Statement of Work.pdf

SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED

U.S. Mission to South Africa Social Media Service Provider Statement of Work

Background Social media platforms are an insufficiently tapped reservoir of influence to advance the U.S. Mission to South Africa’s Integrated Country Strategy goals and objectives. The 2023 South African Social Media Landscape Report indicated that of the 43.48 million internet users in South Africa, those active on social media comprise some 25.8 million. While the U.S. Mission’s social media following ranks highly in South Africa, there is some significant grounds to be made with regards to our growth and engagement rates. The Mission seeks to increase awareness of U.S. social media platforms, convert page visits to followers, and bolster engagement to reach industry averages.

The purpose of this contract is to establish a comprehensive partnership with an external service provider who will be able to track, analyze platform content, and help the Strategic Content Coordination team develop a profile of the Mission’s audience segments following each platform. The contract partner will also develop a tool for countrywide SCC members to track sentiment on social media platforms, monitor the impact of organic and paid content, and track engagement.

Objectives

• Analyze of South African social media users’ sentiments regarding the United

States, the U.S. Mission, and U.S. government programs and projects. User populations covered in the analysis should not only be speakers of English, but also major non-English official languages in South Africa. To further qualify this:

monitoring Afrikaans; isiZulu and Sotho are main languages used online.

• Describe how current followers and non-followers engage with the content on the Mission’s digital platforms on LinkedIn; X; Instagram; Facebook; YouTube (including Cape Town’s independent accounts: X; Instagram and Facebook) and American Spaces pages through monthly reports.

• Track post-performance by region, age, gender, and other audience demographics – this may vary per specifications of each specialized campaign.

• Monitor and evaluate specific digital campaign performance based on quantitative and qualitative analytics (e.g., commentary).

• Compare the Mission’s social media content performance to the performance of content offered by competing organizations in South Africa – including China, Russia and our friendly missions: UK; German; Sweden; EU Commission to South Africa.

• Identify accounts that are spreading disinformation in relation to the U.S.

Government partnership with South Africa and its wider global policy direction.

• To identify top contributors in our comment sections and the Ambassadorial account, these may be comments that are positive or negative in sentiment.

• Identify top performing accounts in South Africa and their best practices.

• Forecast audience growth over the next two years.

• Create a dynamic tool for Public Diplomacy Section staff to track social media trends and sentiment of Mission content going forward.

Activities & Deliverables

• The contractor will be expected to complete the following activities:

Monitoring & Evaluation

• Track, monitor, and analyze user engagement for current organic content across Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (X).

• Benchmark the Mission’s current social media performance with competitors.

• Evaluate the trustworthiness of the Mission's current social media content among social media users.

Analysis

• Analysis of current communities across Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and

Twitter (X) including interests, demographics, and geographic spread.

• Reputation analysis of the United States, its Embassy, and Consulates in South

Africa as expressed by South African-based social media users.

• Analysis and monitoring of community engagement and responsiveness to organic content across Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (X) including streamed events.

• Ability to analyze social media platforms in terms of sentiment, geographical spread, traction, click-through rates, reach, top posters, and influencers.

• Comparative analysis of organic, paid, and boosted content.

• Social media platform analysis using keywords, hashtags, and suggested search terms.

• Identify and analyze engagement and sentiment for paid, earned, shared, and owned social media content, and make recommendations for page and engagement growth.

Platform Creation & Training

• Provide training to U.S. Mission staff to use social media monitoring tools.

• 24/7 access to a password protected, online platform for multiple Mission users to access, input keywords and hashtags & view search results.

• Platform should have the ability to track in major languages of South African on all social media platforms.

• Platform should enable the Mission and its staff to track social media coverage relevant to the United States, its Embassy, and Consulates in South Africa.