LIVE TALK: A Facebook Live on GDPR and council websites

Well, that was fun.

I’ve just completed the first Facebook Live to the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group. More than 200 people watched the live broadcast and more than 50 asked a question or took part.

If you are a member of the group you can watch the replay here.

Big thank you to John Paul Danon from Council Advertising Network and to Eleri Salter from Haringey Council for taking part and sharing some valuable expertise.

A few things really shone through from the exercise.

1. As a platform, a Facebook Live is a good way to talk on an issue and solicit questions and discussion.
2. There is a perception that GDPR is a scary stick to beat people with. If you want it ti be it can be. But the glass half full view is that its an opportunity to get your act together on how you are use people’s data. You are still fine to use it. You just need to make sure you’ve got permission is all.
3. If there is a hit-list of people to be gone after by the Information Commissioner those at the top of the list are likely to be people who buy-up email lists and then spam them relentlessly.
4. Speaking of which, it’s amazing the amount of GDPR spam I’m getting in my inbox. Which undermines the authority of the sender somewhat.
5. You can do bright things with audience insight. It’s helping Haringey Council to better target those who may want to be foster carers, for example.
6. As a comms person, you need to know this stuff. Or at least have a working knowledge of it. It’s pretty fundamental.
7. You need to have permission to take someone’s picture or shoot them in a video. You need to set out explicitly what you’ll use that content for. The ‘general marketing on social media’ line won’t wash anymore.
8. I do wish someone would hurry up and built an app that comms people can use to capture permission and then turn into a searchable data base. There’s a massive opportunity for some bright person.
9. It’s always a bright idea to test broadcast a Facebook LIve before running the main broadcast. I did and spotted a few glitches.
10. Responding to people who join by waving and saying ‘hello’ to them isn’t such a bad idea.
11. The Information Commisioner’s Office will be running a public facing education campaign about GDPR. It would be useful for your organisation to build trust by getting right across that.
12. Council Advertising Network employ bright people who know their stuff.
13. Most councils use a lot of tools which may fall under GDPR. Don’t rip them out just to comply. Work out what you need to do.
14. Don’t delete your existing entire image library. Mark it with ‘don’t until the GDPR process is complete’.
15. The CIPR have got some really good resources if you are a member and Govdelivery have some useful stuff.

Big thanks if you chipped into the discussion or watched and also to John Paul and Eleri. This is the first of a series of occasional Facebook Live broadcasts from the headspace group.