Dan Slee

I often ask how the local newspapers are when I’m delivering training. I can’t remember the last time someone didn’t roll their eyes and complain.

In many ways, it was ever thus. The press officer and reporter relationship was often tricky.

Today, many local titles don’t call themselves newspapers anymore. They are news brands. Clicks not print is the currency. 

A few weeks back, a journalism lecturer on LinkedIn who also runs a hyperlocal site spoke of how the NHS got in touch and the site supported a health event to make it a success. In many ways, that was a throwback. The journalist who could be contacted willing to support the event.

So, what’s the regular complaint today? They’re not interested in local stories. Without sage guidance from senior colleagues they ask dumb questions and often leave inaccurate content up unchanged in the face of complaint.

I can’t measure everything but I can see if they are interested in local stories, locally.

So, I employed my son to log four days of Facebook content posted by what used to be called regional daily papers to see for myself.

Why is Facebook a barometer?

Because Ofcom say that social media is the single most important source of news in the UK. It is the second largest channel after YouTube. What is being posted there is a big part of the news landscape people have.

In Scotland, the industry regulator says Facebook is the number one source of news. In Wales, it is second. In Northern Ireland, it is third. For everyone aged 18 to 64 in the UK Facebook is the most significant platform for local government information. Again, Ofcom stats.

So, on Facebook, here’s what Black Country titles Express & Star and Reach’s Black Country Live published.

Where’s the Black Country?

In simple terms, the Black Country is that urban area to the West of the M5. It’s the boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Wolverhampton and Walsall. More complex arguments about what the Black Country is are carried out by earnest men with beards, a pint of Bathams and a map of the South Staffordshire coal field.

I’m picking the Black Country because I worked on newspapers there for more than a decade then worked as a local government comms officer for almost a decade. I also live there. 

The old Black Country media map

In the late 1990s and early part of this century, I was a reporter on the Sandwell office of the Express & Star in the Black Country. When I joined, there were 12 reporters and three photographers in that district office alone. On my last day, I wandered down to the Press hall to see the print towers churn out copies of that days’ paper. I was as impressed with the sight just as much as I was on my first day.

Less than a mile away, the Black Country Mail had an office where four reporters were based. Woe betide us if we missed a story the Mail had. We knew all the reporters by name and knew who could be trusted and who couldn’t.

Both of those offices closed more than a decade ago.

The new Black Country media map

Today, you can take print out of the equation. The E&S sells 8,000 and the Evening Mail 3,000.

Online is where the attention is. The Black Country Mail title has been turned into the snappier-sounding Black Country Live by owners Reach plc. On Facebook, it has 200,000 followers.

On Facebook, the Express & Star has 260,000 followers.

Both the Express & Star and Black Country Live have a subscription. It’s unclear how many people have actually signed-up.

In the Black Country, Reach have all but given up on local news on Facebook 

On Facebook, Black Country Live have just 9.5 per cent of content is from the area they say they serve.

Sixty per cent of content is national. You are more likely to read a story from the East Midlands (11 posts) than a tale from either the Black Country boroughs of Walsall or Dudley. 

There isn’t a single Black Country story in the top 10 of most engaged posts.

This may be co-incidental. News ebbs and flows. A major story one week wouldn’t turn a hair the following week on the X10 bus from Merry Hill to Halesowen. 

But it may also mean they don’t have the resources to properly report on the area.

In their defence, Reach may say that the Black Country is not one of their core areas. 

But surely, it would be fairer to rename the page or stop pretending this is local news?

In the past, I’ve seen some great work from Reach in the West Midlands online and their football coverage is so much better than it was 30 years ago. They still have some dedicated reporters.

On LinkedIn, Reach feature a creditable weekly round-up of what they tag as quality journalism from across their titles. But this precisely not the lived experience of their audience on one of their core platforms.

The top 10 most engaged Black Country Live posts

NATIONAL: Rachel Reeves confirms pensioners to lose £17 a month if paying back Winter Fuel Payments (22,050 engagements).

