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Social media. Should there just be one corporate account? And how much of the population should you be reaching to be a success? One member of the Public Sector Headspace Facebook group decided to map the larger authorities to see who was reaching most people. It's a great piece of work.
by Tom Jennings
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Diplomats have a tradition of the valedictory when they retire. They pass on the learning. Here one local government communicator does just that.
by Adam Ogden
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As resources are cut and demands increase are we losing something with our public sector customer services?
by Kate Bentham
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Listening and connecting with yourself as yourself online is a powerful way to connect, as one comms person shows.
by Sara Hamilton
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When diplomats retire they are able to write a valedictory. After a lifetime of service they are allowed to be slightly less diplomatic and say what they really think. This is a valedictory for someone who has left local government.
by Ben Odams
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In the Brownhills area of Walsall in the West Midlands 13,000 people live. As traditional media recedes an anonymous blog written by someone who cares about his community now gets up to 75,000 page views a month.
by Brownhills Bob
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With local elections set to take place - followed by the EU referendum in June - communications teams in councils around the country are once again working out what they can and can't do under the purdah guidelines.
by David Holdstock
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Remember print deadlines? They were those immovable feasts that dictated the best time to send out a press release. They were subject to a number of variables; did you want your press release to make the front page, was it more of an ‘inside’ piece, or were you trying to meet the personal deadline of a ‘favourite’ contact who wanted to be out at the pub by noon every day?
By Gill Gwatkin
Read moreA powerful image can make a point and make you stop and look. In years gone by, image libraries were maintained by most councils. As the cuts bit they often went. Now the Local Government Association has a solution for the sector.
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As public authorities work to get flood-affected communities back to normal they will be reviewing what went well and what could have gone better. Here are top ten tips for an effective review.
by Ben Proctor
1. Do an after incident review.
In the midst of an emergency or even while trying to get everything back to normal everyone will be very committed to capturing the learning. As soon as normality kicks in and managers start demanding the full attention of the beleaguered comms team it can be really hard to get people to sit down and think through the incident. It’s important to do it though.
It's good to write. It's an excellent creative outlet and can provide a real spark to the thinking process. but there are, understandably, reasons why some people feel uncomfortable in publishing their work - if that's you, then this post aims to allay your fears.
by GUEST EDITOR Emma Rodgers
Recently, I was very honoured to be shortlisted in the comms2point0 UnAwards best guest blog post category. The post was shortlisted alongside four other posts which were all there because they were the most read on comms2point0 during 2015.
All five went forward to a public vote. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think I had a hope in hell of winning but amazingly (against the odds in my opinion) win, I did. It made me very proud and extremely grateful to those people who voted for me (thanks if you did).
And it also got me thinking. Of late I haven’t been writing many blogs.
The public sector has seen huge budget cuts over the past five years with local government cut more than most. One communications head ponders on what the latest cuts mean for those in local government communications.
by Paul Morris
The Chancellor’s spending review hammered another nail in the coffin of local government. As one commentator predicted, several councils will go bust in the next year because there are no more buildings left to sell, services to close, savings to capture or staff to slash.
Our resilience has been stretched to breaking point; enough is enough, was the tone of his message.
This paints both a worrying and confusing picture for our residents, many of whom depend on their local council in one way or another.
As leisure centres, children’s centres, libraries, museums, day centres and other community essentials shrink their offer, or stop completely, where does that leave those people who rely upon them?
There was a time when we offered so many services it was recommended we produced ‘A-Z of services’ guides to help our citizens navigate through them. Now we face the opposite challenge. How do we explain what’s left?
Our challenge as communicators in the coming year is four-fold, in my view...
The #OurDay initiative aims to paint a picture of what local government does. And with key decisions on spending coming up there's never been a better reason to get involved. And there are tools to help you, too.
On Wednesday, councils across the country will be taking part in #OurDay, the fourth annual tweetathon to highlight the huge range of work that goes on all day, every day in local government. Last year, over 8,000 accounts tweeted 16,500 posts to more than three million people in 24 hours – and with #OurDay 2015 taking place just one week before the Chancellor’s Spending Review, we want this year’s event to be even bigger. We need to make sure that people know just how much local government does, making people’s lives better through everything from day-to-day tasks right up to life-changing interventions.
