cherish the things you love for one day they will be gone

March 30, 2015 Darren Caveney

There’s a certain age and point in your life when you begin to reflect on things that little bit more than you did in your care-free twenties…

By Darren Caveney

I’ve reached that point.

Reflecting.

These reflections include work life and personal life and that’s a good and natural thing. Questioning what you’ve achieved and delving a little deeper into what you really want to do with the rest of your life.

And events which occur in our personal lives add to this and can't help but remind you that nothing lasts forever.

how london ambulance service ‘newsjacked’ zayn malik

March 29, 2015 Darren Caveney

Sometimes comms is about thinking on your feet and being creative. Even when a boyband member quits.

by D an Sutherland

When you think of One Direction, the flashing blue lights of a London ambulance cruising through the night taking a seriously ill patient to hospital doesn’t spring to mind. Unless the patient they’re taking is one of the boyband’s billion fans worldwide.

download and blog: unpacking purdah: what do pre-election publicity restrictions mean in practice?

March 27, 2015 Darren Caveney

In a set period before an election tight restrictions come into force on what comms teams in the public sector can and can't do. The Local Government Association have written a rather fab guide from a local government perspective. Follow the link in the blog to the download.

by David Holdstock

The countdown for local and national elections has started and communications teams in councils around the country are working out what this means for them. In response to requests for guidance, we recently produced a short guide to the publicity restrictions during the run-up to an election. Nearly 5,000 downloads later, even I’ve been surprised by the level of interest.

The term ‘purdah’ has come into popular use in both central and local government to describe the time immediately before elections and referendums when, amongst other things, particular care must be taken in the way communications teams operate.

how we communicated the homes for britain campaign rally

March 20, 2015 Darren Caveney

The Homes for Britain campaign held the biggest housing rally ever in the heart of Westminster to get the housing crisis firmly onto the general election radar – and on the national news agenda. What's the comms story?

By Anne Arnold

It used to irritate me that the housing crisis wasn’t in the news more. House prices sure, but not the housing crisis. That sinking feeling when you realise you’ll never be able to afford to buy near your family, not now, not ever.

Couples delaying having babies because they’re forking out half of their wages to live in a flat the size of a shoe box, graduates bunked up back in their childhood bedrooms, people having to move further and further out of the cities and towns where the jobs are, commuting for hours each day to get to work.

to specialise or not to specialise… that is the question

March 18, 2015 Darren Caveney

It's an interesting dilemma for a comms professional - is it best to specialise or to generalise? Or do you need to be a generalist with some specialisms?

by Nicky Speed

‘Press Officer needed to manage the media and write lively copy’ the job advert headline read. Really, is that all you’re asking for? Do those jobs actually exist anymore? To have the luxury of having such a big communications team to be able to specialise sounds great in theory – but in the digital age and more demands placed on communications people, is that realistic?

your ‘cut out and keep' guide to saying NO to daft requests

March 16, 2015 Darren Caveney

No can be the hardest word. But often the kindest. Here's a cut and out and keep guide to saying no when you really do need to politely shake your head at someone you work with...

by Darren Caveney

so what makes you the right person for the job?

March 15, 2015 Darren Caveney

One of our key reasons for setting up comms2point back in the day was to share and to encourage sharing across comms and digital folk. And we said that the ultimate outcome for us would be to help someone find a job no matter how small that bit of help might have been. Well what do you know...

by Ant Gale

I’m trying to remember how I first came across comms2point0. I think it was a random retweet I scrolled across during a work break.

Little bit of back-story on me – I had been working at Sainsbury’s since graduating with a Media Technology degree in 2012 (shout out De Montfort University) and I was doing one day a week work experience at Staffordshire County Council.

five things for a busy, stressed comms person from a buddhist publisher

March 12, 2015 Darren Caveney

Just recently, the CIPR annual State of the Profession report put stress as a major issue. It regularly comes in the top two of most stressful jobs in the UK. Journalist is the most stressed. But what can we do? We asked a Buddhist book publisher for some thoughts and advice. It makes for fascinating reading.

by Richard St Ruth

1. How did the Buddha communicate?

The Buddha was a master communicator. He gave talks to masses of people as well as individuals over a period of forty-five years. His words, delivered approximately 2,550 years ago, were remembered and recorded, and have become what we today call ‘Buddhism’.