NATIONAL: Labour to delay local elections following reorganisation (8,747).

STOCKPORT: Pig’s head mounted on front gate, prompting police investigation (7,119).

NATIONAL: Keir Starmer announces cost-of-living payments for 6 million households (4,644).

SHROPSHIRE: Police and RSPCA looking into boarding kennel deaths (4,445).

NATIONAL: New Brexit poll shows majority would vote rejoin (3,328).

NATIONAL: State pensioners to recieve help from Household Support Fund (2,195).

NATIONAL: Labour introduce campaign to encourage drivers switching to electric (1,832).

NATIONAL: DWP could give expats full state pension through legal loophole (1,066).

NATIONAL: Chris Packham warns of danger of feeding birds (978).

Of the 417 posts, the average engagement was 185 likes, shares and comments per post.

In the Black Country, the more local news focused Express & Star is rewarded with less engagement

There is only one Express & Star Facebook page.

Just over half of all E&S stories on Facebook are from the Black Country.

Staffordshire, where the print newspaper also circulates accounts for 12 per cent. Two per cent of stories are from Worcestershire where the print edition also sells. Overall, almost two thirds of stories are from their traditional circulation area.

What got people clicking most was a Wolverhampton story where tributes have been paid to a dead man.

Walsall emerging as one of the most deprived areas in the UK also dominated the top 10 with three stories.

Top 10 of most engaged Express & Star posts

WOLVERHAMPTON: Tributes paid to man found dead on Wolverhampton school grounds (892).

WALSALL: Walsall native reporter gives take on ‘most deprived town’ (752).

BIRMINGHAM: Five men jailed following violent incident (665).

DUDLEY: Dudley Metro opening date confirmed, coming more than 2 years late (638).

BLACK COUNTRY: Seven Black Country landmarks that need a second chance (335).

DUDLEY: Rival groups wanting control of mosque ordered to merge (273).

WOLVERHAMPTON: Committee approves new Desi restaurant on site of Wolverhampton pub (269).

WALSALL: Walsall council leader responds to ‘most deprived’ label (252).

WALSALL: Pictures of deprived areas of Walsall (217).

WOLVERHAMPTON: Fast food chain to open branch in Wolverhampton (184).

At 275 posts, the Express & Star was behind their main rival. With just over 50 engagements on average the figure also is behind the Reach publication. 

So what does all this say? Probably, the sample size is not large enough to make firm conclusions. But the lukewarm engagement of local news on Facebook doesn’t make for optimistic reading.

Local Press and democracy why does this matter?

There is a clear link between the number of reporters covering a town and voting patterns. Rachel Howells’ PhD thesis ‘Journey to the centre of a news black hole: examining the democratic deficit in a town with no newspaper’ mapped the link between declining newsrooms and lower turnouts at elections.

Rachel wrote:

“It finds the community under-informed, under-represented, and unable to access timely local information or gain adequate access to scrutiny. The democratic measure of election turnout in particular declined from around the time the district offices closed. Together, these findings suggest damage to the local public sphere in the town.”

I thought about this research when I read that Councillors in Sandwell Council’s incoming Reform administration had been told not to talk to the Press.

Express & Star reporter Mark Andrews’ piece further underlined the importance of reporters on the ground by witnessing then reporting the exchange.

But with no newpaper office in Sandwell what challenge will there be to this ban from the Express & Star, Black Country Live or another news outlet?

Facebook and the future of news

While my focus has been Facebook and two local news titles, maybe those titles have already moved on?

In late 2025, Reach’s Donna Ogier spoke about the company putting less trust in platforms like Facebook and Google. 

But she went on to say that breaking news on Facebook is critically important.

More emphasis is being put on news aggregators like Apple News, Yahoo News, she said. Although Meta are paying publishers like Reach for their engagement on Facebook. If engagement like anger at winter fuel payments sells then no wonder local news is getting squeezed out.

Maybe, this is already the past

It’s just possible that this model of courting mass attention is already over. While writing this, I read a post from Danish media analyst Thomas Baekdal on LinkedIn.