'The future is already here,' one commentator once said. 'It's just unevenly distributed.' But in a challenging post about the digital divide one view is that surely much of the debate is now over?
I turn on the news this morning to hear that HMRC are going to be closing 137 offices and opening new regional centres.
How did I react to that? I said 'oh ok,' to myself and carried on eating my breakfast.
How did the BBC react? With an interview posing a number of questions, followed by the big hitter – but what about all those older people that can’t use the internet?
Seriously, can we all just get a grip?
A new resource, launched at the Public Sector Communications Academy last week, is designed to help local gov communications people better engage with local business.
56% of the sole contact your local businesses have is with just one part of your council.
56%. Who is it? Well it’s not Communications Teams, it’s not Customer Services and it’s not elected members.
It’s your regulatory colleagues.
There is so much more to this area of work that just sending out a press release when a rogue local trader is caught and fined by Trading Standards.
For example, do you know what the excellent Primary Authority initiative is? No, I wasn’t fully aware either.
In fact when I reflect back on my 11 years leading local government comms teams I realise that I did very little with business customers, almost all of my focus was on residents. And that’s missing a trick.
From talking to other comms colleagues I was not alone.
A major piece of insight on council websites has been published by Ben Proctor of the Likeaword Consultancy. The numbers are impressive... more than 10 visits for every man, woman and child in the UK. But what do they mean for local government comms people? Isn't that just the web teams job? Actually, no. We asked Ben to interpret.
by Ben Proctor
The report in question which you can read here is an analysis of some key data points about visits to local authority websites in Great Britain. I asked every council for a small number of figures about visits to their websites and drawn some conclusions as a result.
It’s not all about the websites (except it is)
I am very aware that comms these days isn’t about getting hits on your website. It’s about digital engagement, community development, Instagram and SnapChat.
Council magazines and newspapers - A great channel or produced out of habit? A lunchtime Twitter Chat on the subject, teed up by this original post, attracted 84 comms colleagues to chip in with over 400 tweets rich with thoughts, ideas and learning.
There were plenty of views expressed during the ‘Twitter Chat’ I co-hosted with comms2point0 on 14 October. Whichever side people came down on one thing was clear - they care about communicating effectively with residents.
Here’s what I took away:
If the majority of people are online, why are we still printing magazines?
Ninety per cent of adults have access to an email address and 60% own a smartphone. While I don’t 100% agree that council magazines “service three groups 1. comms staff who think it's still 1997 2. people who refuse to 'do the internet’, and 3. older councillors” I think there is a kernel of truth there.
One of the best things about having the comms2point0 web site is the opportunity to showcase and share other people's rich learning. Learning from one another is at the heart of our ethos. This post ticks all of those boxes.
Darren Caveney’s recent blog post about his experiences as a Head of Communications over the last 10 years got a huge and admiring response from his friends and colleagues across the public sector comms industry.
At the same time I was asked to do a second year as a mentor for one of local government’s aspiring communications talents on the LGcommunications’ Future Leaders programme.
Both Darren and LGcommunications got me thinking about my experiences as a leader of communications teams and what, if anything, I really had to pass on to a leader of the future (the very near future if the track record of LGcommunications of spotting stars is anything to go by. Step forward Emma Rodgers and Natalie Corney, as just two recent examples).
The results are in: here are my top 10 honest lessons from 11 years as a Head of Communications...
A question:
Encouraging local growth: who is responsible for 56% of the sole contacts your council has with its business customers?
Answer
Your regulatory teams.
If you didn’t know this, you could be overlooking a great opportunity to engage with your business customers.
And you could be missing an important narrative about how your authority is working for economic growth and local prosperity – a story your council leaders dearly want to tell.
Are you clear how your regulator colleagues can give businesses the confidence to grow by helping them comply with the law?
What are regulators talking to your business customers about?
And what are your business customers saying to them?
For an already stretched communications team you might be wondering what you can do to make the most of this opportunity and why this should be a priority.
Here’s where to start: You are invited to attend an all-new workshop in Coventry on 10 November at the three-day LGcomms/Government Communications Service Academy.