It is not about how successful the Buddha was at transmitting his message, however, that is the issue here; it is the message itself which we might find useful in our lives and in our work.

what's in your room 101 part two

March 11, 2015 Darren Caveney

There was a tremendous response to Emma Rodgers' blog when it was first posted. A room 101 of comms. A room where you could send all the things you really don't like. After a slew of responses here is the second part.

by Emma Rodgers

Some great Room 101 tweets and comments were shared when this blog post was published. I wanted to include them so captured below is what they said. Thanks to everyone for taking part in the banishing. If only it was that easy. But my oh my that cleansing feels good.

what’s in your comms room 101?

March 8, 2015 Darren Caveney

I'd love a chance to appear on the TV Show Room 101, although I'd struggle to narrow it down to just five choices. But what would your 'Comms 101' choices be?

by GUEST EDITOR Emma Rodgers

I have been lucky recently to get to a couple of top-notch learning events – the LG Communications Digital seminar in Coventry and the comms2point0 Campaign Masterclass in Birmingham.

Instead of doing a blog on all the things I learnt from the event (of which there were many), I’ve instead opted for a post that will hopefully act as a little bit of therapy for comms peeps. It certainly did for us anyway at the time.

I’m all for sharing and while I’m generally always focussed on what the good things are to share. This time when pitching on both days, I was keen to take a different tact. It was a sharing, cathartic session whereby anyone who came along could get it out as to what was annoying them the most to do with digital at the LG Comms session, and what was annoying them most to do with campaigns at the masterclass event.

you want campaign success –then take a risk or be prepared to fail

March 5, 2015 Darren Caveney

We really enjoyed our first Masterclass event last week. But what did other attendees think...

by Nicky Speed

I had the great pleasure of spending the day with lots of creative peeps at the comms2point0 Campaigning Masterclass. It’s probably worth saying at this point that I almost didn’t make it after being rudely woken at 3.30am by a collapsed ceiling in my kitchen due to a leak and having to phone the fire brigade (yes, bizarre I know!) to come to the rescue.

four gems of learning from #uncampaign

March 4, 2015 Darren Caveney

We staged a campaigns masterclass last week. We learned loads ourselves. But what is much greater is when people who come learn. The first step is to get out of the rut and get out of the office.

by Louise Fisher

I don't know about you, but I sometimes find it all too easy to avoid getting out of the office for training or for an interesting-looking event (assuming the budget allows, of course...) That looks great, I think - but we've got so much on at the moment. We're just too busy. I'll never catch up.

Last week's @comms2point0 #uncampaign masterclass - on the art of running an effective campaign - reminded me how important it is to fight against that instinct.

how effective is your home page?

March 2, 2015 Darren Caveney

Every year SOCITM publish their Better Connected report into how local government websites are faring. Spending all your effort on your homepage?

by John Fox

The way that website visitors are led to the tasks they require is fundamental to achieving a successful website design. Better connected 2015, published today by Socitm Insight, includes an analysis of the effectiveness of council website home and landing pages.

ten things internal communicators can learn from wales

March 1, 2015 Darren Caveney

To mark St David's Day we thought that it would be rather good to have a Welsh post and a Welsh guest editor. Over to you, Nat Corney...

by GUEST EDITOR Natalie Corney

Please indulge me here, I wrote this for St David’s Day. Yes, there is some stereotyping, yes, it could apply to other countries and areas etc., but go with it – I think it has some important points...

1.Be proud

Welsh people are incredibly proud of where they come from – and not just the country – their actual town or village. There is a great affinity to home. Whether people still live there or whether they’ve moved somewhere else in the world, Wales is still home. It doesn’t matter if it’s the smallest village or the biggest city.