For him, the moment of chasing a mass audience for media companies is over. He argues it peaked with Buzzfeed in the 2010s and is the wrong business model to chase.

He describes this as social media providing ‘low-intent micro-moment’ traffic while the media industry is heading towards ‘high-intent macro-moment’.

Basically, this is swapping lots of clicks but not that much action with fewer clicks from more invested subscribers who will spend more time with you.

He writes:

“To put it simply, what is better? To have 10 people coming to you from Facebook, or to have one subscriber come to you directly? The answer depends on where you sit in your newspaper organization. If you are part of the advertising team, one subscriber sounds like a nightmare. But if you are part of the revenue team, you are making more money from that one subscriber than you make from those 10 Facebook clicks.”

What does this mean for public sector comms?

In the Black Country, there appears little point in pitching a story to the Black Country Live as local journalism has checked out. 

But is there much point pitching to the Express & Star?

Slightly more. 

But these numbers also loop back and emphasises the importance of your own channels, too.

If Facebook is critically important for breaking news for news providers then they will be for the public sector, too.

In times of crisis, this is clear. The flooding in the South West, for example, saw some helpful content from the Environment Agency giving a shareable map of road closures. That’s gold at a time when that knowledge is power.

For more, I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape. 

ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS

ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER

ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS

ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Creative commons credit: Minnesota daily newspaper office, 1984 Myotus, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

So what does running a tracker survey into AI in the public tell us? Quite a bit, actually.

Without data you are just another person with an opinion, data scientist W. Edwards Demming once said.

So, here is some data you can measure you and your team against.

In the third edition of my quarterly survey, it’s clear that AI is being firmly embedded in public sector comms teams.

Policies are being more widely adopted by organisations but there are still people using their own tools to get round barriers put in place.

Broadly speaking, the sector is moving towards greater AI adoption. But a lack of skills is holding people back.

Of all the issues being stored up, a failure to be transparent is the one that worries me most. Trust is being gambled with. The losers will be public bodies that fail to declare what and how they are using AI.

Transparency is a major issue. It’s not an stretch to say that all the guidance for the public sector is to encourage every organisation to be clear where and how they are using AI.

Trust is important and people are anxious to know how and where organisations are using artificial intelligence.

While the number of people using their own tools to dodge corporate restrictions has now moved into a minority almost four in 10 still carry out this practice.

This represents a significant danger in data leakage. This could be anything from data uploaded to a public AI tool that is then extracted to a meeting notetaker spilling the secrets of a sensitive meeting.

On the flip-side, the organisation can benefit unknowingly from an unapproved third party tool being used. For example, the unapproved use of a platform that detects if an image is AI.

---

Here, people are being very consistent. There is little change over time as more than two thirds are both worried and excited at different times. This is to be expected with a new technology.

---

Worries about AI are not swift to dissipate. A third of people worry about a lack of knowledge, having the time to use AI and being replaced. Concerns about using AI incorrectly remains the most significant worry while data leaking has emerged as a significant worry. This question was not asked in the first two surveys.

---

AI is becoming a daily tool. It is poised to become a daily tool for the majority in the survey. The most significant change is in this with 43 per cent now using it every day. Just three per cent surveyed don’t use AI at least monthly.

---

The Wild West of no policy is drawing to a close. There has been a significant shift in the number of organisations with policies. Almost two-thirds now have a policy against a quarter in summer 2025. However, while the trend is clear a large rump are operating without giving guidance to staff. This is as safe as pushing a pram over a thawing lake. At some point it will crack.

---

Idea generation remains the most popular use of AI in public sector comms and by some distance. Spell check and grammar comes second with generating press releases third.

Audio and video created by AI account for mid-single digit figures. Images have grown from a tenth of those who took part in the survey in summer 2025 to 17 per cent in early 2026.

It’s clear that people are not using AI to create public-facing content. Instead, they are using it for inspiration.

