THE PATH AHEAD: 25 predictions for public sector comms in 2026

It’s the time of year when I like to think about where we are headed and this I’m going to cite former football manager Tony Pulis, Albert Einstein and Taylor Swift.

The former Stoke manager has spoken about the need for today’s manager to be better at ‘managing up.’ That’s the art of bringing the club’s board with you. 

That skill in public sector comms will become absolutely critical in a year of crisis and change for reasons I’ll set out.

Einstein struggled at school but made time to learn in his own time. The leaders of 2035 will be learning in their own time too. The very bright team will encourage regular learning.

Taylor Swift? 

“Long story short, I survived.”

There will be change, redundancy and re-applying for jobs. There will be short term pain I don’t minimise. I can only offer my own experience with time and perspective.

How did last year’s predictions work out? 

68 per cent I got wholly right 

16 per cent partly right 

16 per cent wrong

Predictions I got right

The media landscape did continue to splinter. 

Algorithms did continue to edge out friends and family as the driver of traffic on social channels. 

Good content did beat churning out noise. 

Teams did start to have input into the corporate AI policy as well as have one for their comms team.

BlueSky did continue to be niche.

Staff face were facing perma-crisis fatigue so brighter heads of comms invested in them.

Vertical video did break out into the mainstream.

Mass readership local news will look even less like what local newspapers used to be.

Teams did struggle to reach people without ad spend.

Teams have been siloed in a Microsoft AI landscape ignoring the better tools out there.

Legacy tech in an AI world has been a problem.

Teams have been trapped in a Gen X landscape and have not taken on Gen Z people fast enough.

The risk of not bringing the organisation along with you was a problem and remains one.

The risk of not learning new skills was a problem and remains one.

Hmmm… partly right

Hiring a chief story teller did gain wide traction in PR but not in the public sector.

Recruiting an army of advocates to share your content in their communities was be one of the best tactical things you could have done. Few did.

There wasn’t a major be AI fluff up. But there were minors ones.

No

I’m not sure that regional news shifted meaningfully to email first newsletters. 

I don’t think the public sector embraced AI cartoons.

I don’t think teams have really embraced AI agents let alone AI swarms.

This year predictions have grouped themselves into strategic, tactics, media landscape and continuous professional development. 

Predictions

Strategic

This year will cover an epoch that will be the biggest change in the public sector for 50 years. Some shifts will be self-inflicted like huge reorganisations of the NHS and local government in England. Some will be big picture like AI. In the words of the late Robert Phillips, the PR futurist, ‘embrace chaos.’ Because that’s what the future holds.

Evaluation needs to change but the public sector will be slow to make that change. It needs to move away from the number of web hits, media queries, Facebook followers and likes. It needs to take into account the fracturisation of the media landscape. Those Facebook group posts, those email alerts, that disinformation challenged. How to count that?

As people turn more to Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Copilot for search the corporate website will decline in importance. The challenge is that information gleaned from these sources may be inaccurate. Correcting misinformation is needed. But simply putting it on the web is a not a magic cure-all.

The Daily Mail will run a story saying AI is a fad that’s now over. Just as it did with the internet in 2000. On a macro level, there will be an AI hype correction. Gartner’s hype cycle shows generative AI moving from the peak of inflated expectations into the trough of disillusionment. It could move from there to the plateau of productivity. That’s when it gets truly useful. Before we discovered Google and Amazon there was the dot com bubble.

Local government communicators will have to deal more with more Councillors, Council Leaders and candidates who don’t observe conventions, advice or the law. Comms teams need to remain calm. They need to refresh their knowledge of what local government comms can legally do and say. They need to communicate this 365 days a year locally to all parties. Not the morning after an election win. Demonstrate you are politically restricted. Building basic relationships with party leaders to re-iterate this point would be sensible. So would joining a union. These influences will be felt less strongly in NHS, police and fire & rescue.

If they haven’t done already, good communicators at all levels should understand how algorithms have changed and educate the organisation accordingly. That’s things like links should not be used as a primary tactic, for example. That’s so 2011. Without doing this your output may be pointing in the wrong direction.

As pressure grows on services, there will be greater pressure for a slew of vanity comms. That’s comms to look good in front of an incoming administration, a new organisation or to help look for a new job. This will play havoc with the team’s priorities left unchecked. Does your organisation have a list of actual priorities? You’ll need this to bat away the flim-flam.

