Dear friends and colleagues,
The World Jewish Congress has made enormous leaps with its social media profiles since I joined the WJC three years ago, becoming an important and ever-present fixture on the digital platforms viewed and used by people of all ages, all over the world.
Thanks to our growing and expanding presence on widely used platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+, the WJC is maintaining its relevance in far reaches of the world for Jews and non-Jews alike: we are considered an important and well-respected source of news about Jewish communities and their activities everywhere; people turn to us for in-depth analyses and commentaries on a range of issues including anti-Semitism, Holocaust remembrance, Israel advocacy, Jewish traditions and Judaism in general.
The World Jewish Congress’ Facebook pages–available in four languages–are among the most popular of all Jewish organizations and have more posts and engagements with users than any other Jewish organization.
FACEBOOK REACH EXPANDS FROM 3,000 TO 1,000,000
Over the last three years, we have managed to raise the “weekly reach” from 3,000 to around 1,000,000. The annual reach of the WJC’s Facebook page in 2015 alone was close to 90 million, an increase from 4 million in 2013.
The majority of people who view WJC content on Facebook are from the US, Israel, UK, Canada and South Africa, but we also have a vibrant presence in other parts of the world, such as Latin America. The WJC English Facebook page grew by 100 percent over 12 months and is now “liked” by about 170,000 people, most of them under the age of 45.
There are 30,000 followers on other WJC-related Facebook pages such as the Russian-language page (launched in the middle of 2014), the Hebrew page (which rapidly grew over 2015) and our latest French page, maintained in cooperation with our affiliate organization, CRIF. In total, WJC speaks every day in four different languages to the more than 200,000 people who follow these pages.
COOPERATION WITH COMMUNITIES
We have also established a fruitful cooperation with the Latin American Jewish Congress, with which we often carry out joint campaigns in both English and Spanish. The most recent example is the website www.stopholocaustdenial.org , an English adaptation of a project already run by LAJC to find examples of Holocaust denial in videos and on social media platforms. The promotional video of the website in both English and Spanish has been seen by more than 150,000 people to date, with coverage reaching more than 1 million people in both languages.
We are looking forward to seeing this particular project grow even further and working with more communities on online campaigns and joint social media presence.
WJC also has a rising presence on other social media channels. In the last year the number of followers on Twitter account @worldjewishcong grew to almost 6,000. Over the last year our reach grew by 400% to almost 1 million people, matching our 2014 level of growth. In other words, Twitter knows that the World Jewish Congress is here–we are being heard.
Our social media programs are being run at an extremely low cost, with one full time social media operator and two part-time assistants, and contributions from the whole WJC team. The immense growth experienced over the course of 2015 came from a budget of just $75,000 per year. The growth in our reach is in large part organic and happened thanks to the original creative content created by both our team and affiliated contributors. We are extremely thankful for the personal involvement of many community leaders and we believe together we can do much more.
Over the coming year we have ambitious expectations for what we can achieve. This is an exciting time for the World Jewish Congress–our professional staff is diligent and creative, our affiliate communities are eager to participate and on the whole we are looking forward to a successful year ahead.
Best regards,
Robert Singer
Chief Executive Officer
World Jewish Congress