How public sector comms compares with the rest of the UK

Of course, the audience for this tracker survey is self-selecting. But more than nine in 10 people who took part in the survey say they have been using AI regularly. This compares with 20 per cent of businesses in the UK, according to UK Government data from early 2026.

Like the rest of the UK, public sector comms has identified limited skills as one of the most significant barriers.

A note about the surveys

More than 300 people have taken part in each of the tracker surveys. Data used is from people in the public sector.

For more, I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape. 

ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS

ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER

ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS

ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Image credit: Alamy used under licence.

Some new data has been published that has made me rethink who you are creating content for on Facebook. Let me explain.

Firstly, if you think Facebook is all about friends and family then please think again.

Some new data has emerged that shows FORTY per cent of your timeline is now content algorithmically selected just for you.

It’s an approach that started a few years ago but that’s now seriously ballooned. 

It also poses the very significant question… what can Facebook page admins do?

Yes, TikTok is to blame

In the olden days, Facebook and much of social media was friends, family and pages you follow.

Then TikTok came along and upset the apple cart. Instead, it started to show users content based on their INTERESTS instead. This is done through the For You Page. A user switches on and straight away sees content selected based on what they’ve watched, shared and engaged with.

Basically, on TikTok if you spend a lot of time searching or watching midweek recipe ideas then you’ll get more midweek recipe TikToks.

This approach has seen TikTok users spend more time on that platform compared to competitors.

What is Facebook’s discovery engine?

In response, Facebook tweaked their algorithm to also start showing you content you may have a stronger affinity with. Of course, Meta would never admit they had stolen the idea. So instead they called their approach ‘the discovery engine’.

They get clues from you on what you may be interested in from what conversations you are having. Talk about beach holidays with a friend or on a Facebook group and you may see more beaches, for example. 

Recent Facebook data now shows 41 per cent of people’s timelines are now ‘unconnected’. That’s not something you are following. That’s the posts the discovery engine has selected for you.

Unconnected is a figure that’s now double the amount you see from friends. It’s three-and-a-half times the amount you see from Facebook groups you are a member of. It’s similar for the pages you follow.

So what does Facebook discovery engine content look like?

I decided to go looking for it in my own Facebook timeline.

A quick scroll through my timeline finds several posts from places I’m not following. You can see the blue ‘follow’ button on this Stoke City post. I can see I’m not following them.

This makes sense. I support Stoke and I was having a long chat on a Stoke City Facebook group. The post itself was doing really well recalling the day Stoke lifted the Division 3 title. 

Next was this.

It’s a quirky Reel from BBC Cumbria with GoPro footage of a climber rescuing a crag-bound sheep. 

This also makes sense. My Dad was from the Lake District and I’m a member of several Cumbrian Facebook groups. 

So, what now?

What it means for Facebook pages

Firstly, your pages’ followers are less important. Follower numbers as a vanity metric make even less sense. The 10,000 people who liked your page haven’t seen all of your content for a very long time. 

The next question is what content may work?

For this, I have a hunch.

I think you should experiment with topics you think are popular with people online.

In the run-up to half-term, maybe people are talking about what to do in half-term. 

So, the council Facebook page that talks about what to do in half-term may look extra attractive to the searching discovery engine bots.

The NHS page that offers solutions to hayfever at a time when hayfever is peaking could see rewards. 

Right now, that’s just a gut feeling. I don’t have data to support it. Neither is there a place on Facebook where you can see what interests people. So, maybe we are just using common sense to think may appeal. 

Thinking about trends first may make it harder to get your topic on a less fashionable subject. That’s a creative challenge. But isn’t all of Facebook?

I’ve blogged before about what makes effective content on Facebook. Avoid links. Carousels of images and video may be an approach. 

But the bottom line is this. By writing for the discovery engine you are aiming at a larger slab of Facebook.

Creative commons credit. Newstand. By Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine – Own work.

For more, I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape. 

ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS

ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER

ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS

ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

One set of figures comes shining through from the AI tracker survey I carried out at the tail end of winter.

That’s having a policy.

A policy is the organisation having a set of guard rails to give safety, confidence and direction.