With all this change, some people will forget internal comms. If you forget internal comms you are stuffed. It’s really hard to evaluate this but in a time of change talk to your staff. This is less prediction and more advice. But this is internal comms to staff but also managing upwards. 

An AI plan for a comms team will become essential. This will work out what AI is, some basic training and working out how the organisation can use it constructively and safely.

The smart team will further streamline approval processes. Sign-offs built for the print age do not work when the demand is often real time.

The gig economy will be more of a thing in the public sector. The sector is in the middle of a shake-up but still needs hands to do certain tasks. Drawing on some experience when and where it is needed will become routine. 

There will be more people demanding more failing tactics. The poster used to work. So the answer is more posters. This needs to be resisted. Some of this will be service areas and some will be the team itself. 

Tactics

Human storytelling will stand out even more strongly. Enshittification is the precise term that describes the process where something online starts off good then gets filled with rubbish. In social spaces, the amount of AI slop and abuse is noticeable. But so is the nurse talking about what motivated her to become a nurse in the first place.

Tactical print will be more effective. Cutting through some noise is a strength of tactical print. It’s novelty value will cut through. It can also land through a letterbox without a crowd of hostile people commenting on it.

More comms workflows will be automated by AI. Rather than being a threat the process that trims minutes from tasks will be a benefit. 

There will be things of benefit that AI does at the end of 2026 that we could only dream about at the start of the year. There’s no point predicting a widget that does ‘X’. But when that widget comes along we’ll all be impressed.

The media landscape

In regional journalism, there will be even fewer reporters and BBC Local Democracy Reporters will become even more important. People who work in journalism talk about AI creating a ‘bloodbath’ amongst an industry whose senior people are failing to grasp how AI will affect them. This will play out as fewer reporters paying even less attention to what you have to say. BBC-funded reporters will be the exception to this. They are the final bastion to what old journalism looked like. Elsewhere that kind of reporting will get even harder.

A crisis scenario made worse by AI is around the corner. We learned hard lessons about social media in 2011’s riots. We will learn more about AI and emergency planning in 2026.

More disinformation. With the rise of the far-right and Russian influence the public sector strategically needs to understand what disinformation is and how to challenge it.

One of the most significant barriers to good communication will continue to be the radicalised over 50s. Some public sector Facebook pages are magnets for bile and misunderstanding. Shaping a way to triage debate and misinformation will be the most important day-to-day challenge.

There will be more very good and more very bad video. Some of it will tick a box and will fail. The best will have a hook, be made for the specific channel and will work. The Chief Executive may hate some of it. They are not the audience.

Continuous professional development

The public sector may finally wake up to the idea that niche content will perform better than a single loud broadcast across multiple channels. We’re not in Kansas anymore and it’s not 1990. The entire population of Stafford does not watch the 9 O’Clock News and read The Stafford Newsletter. The bright comms team will create content for the Polish WhatsApp, the email list aimed at parents and the Reel aimed at under 24s. They will be entirely different pieces of content. An army of advocates will make this easier. The Polish employee who can share content to the Polish WhatsApp will add value.

There is an immense need for teams to come together to schedule regular time to train more, listen more and to reflect more. All this change would have been hard pre-pandemic. Even if WFH was ended tomorrow, it will remain hard. Time booked in for training or to compare notes is not a luxury. It is survival. This is where you can plot a path for the future pf the team and your own future. This will involve listening, learning and adapting. This may be thorny. It will always be useful. This is best done at scheduled times face-to-face. If the team won’t do it, do it yourself. 

Some people will ‘Brooks’ it. Brooks was the character in the film ‘Shawshank Redeption’ who becomes institutionalised. He cannot learn new things. Some comms people buffeted by years of change will make a conscious decision to stop learning. This is understandable but is going to be tricky for leaders.

The comms person who is still in the sector in 2032 will have set aside time to learn new skills now. A comms person who doesn’t invest an hour a week minimum now in their own R&D won’t have the skills. The bright head of comms will encourage this. Reassurance is going to be a big part of this. The sharp officer will just do it anyway. 

That’s it.

Thanks for reading.

