About a decade ago I sat in a deckchair on holiday and came up with a list of skills a public sector comms person needed.
A few years later I did the exercise again instead looking at what the wider team needed. I realised there was now too many skills for every team member to know.
A few weeks ago, I was asked to repeat the process with an eye on what skills are now needed in 2025. Here is that list.
The list is in two parts, core skills and specialist skills.
Everyone in the team needs the core skills with the wider specialist skills covered by the team.
After reflecting, I’ve added some basic AI knowledge to the core skills. Using it safely is a core task everyone now needs to know.
CORE SKILLS
| Know your organisation’s priorities and how to deliver them.
| Know your audience and help others to know theirs.
| Know the age and cultural demographics of your area.
| Know which channel is the most effective for all demographics be this print, social, web, radio, podcast, face-to-face or TV.
| Know how to create content effectively on all platforms.
| Know how and what to evaluate with the service area you work with.
| Know how to write a comms plan with the input of others.
| Know how to plan, shoot, edit and post effective vertical and landscape video.
| Know how to choose the best person or people to front your content.
| Know that social media is social.
| Know that effective social media is a mix of some call to action with more lighter human content.
| Know how to stay updated how the algorithms change on the key platforms.
| Know how to Speak human.
| Know how to educate the client.
| Know how to be a diplomat and know the big and small ‘p’ political awareness.
| Know how to speak truth to power.
| Know how to tell stories.
| Know how to add emotion.
| Know how to interpret data.
| Know how to respond in an emergency.
| Know how to communicate with head and heart and when to do them.
| Know and understand jargon but translate it into plain English.
| Know GDPR.
| Know copyright law with images, video, text and generative AI content.
| Know the basics of RIPA.
| Know the HSE legislation.
| Know how to create accessible content.
| Know brand guidelines and when they are applicable.
| Know when to engage and when not to online.
| Know current UK Government guidance on AI.
| Know GCS guidelines for safe use of generative platforms.
| Know how and when to safely create words, images and video using AI that are within UK Government guidelines, your organisation’s policies and the guidelines of the platforms to which they are posted.
| Know your social media house rules and when to enforce them.
| Know how to evaluate and locate relevant data with the critical mind of a scientist, the eye an artist and a filmmaker and the story telling ability of Roald Dahl.
| Know how to present your advice, findings and evaluation.
PERSONAL SKILLS
| Know how to work as a team and as an individual.
| Know how to work with a service area.
| Know how to work with empathy.
ETHICS
| Know your own professional standards and those expected by your organisation.
| Know how your organisation’s constitution or founding legislation affects your job.
SPECIALIST SKILLS
STRATEGIC
| Know how to draw-up an emergency plan and work with colleagues from other organisations at a stretegic level as part of the Civil Contingencies Act.
| Know as a head of communications how you help deliver the strategic vision of the organisation.
WORDS
| Know how to write good content in print, social and web.
| Know how to write a marketing email subject line and to improve open rates and click throughs.
IMAGES
| Know how to take and edit pictures.
| Know how to commission freelance photography.
| Know how to use and update an image library with metadata.
| Know how to work with designers
MARKETING
| Know when and where to deploy marketing and when not to.
WEB
| Know how to edit and create a webpage.
| Know basic current principles of SEO and what metadata is.
| Known how to embed sharable content.
| Know that the social media is no longer about driving traffic to the website.
| Know the CIPR advice on when and how to engage with Wikipedia.
| Know the basics of Google Analytics 4 to help measure where people are coming from and what they are doing on your website.
AUDIO
| Know when and how to create a podcast.
| Know how to pitch to a podcast or a radio journalist.
VIDEO
| Know how to brief a videographer.
| Know how to work with and create brand guidelines online.
| Know what TV journalists are visual and how to pitch to them.
COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
| Know how to find and connect with influencers be they online group admin, amateur photographers, local historians or food bloggers.
| Know when and how to engage with people in their own online spaces.
| Know how to build and maintain an online community.
| Know how to deal with comment, criticism and abuse.
| Know how to create, maintain and enforce social media house rules.
MEDIA RELATIONS
| Know how to log and take a media query.
| Know how to deal with a media query and its sign-off.
| Know how to build relationships with reporters.
| Know how to select a news, stock or library image for a media release.
| Know how to make a complaint.
SOCIAL MEDIA
| Know how social media and customer services work.
| Know how to search social media for groups.
| Know how to create thought leadership content.
OPEN DATA
| Know what open data is and what obligations your organisation has.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
| Know how to safely use large language models to generate ideas and content within UK Government guidance.
| Know how to identify fake images and video.
| Know how copyright and GDPR affects the creation of all content.
INTERNAL COMMS
| Know face-to-face, intranet, social and print channels and which is most effective for each task.
| Know who is best fronting different internal messages be that the head of the paid service, a manager or a colleague.
I hope this list helps you think of what your comms needs to look like in 2025.
Training I deliver:
ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS REBOOTED