In the most recent tracker survey I carried out, almost two thirds of public sector comms people say that their organisation has a policy.

This is a significant shift since the summer.

Why is having an AI policy important?

If you have a policy, you have guard rails.

But having a policy drawn-up on its own does not mean that the problem has been solved.

But that’s a step on the journey not a destination.

Many commentators have rightly pointed out that everyone who uses technology as a minimum needs to have Blue Peter-style AI basics training.

In the 1990s, we had desktop publishing courses as a matter of course.

Thirty years later, we need the same for AI.

But the shift towards organisations having policies starts to close the era of AI Wild West when anyone could technically do anything. How can you take action against someone on how they use AI if you don’t have an AI policy?

Not just that but how can you encourage people to use AI well if you don’t have a policy?

I’ll be blogging the results of the AI tracker survey in the coming weeks.

For more, I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape. 

ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS

ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER

ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS

ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Creative commons credit: Retro computer by Adam Podstawczyński.

Back in the olden days you posted something and bingo your followers saw it.

Today, the dynamics of this are very different.

Algorithms shifts obscure your content to nudge you towards paying for ads to reach the audience you know are there. 

But in recent times, a new tier has emerged where pages can effectively pay subscriptions in return for benefits.

So, is it worth putting your hand in your pocket to pay extra as a page?

In the public sector when budgets are tight the immediate answer is probably no. But hold those horses. Social media is the most significant channel for news in the UK. In an emergency, people will often turn to online channels. There are arguments that you need to be on these platforms and with organic reach getting especially hard are there other options?

Is it worth it?

For existing organisations, there’s some benefits. Broadly, you get more visibility. However, for newly merged or created organisations this would be an interesting way to get your content in front of more people. The LinkedIn option may be especially useful here.

But for any organisations, the Meta Verified option which allows you to contact support feels like a useful thing all on its own. Think of it as an insurance policy against Meta.

Broadly speaking, a lot of what you pay for with these paid layers is more useful for an aspiring start-up or private sector company. But I really don’t think we are at a place where we just dismiss these things out of hand anymore.

So, here’s what’s on offer.

I’ve taken a look at options for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X and YouTube. 

Meta Verified for Facebook and Instagram

With this option, you get a verified badge. Most public sector organisations have pretty established pages so don’t really need the extra flakes of trust a badge can offer. 

But one attractive factor is the offer of 24/7 enhanced support. I’ve lost count of the number of times people have asked for advice to get hold of someone from Facebook to overcome a particular issue. Their customer service is almost non-existant. So, there’s part of me that thinks that this option is an insurance policy against things going wrong.

There’s also the option with the medium tear of adding two links to a Reel. Given that links are heavily penalised by Facebook and almost impossible to achieve on Instagram this is an attractive proposition. But if you do go down the path don’t blow your monthly allowance on linking to a heavily mangled press release. That would be daft.

With this option, Meta also offers impersonation protection. If Meta think that Oxdown Council Official is trying to underarmine the actual Oxdown Council page then this becomes a proposition. But to be fair, the only damage often in these impersonation cases is to a councillor’s ego.

All this is handy. The enhanced search function would probably be of most use to a new brand or maybe a new council that emerges from three merged ones. But if you are established this feels a little unnecessary.  Similarly, exclusive stickers for stories isn’t that much of an attractive proposition.

Options: £11.29 a month for the basic with no links on Reels and £37.65 for two links a month and some fringe benefits.

Value: ***

Benefits for the public sector: ***

More info on Meta Verified here.

LinkedIn premium company page

While the corporate page on LinkedIn is the organisation’s shopfront the real strength of the platform is the networks each member has.

That said, there’s an argument to have a premium company page. It’ll give you a gold page badge. It’ll give you a custom call-to-action button for the page so you can ask people to go to the website, register, volunteer or other tasks. It gives you a list of who has visited your page which feels a little bit stalkerish.

You can also display an 80-word testimonial prominently which again is probably not a public sector tool. Neither are credibility highlights where you can brag about awards you’ve won.

