As one year ends and another begins it is a good chance to pause and reflect.
How was your 2023?
How do you think your 2024 will be?
To help you, I’ve blogged a list of predictions for where public sector communications is headed. If I could sum up the year ahead in a sentence it would be this:
The old world is vanishing and if you hurry you can prepare for the new one.
But first, a look at last year’s predictions. I got 13 out of 16 right. Or 81.2 per cent.
What I got right from last year’s predictions
Turbulence with channels did accelerate – Twitter became X. Threads became Twitter. Facebook’s page plus link strategy collapsed, YouTube became the biggest channel in the UK and TikTok surged.
Permacrisis – That did too. Strikes in the NHS, Westminster turbulence and a quarter of local government in England, Wales and Scotland on the verge of bankruptcy and no sitting government in Northern Ireland.
More organisations did fall over – Nottingham, Birmingham and Woking councils went bankrupt with warnings more will follow.
Social media did ease away from the town square – The newly launched WhatsApp Channels was a one way broadcast. Instagram Broadcasts was literally that. New tools were given to Facebook groups and Facebook page post with a link reach collapsed. Goodbye town square and hello walled gardens.
Email lists did become more important. – Email lists which are not beholden to the whims of Elon Musk or algorithm changes.
The hegemony of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube did end.
The drift of staff to the private sector did increase.
Burn out has become institutionalised.
There was a two speed AI learning curve. Some are innovating and others haven’t even started.
TikTok did become mainstream. More organisations started using it.
Mastodon didn’t become a Twitter rival.
LinkedIn became helpful daily. From a professional perspective it’s where the conversations are.
Working with creators did become more important.
Here’s what I didn’t get right
SEO is back, baby. I’m not sure if it was.
Viva the generalist. I’m not sure if that did happen. Given the rise of AI a team with specialists just now seems the way to go. Have corse skills but learn a niche is what I’d do if I was in a team.
TikTok the end of organic reach. That didn’t happen, yet.
Predictions for 2024
Without retrenching social media there will be a ghetto of underperforming organisations with time intensive social media that doesn’t work. Teams will feel run ragged but they won’t be achieving. We are no longer in 2012. Everything needs to be re-thought.
X, formerly Twitter, won’t fall over it’ll just get less relevant. The platform is, as my daughter may say, a messy bitch that loves drama. While the noises it makes will influence the national news cycle it will continue to wither as an effective public sector channel. It won’t go away even if it becomes bankrupt. MySpace can still be found on the web even though its long since stopped being useful.
Subscriptions will be a key plank. Subscriptions for pro social media accounts will become more necessary to make accounts work anywhere near as well as they have in the past.
Fascism will become part of normal conversation. Bearing in mind what’s happening to X, formerly Twitter, the Overton window which marks what’s the norm will move globally to include overt fascism from mainstream parties. This will be unavoidable in America with a sidewash for the UK. How an individual and a profession responds to this will depend on their ethics.
Communicating bankruptcy and more cuts. This will become an important part of swathes of the public sector as more councils go bankrupt and NHS Trusts and government departments face cuts regardless of political party.
The most effective comms will be done by teams operating outside of social media management tools. While the ability to schedule and have graphs produced is attractive the pace of innovation and new tools added means there is already a welter of new tools and practices that exist outside of established social media management. These include adding a Facebook page link as a comment, engaging with Facebook groups and WhatsApp Channels. Teams that perform best will innovate using the platforms natively.
Election turbulence and the need to be politically restricted. In the UK, the public sector needs to closely read and carefully understand election law as a General Election looms. If you are elsewhere in the world there’s a fair chance you’ll have an election too. Voter ID had an uneasy start in England’s local elections but will be introduced in Westminster elections for Scotland and Wales. Unprepared teams will sink.
Teams need to spot and deal with misinformation and disinformation created by AI. Fake audio will be chief amongst this. How would you respond?
Messaging apps become more important with WhatsApp Channels leading the charge. There will be experimentation with WhatsApp.
No, there won’t be a Twitter replacement. Threads will build slowly. No, it won’t be the new Twitter. Yes, with the heft of owners Meta it will eventually become a significant player but this will take time. Not in 2024 it won’t. BlueSky and others will stay servicing a niche.
Teams that don’t accept the link is dead will struggle to provide effective comms. As we saw towards the end of 2023, Facebook page posts with a link are reaching 0.0 per cent of people. What Meta do today is what others do tomorrow. Indeed, other platforms are already doing it.
Teams that don’t educate the client will struggle to provide effective comms. Not a new thing but given accelerating changes in 2024 will prove fatal for some teams who have drifted into being unintentionally obsolete. Bring your organisation with you on how you communicate in 2024.
Facebook pages will be Reels, Facebook groups and ads… not organic content. In late 2023 half of time spent on Facebook was Reels. It is the safest prediction to say this trend will continue but for the public sector tapping into sharing into Facebook groups will also be the way they can cut through even more than ever.
For UK Fire and Rescue comms, there is a once in a generation opportunity to shape the future. The Home Office white paper on fire and rescue has moved fire from becoming a bizarre sub-set of police governance to re-establishing it as its own discipline with a College of Fire. Comms has a chance to play a central part in that.
For Police comms the Nicola Bulley case showed how TikTok detectives can make an investigation harder. The need to get up to speed with this, monitor, challenge and debunk in real time will be increasingly important.
The new direction of public sector social media will be defined by a cataclysmic event in 2024. In 2011, riots saw Twitter emerge as a key channel for the public sector. In 2024 a significant news effect will signpost the direction needed for the coming years.
Local news will continue to move from mass consumption and print to become a niche vanishing product. The example in the north of England are city-based email-first subscription platforms dealing with local news with low reader numbers. Print will continue to wither and what the heck, let’s say one local news group will end print entirely.
TikTok will continue to become more important. Bright comms teams will realise this and find ways to use it while working within the UK Government guidelines. The solution as Grant Shapps has showed is burner phones.
The wider internet as we know it will begin the process in earnest of drowning under a lorry load of AI-created sludge. Media companies and others in 2024 will jump for the AI creation escalator to make more noise to cut through.
Two speed AI adoption will continue. If we thought early social media adoption was two speed that’s nothing to teams who take the AI route and those who don’t. Content creation by volume can be increased by it but trust remains an issue.
Find your AI advocate in your team and let them read, discover and experiment. Never since the early days of social media has the need for an individual to use their own time to experiment and get to know AI in 2024. This investment of time for an individual will reap them medium and long term career dividends. Social media grew because there was one risk taker in the comms team. That needs to be the case with AI in 2024.
Build a network of AI knowledge. If there’s one person in a team be that person. If you are then connect with others. LinkedIn is useful for this. So is the CIPR AI in PR group.
Comms needs to shape their organisation’s AI guidelines. Using AI will happen but being the public sector it’ll need to have some parameters. The UK Government’s work on this will be critical in setting the pace.
Human comms and storytelling will cut through. As more content has an AI flavour what will have greater value is a trusted channel with recognisable humans at the centre.
Have a good 2024.
I deliver ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER workshops to show you how to post better content. I deliver ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED and ESSENTIAL TIKTOK & REELS workshops. I also run SOCIAL MEDIA REVIEWS where I can help you with your strategy.