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 and 

ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Picture credit: By Footpath Sign by Keith Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0.

UPDATED: UK social media statistics for 2025 and other helpful numbers

I must have said the line ‘more change in the last 12-months than the last 12-years’ dozens of times in the last 12-months. It’s still true.

There are rare chances to assess just how much change. One such opportunity is Ofcom’s Online Nations report which takes a chalk mark and compares it to previous years.

I’ve read it so you don’t have to.

Perhaps more has stayed the same than you may think but there are clear signs of movement around the increase in AI for search. 

As a former journo, I’m comforted that news consumption has stayed largely the same. 

The top 18 UK social media channels

Why 18? It’s an arbitrary number that allows me to capture BeReal which was top 10 a few years ago and has now dropped out of fashion.

YouTube is still largest. Some things don’t change. YouTube remains the largest UK platform reaching 66.9 per cent of the over 18 population. Facebook & Messenger is again edged into second place.

WhatsApp is huge. WhatsApp is in third place reaching 63.4 per cent of all adults with Instagram reaching more than half of all adults.

Reddit is what? Now the surprises. Reddit has moved up into 5th place growing 88 per cent over the last two years. However, as you go and Google what that platform actually is, the data shows people spend a mere four minutes a day there. Compare that to the 51 minutes on YouTube and almost three quarters of an hour that’s thin gruel.

X keeps falling but not as fast as you may think. Also worth a raised eyebrow is the decline of X. It’s been falling for several years but the surprise is that its only six per cent down year-on-year reaching 27.8 per cent of the UK population.

X rivals have not really taken up the challenge. Bluesky has plateaued atlas than three million users – that’s 3.9 per cent of the UK population. Meta-owned Threads still remains the largest X competitor but their numbers have levelled out at just over five per cent.

Elsewhere…

AI is having an impact on search. While Google is pre-eminent on three billion UK searches AI-powered ChatGPT has emerged as its rival with 252 million searches.

AI search is growing. Almost a third of all search has an AI summary. This includes Google and the AI providers. This wasn’t measured two years ago.

The internet continues to be everywhere but we’re alive to the fact it may not be always positive. We spend on average 4.5 hours a day online in our own time. A third of us think the web is overall good for society.

Almost four in 10 people have seen something upsetting online in the previous month. This includes misinformation, abuse or violent content.

We’re still using the web for news. Overall, 97 per cent of people have visited a news site. The BBC is the largest share with eight in 10 visiting it in the previous month. The Sun is in second place with The Guardian third. We spend 10 minutes a day consuming news online.

WhatsApp is trouncing its messaging rivals. Ninety per cent of people who use the internet use the platform. This is almost double Messenger in second place. 

WhatsApp is the most widely used app. Nine in 10 have used the tool beating Facebook into second and Google Maps intio third.

Children are spending time on the internet. A 13-year-old will spend four hours a day. That’s twice as much as an eight-year-old.
You can read the full report here.

WHAT’S UP? Exploring the mystery of limited WhatsApp Channel adoption in UK public sector

There’s two questions to ask with UK public sector WhatsApp use… how is it performing? And why on earth isn’t there more?

As a platform, WhatsApp is about as near as it is possible to get to a universal channel with more than 80 per cent of all age groups in the UK using it.

Organisations like Real Madrid have more than 60 million users and in the UK, BBC News commands a channel with 13 million subscribers. 

Yet, two years after launch, WhatsApp Channels have failed to really ignite public sector communications. 

Analysis shows just over 20 public sector organisations in the UK are using WhatsApp Channels. Yet, Metropolitan Police have 65,000 people signed-up for their WhatsApp Channel but have used it only once. 

There is an audience who is not being reached.

The importance of the push notification

Way back as far as 2019, the push notification to the phone was being seen as a front that had overtaken the 9 O’Clock News TV bulletin as a space that is dominating the news agenda.

Your phone pings, you glance at it and read a piece of breaking news that you’ve opted into. 

“The push notification is one of the only ways to cut through the noisy filter bubbles that many of us now occupy,” the New Statesman then reported. 

“In our fragmented media landscape, push notifications are becoming as important as traditional TV news slots.”