The AI-assisted writing tool feels slightly problematic. It also cuts to the heart of the divide between public and private sector. The private sector can throw anything against the wall. Councils, fire and rescue, police and NHS really do need a policy.

The dynamic cover image sounds a bit grand and eye-catching but is maybe not a huge benefit to the public sector. 

The ability to auto-invite engaged members does sound attractive. With this, people who like or comment will be prompted to follow the page. If you are looking to grow the page this could be a handy tool. 

Options: A company page starts at £75.38 a month.

Value: **

Benefits for the public sector: ***

More info on a LinkedIn premium company page here.

YouTube Premium

Anyone with a YouTube account can upgrade to premium.

However, this is more aimed at making the user’s viewing experience bettger rather than promoting a business. So, it allows you to watch clips without ads. There’s nothing really here for the public sector.

Options: £12.99 a month.

Value: *

Benefits for the public sector: *

More info on YouTube Premium here.

X premium

Where Twitter was pivotal to public sector a few years ago X has become something of a legacy platform.

That said, let’s go through the options. You can edit posts for an hour and you can have longer posts with up to 25,000 characters instead of the 280 for the free level. You can also share longer video of up to three hours in length. 

There’s also some other benefits like the ability to reply to other verified accounts. But it’s hard to see how this is all that useful for the public sector. There’s some other monetisation tools that would work maybe in the private sector but not the public.

If you did go down this route as the public sector you’d need Premium Organisation status.

Options: The basic level of premium is £6.03 a month rising to £23.35 a month for Premium+.

Value: *

Options for the public sector: **

More info on X Premium here.

For more, I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape. 

ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS

ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER

ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS

ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Creative commons credit: Tickets please by Colin Smith.

We live in changing times but there is no reason, to quote Withnail & I, to make an enemy of our future.

Knowing the slight touches at the tiller is useful as the boat chugs ever onwards.

The Ofcom Adults Media Use and Attitudes report is one such document that shows slight tweaks of direction.

Here’s seven stats that you need to know. 

54 per cent of UK adults are using AI

Within two years the number of people who are using AI in the UK has doubled. This compares to the eight years it took for half the country to be using the internet. This figure includes a mix of work, home, education, curiosity and other factors.

Almost twice the number of 16-year-olds are using AI compared to 55-year-olds

With 79 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds now using AI the younger generation are adopting the tools at a far greater rate than older people. By definition, senior communicators who are older are at risk of being left behind. This is not something to outsource. It’s something to understand. There are some great online explainers from the likes of Google and Microsoft out there.

75 per cent read AI summaries in search

Google has switched from a traditional listing to a summary generated by AI for many searches. We have had SEO – search engine optimisation. We now have the age of GEO – generative engine optimisation. That’s techniques for placing your answers into AI summaries not just on Google but answers from large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot.

44 per cent are confident they can identify AI content

If less than half of us are not confident that we can identify something made by a machine this poses questions. Are we likely to be taken in by AI deepfakes and disinformation? Yes, we are. 

85 per cent use mainstream news

The majority of people use our 300-year-old tradition of journalism. But within that, while a fifth always trust it the same number always question it. We would be wrong to think that the liberal tradition of journalists holding decision makers to account will always be with us. This needs work.

49 per cent now post or comment on social media

This figure marks something of a collapse. Last year, the figure was 61 per cent. If we are retreating from active social media use what else are we doing? The overall figure of social media use – 89 per cent – hasn’t changed much.

78 per cent see news regularly on social media

Social media once again has become an established source of news. While four in five see news in their feeds a third of people will also share it. 

For more, I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape. 

ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS

ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER

ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS

ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Creative commons credit: Piccadilly Circus in 1986 by Stella Gardiner, CC BY-SA 2.0 

In the olden days there was just one type of YouTube. That was landscape clips that lasted less than 15-minutes. You can still see the sediment of this period if you go searching for it.

The 15-year-old Bullseye episode that’s split into two 14-minute parts. That’s from then.

