the UN Secretary General are in third and fourth position with 2.88 and 2.24 million followers respectively.
The outgoing UN Youth Envoy, Jayathma Wickramanayake is present on all social-media platforms and makes it into the Top 10 of the most followed leaders.
Data was captured on September 1, 2023, using Audiense.com for X and Crowdtangle.com for Facebook & Instagram with data going back 12 months; and a manual count on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok and YouTube.
A month after the Twitter rebrand, only nine organizations had updated the social-media boilerplate on their websites, adding the new X logo. Interestingly, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is the only one which has put the social networks in alphabetical order. The World Economic Forum is the only organization to add he Threads logo to its social-media boilerplate.
With the exception of the European Central Bank, almost all international organizations have a page on Facebook. The 102 pages combined have an audience of 150,548,123, a figure which has registered a modest growth of 1.73% over the past 12 months.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF are topping the Facebook ranking, with more than 38 and 30 million followers respectively. The WHO was consistently boosted during the pandemic as reputable source on COVID-19.
The World Economic Forum (WEF), the United Nations and the UNHCR complete the Top 5 list of the most followed pages.
Interestingly, UNICEF, which often boosts its best performing posts, has clocked up more than 8 million interactions on their 1,329 posts, compared to only 2.4 million interactions on WHO’s 768 posts. Ove the past 12 months UNICEF has an interaction rate of 0.05%, compared to 0.02% for the WHO.
It pays to be consistently active on Facebook several times per day. The WEF posts on average 32 posts per day on Facebook, garnering 1.64 million interactions over the past 12 months.
UNICEF attracts the most likes and shares as well as love, sad and care reactions. The WHO, on the other hand, attracts the most comments, laughs and angry reactions which speaks volumes about their respective audiences and the amount of criticism the WHO is facing. The World Economic Forum leads in terms of total video posts and the number of wow reactions.
Facebook does not necessarily come to mind as the platform of choice for executive communications, but 24 leaders of international organizations have personal pages or profiles on Facebook.
WHO Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom, leads the group with 1.31 million followers well ahead of the WTO’s Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg, each with more than 414,000 followers.
Dr Tedros followers represent 40% of the 3,287,195 followers of all 24 leaders combined. The median average number of followers of the 24 personal pages and profiles stands at just 12,174.
However, the interaction rate of personal pages often trumps that of the larger institutional pages, which goes to show how important personal engagement of executives on social media is. The UN Youth Envoy Jayathma Wickramanayake, the Secretary General of the Nordic Council Karen Ellemann and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi might only have between 12,000 to 15,000 followers and not be very active, but their interaction rate is well above 3%.
Among the institutional pages, United Nations ESCAP, NATO and WIPO have the best interaction rates of between 0.30% and 0.25%. The median average of followers of the 101 institutional pages is 330,148, which makes Facebook the prime social media-platform given the size of the community.
Instagram has become one of the prime audio-visual platforms. The platform combines three distinct channels: the main feed where pictures and videos are displayed in the traditional square format, the reels feed where videos are displayed in vertical format, and the stories feed with full vertical pictures or videos. It is important to choose the cover picture wisely when sharing a reel (video) on the main feed.
While the audience of all Facebook pages of international organizations have witnessed only a modest growth of 1.73%, their Instagram audience has increased by 6.72% year-on-year.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF are crushing it on Instagram, with 12 and 11 million followers respectively. The United Nations, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Greenpeacecomplete the Top 5 list of the most followed accounts, with 7.8, 4.7 and 4 million followers respectively.
In terms of interactions (comments and likes) UNICEF is once again leading the ranking, with close to 10 million interactions over the past 12 months. The United Nations is in second position, followed closely by the European Space Agency (ESA) with 8.8 and 8.7 million interactions respectively . The World Economic Forum (WEF) and NATO have garnered more than 6.3 million interactions over the past 12 months.
The WEF is killing it with its videos shared on Instagram. The videos, often posted as part of an album for maximum interaction, have generated 108 million views over the past 12 months. To put this in context, this is 1’ times as many views as the second runner-up, the European Space Agency (ESA) with 11.18 million views.
Sixty leaders of international organizations have an Instagram account. However, 14 of these are private accounts and 25 are inactive, leaving only 21 active accounts.
UN Secretary General António Guterres is the most followed, with 406,338 followers — this is almost twice as many as the WHO Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom, with 228,335 followers.
NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the ECB’s Christine Lagarde, and the UN Youth Envoy Jayathma Wickramanayake complete the Top 5 list of the most followed leaders accounts.
All leader accounts have a combined following of 1,365,706 followers and have been growing on average by 11% year-on-year which is exceptionally good.
“LinkedIn Is Cool Now”, wrote Sarah Frier, San Francisco Tech Team Lead at Bloomberg. The professional social networking platform has clearly benefitted from the slow decline of X.
Ninety-seven of the 106 organizations in this report have official company pages on LinkedIn and are active on the platform. All LinkedIn pages combined have a total of 55.8 million followers and a median average of 194,415 followers per page.
The WHO is the most followed organization with 5.4 million followers, slightly ahead of the United Nations page with 5.2 million followers. The WEF, UNICEF both have more than four million followers and among the Top 5 pages is that of the United Nations Volunteers organization.
LinkedIn — self-proclaimed “the world’s largest professional network” — is the perfect fit for the leaders of international organizations ; 74 have personal LinkedIn profiles.
Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), is by far the most followed leader with 2.6 million followers. Winnie Byanyima, UNAIDS Executive Director, and Dr Tedros Adhanom, Director General of the WHO, are in second and third place with 777,649 and 621,432 followers respectively.
UN Secretary General António Guterres, who joined LinkedIn at the end of March 2023, makes it into 8th place.
Embarrassingly, many executives have not created a custom URL for their LinkedIn profiles and have kept the number combination at the end of their profile URLs.
Twelve executives are part of the Top Voices program, an invitation-only group of experts across the professional world who are being promoted on the platform. It is no surprise therefore that the first nine leaders on the list below have the Top Voices label. The three other top voices are UNEP’s Inger Andersen, HRW’s Tirana Hassan and UNV’s Toily Kurbanov. LinkedIn’s top voices are encouraged to be personally active and post original personal posts and articles. And finally, the Top Voices badge cannot be bought. LinkedIn is currently rolling out a Community Top Voices label for users who share their expertise and point of view in collaborative articles.
Sixteen organizations have created newsletters on LinkedIn with smashing results. The newsletters have a median average subscription of 230,000 and the WHO’s Health for All newsletter counts 1.5 million subscribers.
X
Whether you like it or not, X (formerly Twitter) remains the dominant social-media platform for most international organizations. X is notably listed as the first or second social network after Facebook on the social-media boilerplates on the websites of three-quarters of the 106 organizations. One month after the rebranding of Twitter to X, the bluebird still graces the websites of most international organizations as if they were secretly it will somehow revive.
None of the international organizations commented on the sudden rebranding, but some used it to their advantage. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) put it squarely: “Twitter’s iconic bird isn’t the only one disappearing.👉 Today, one in eight bird species are at risk of extinction.” The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) asked its followers: “What other single-letter logos do you know?”
The United Nations @UN account, with 16 million followers, is the most followed international organization on X. The World Health Organization @WHO is in second place, with more than 12 million followers. Both organizations also top the ranking of the most listed organizations, appearing on 45,699 and 35,381 lists respectively which is a probably the best gauge of influence on the platform. UNICEF, Human Rights Watch and the WEF complete the Top 5 list of the most followed organizations on X.
The 106 institutional accounts have a combined following of 124,428,511; the median average number of followers standing at 212,319 for each account. The WWF has been the most prolific organization on X, with over half a million posts since inception in February 2008. The WEF has posted 179,000 times, often repeating posts up to 10 times to reach new audiences in different time zones.
Almost all leaders of international organization have personal or branded personal accounts on X. Only a handful of leaders are still resisting to engaging personally on social media. Obviously, most leaders have outsourced their social media activity to their social media teams, but some are taking matters into their own hands.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, is the most followed leader with 2.27 million followers ahead of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus with 2.14 and 1.97 million followers respectively.