Now, there’s many ways to watch how to skin a metaphorical cat.

One of the glorious things about Ofcom is they don’t just publish reports they also publish selective data that goes into them.

So, here it is. I’ve read the 154,000 lines of data that went into the video on demand survey to unearth some absolute gems.

We know that video is significant in the media landscape.

We know that YouTube is the most popular social media channel in the UK and used by 43.6 million people. That’s 94 per cent of all internet users.

But how are we using it?

What length of YouTube clips do we watch… and why does it matter?

Traditional short-form video still tops the charts on YouTube. That’s clips less than 15-minutes. Ofcom research shows that 57 per cent of the UK population have watched this length of clip in the last 12-months.

What’s interesting are the YouTube Shorts data. Shorts is the vertical platform to challenge TikTok and Reels. Here, the data skews strongly to a younger demographic. Seventy per cent of 13-to-17-year-olds watch this platform.

As we get older, the traditional short-form content performs strongly. More than half of 18 to 50-year-olds will watch this.

Live streams are measurable but are not really cutting through to much more than a tenth of people. They perform best with 13 to 17-year-olds.

What’s also interesting is the longer-form content. Again, almost half the population watch clips longer than 15-minutes long. Full length films and full TV programmes perform less strongly. Around a fifth of people up to the age of 64 will watch this kind of content.

What can public sector communicators take from this? Well, maybe its worth looking at cross-posting Reels or TikTok content to Shorts would be one lesson.

But it would be a mistake to think that 15-minutes of someone dull lecturing you is the answer.

What types of genre perform well on YouTube in the UK?

The real detail in the Ofcom study can be found in the type of content we are watching on YouTube in general.

From the breakdown, music has regained the top spot but how-to guides are the most profitable type of content for public sector communicators. The new recycling bin launch can best be communicated through a ‘how to’ film.

Here, you may not always be looking at what the organisation wants to tell people this week. There may also be value in finding content that people want and making that. A chat with customer services or the webteam may show the less glamorous areas where an explainer can work.

As ever, the question ‘who is your audience?’ is vital.

By knowing the age of the audience you can better frame content.

The ‘how to’ route offering timely practical help is a powerful and underused tool in the comms toolbox.

A few years ago, an author I admired asked me to drop him a note the next time I was in London. So, I invented a spurious reason and met him.

We had connected on Twitter and the author was interested in what was happening with social media in the public sector.

We met in the South Bank Centre cafe a stone’s throw from the London Eye.

At that point in time, I was in the wave of militant optimists who were looking to make the social web work for social good. We chatted over a cup of coffee and the conversation turned to bringing people along.

Back then, I thought that you should spend time with everyone because anyone could see the possibility of those tools.

The author didn’t.

At the time, I was surprised. It took me several years to see he was right.

His argument was that in a room of 10 people you can see a lightbulb go on over maybe two or three people. They are the enthusiasts. Fired with enthusiasm, they will scheme and experiment and take things forward. A further two or three may do similar between 9am and 5pm. They are the followers.

Then there were the rest.

The author said he didn’t bother with them because they would probably never see the light. They are the laggards. 

A few weeks ago, I thought of this conversation. In the last 20 years there has been the financial crash, two significant changes of Government, an energy crisis, war in Ukraine, war in the Middle East, Brexit, COVID institutional reorganisation and the rise of AI.

Working in the public sector over the last 20 years has seen pay freezes and a loss of earning power. On a good day, you get called an idiot twice an hour online.

There is no question that ever more change is coming.

Should we expect everyone to be enthusiastic?

Not really.

We can hope people are in the first group of enthusiasts. 

We can maybe bring people along to be in the second group.

But we don’t have any right to expect this to happen.

There will be people in the third group who have had enough.

I’m always keen to show them the door to a better path. I’m realistic enough to know that some people have just had enough. 

Which group are you in? 

Picture credit: Penzance Railway Station by Andy F, CC BY-SA 2.0.

For more, I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape. 

ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS

ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER

ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS

ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.