The 101 personal accounts have a combined following of 16,322,955 and the median average stands at 20,197 followers for each personal account.
A handful of organizations — namely the African Development Bank, Amnesty International, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Inter-American Development Bank, and WWF … have subscribed to the premium service. This allows them to create and manage a list of affiliates on their profile. The premium subscription comes at a hefty US$12,000 per year, and US$600 annually for each affiliate account.
The Organization of Ibero-American States (@EspacioOEI), the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (@OPCW), the Union for the Mediterranean (@UfMSecretariat), the WHO and its Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom have also subscribed to the premium service. This allows them to share longer posts and videos, highlight top posts on their profile, get priority ranking in replies, among among other smaller perks. But these accounts haven’t created any list of affiliates yet.
It remains to be seen whether other organizations will follow their lead and succumb to paying to play on Elon Musk’s platform.
TikTok
Almost half of the 100 organizations surveyed have set up shop on TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing platform which had its heyday during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, TikTok helped onboard international organizations through the Elevate programme and their videos would reach millions of views making the platform a must for international organizations.
Fast forward to 2023. Only 29 organizations remain active on TikTok and many struggle to produce sticky, viral videos for the platform. The UN Refugee Agency (@Refugees) has registered 230 million views on its 89 videos this year so far thanks to several viral hits in the run-up to World Refugee Day, such as: this video recalling the appalling refugee figures worldwide ; this one with refugees explaining what gives them hope away from home ; and this one on how to help refugees.
However, the median average views of UNHCR’s videos stands at only 4,227. The World Food Programme is the most successful, with their TikTok videos generating on average 35,000 views. The WHO, which has a median average of 99,400 views on all its videos, is only getting 5,100 median average views on the 58 posted in 2023. The same is happening to the IFRC and IOM - UN Migration, two organizations which originally championed the use of TikTok.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is still the most followed international organization on TikTok, with 3.2 million followers and 12 million likes. WHO is in second place with 2.9 million followers and the World Economic Forum is the third most followed organization, with 1.7 million followers and a record 18.4 million likes.
The World Economic Forum is also the most active of all international organizations on TikTok, with a total of 1’835 and 297 in 2023 alone. However, the median average view count of each video stands is only 2,700.
Few organizations produce quirky content, tailored to the platform. Most tend to post professionally produced clips which they also share on other platforms. These videos look good but are not viral TikTok material.
YouTube
YouTube is still an important channel to host videos and all but five of the 106 organizations have a dedicated channel. All channels combined have over a billion subscribers and the median average number of subscribers is 18,400.
The United Nations channel is the most popular, with 2.7 million subscribers and has clocked up a record 372 million views on its 15,000 videos.
The UN live streams public events from the Security Council and has a live broadcast from the annual UN General Assembly in September. The UN also has dedicated channels in all five official UN languages, namely Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish, featured on its page.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has the second most-followed channel, with close to a million subscribers. ESA often shares videos from its astronauts on the international space station. The WHO, the WEF and UNICEF complete the list of the Top five most subscribed channels.
Greenpeace gets the best average views per video, with more than 100,000 average views for each of its 975 videos. Greenpeace is known for its impactful viral video campaigns. Its latest video posted at the end of August 2023 accuses the French oil company Total Energies of greenwashing as the main sponsor of the Rugby World Cup 2023.
The UN’s most watched video, with 85 million views, is the clip of the Korean boy band BTS dancing in the General Assembly Hall. The clip, posted in September 2022, is by far the most watched video of any international organisation.
All but 16 channels have posted Shorts, YouTube’s 60-second vertical videos. Shorts were released worldwide in July 2021 and are a great way to recycle vertical videos produced for Instagram or TikTok. However, many channels are posting square videos, which is sub-optimal given the vertical format.
A third of the 101 channels are verified by YouTube which requires at least 100,000 subscribers. Seven channels have the precious grey badge without having the required threshold.
➡️Download a PDF version of the study with the full rankings here for €9.99: https://luefkens.gumroad.com/l/IntOrgSocialMedia2023
Thanks for your support.
Matthias Lüfkens
Geneva, 10.09.2023