Today, the BBC has eight million sign-ups to its news app that issues push notifications. That’s more than double the 3.5 million who watch BBC’s largest news audience for the 6 O’Clock News. The click through rate is one per cent. But rather than the full story, people are grazing the headline. 

For news apps, around a third of people see the notification. 

This is where WhatsApp comes in. 

WhatsApp is the 4th largest platform for news in the UK. 

Reach’s combined local and national WhatsApp Channels reaches more than three million people. Interestingly, 80 per cent of their five million clicks a month come from WhatsApp Communities rather than WhatsApp Channels. While Channels are open-ended Communities are limited to 5,000 subscribers. Fine for the Stoke City coverage from Reach’s Sentinal title but less so if you are a global football brand.

An update from a WhatsApp Channel can be made to ping like a news alert. Or people can simply use their feed as a news catch-up scroll.

Why the low take-up?

All this constructs a compelling argument as to why WhatsApp is in an important position in the landscape. It can be used for news or it can be used to sort meet-up arrangements between friends. 

So why hasn’t it taken off?

As a hunch, I’d say that WhatsApp has been hit by a perfect storm of less available time, declining morale and smaller teams. The day is already busy enough. Why squeeze something else onto the to do list?

But is public sector comms missing a trick? 

I’d say, yes. 

Where public sector WhatsApp is 

Take-up of WhatsApp Channels in the public sector is thin. 

Across the public sector, there is a WhatsApp Channels for UK Government as well as Welsh and Scottish Governments. There are four police forces with a presence. Aside from the under-used Met in London, Lancashire and Derbyshire Police have accounts as does Gwent’s Police and Crime Commissioner.

In the NHS, NHS England run the NHS WhatsApp Channel and it remains to be seen if that will outlast that organisation’s demise. Elsewhere in England, Northumbria Healthcare and Great Western Hospitals have a presence. In Wales, the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board have a presence.  

In local government, Sheffield, Renfrewshire, Fife, Surrey, Wealden and in London Hillingdon and Richmond have WhatsApp Channels. South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue and West Midlands are flying the flag for fire and rescue.

There are no WhatsApp Channels in Northern Ireland found in the sweep. 

There may be more and I’d love to hear from you if you are aware of more.

How is it performing?

I’ve taken a look at a cross-section of accounts from different sectors and different parts of the world.

WhatsApp Channels can work. 

Real Madrid’s 60 million followers thrive on realtime updates. News from the club or scoreflashes work well. 

There is a tendency to add a link to the post to drive traffic to the corporate website. I’m not convinced that’s what people want from WhatsApp. A quick update and some sharable information is probably what people want.

In Germany, Feuerwehr Munchen – the regional fire service – send out text updates of incidents in a uniform format. Some get comparatively good engagement. 

For me, the Daily Mail approach is still a strategy to pursue. Rather than have one account to rule them all you can opt into different subjects. So, the Daily Mail general account has 1.3 million followers, with Daily Mail Kardashians 1.1 million, Daily Mail Taylor Swift 249,000, and Daily Mail Best Shopping 11,000. 

So, segmenting is good. 

Few people want to hear about everything the organisation does. But news targeted to a geographic area or a demographic such as parents of primary-school age children would work.  

And how about flood alerts?

Extreme weather?

Creative commons credit: Man sits at desk with five computers and 21 telephones by Crombie McNeill.

AI note: ChatGPT Deep Research was used to collect together evidence of UK public sector WhatsApp Channels as well as push notifications. The gathered information was read and reviewed.

HO HO: Here’s ten December content ideas that would work 

With December coming into view, here’s some content ideas you can adapt to reach an audience.

I’ve taken them from advice baked into training I offer just to make your life easier.

Stay safe this Christmas 

A carousel of images to depict safety advice over the festive season. Switch off the Christmas tree lights overnight. Don’t leave cooked meat out in a warm room on Christmas Day unless you want food poisoning. That kind of thing. Text on image but with images recognisably local.

Why? Because carousels are the most popular content on Instagram and Facebook.

House Christmas tree displays

As an admin on a community Facebook group, let me tell you the content that is going gangbusters are shots of houses with festive lights. Avoid car number plates in the drives or telling people where the houses are just in case people don’t want the extra attention. Maybe even crowdsource it. 

Why? Because the topic is hot and timely and public engagement can boost your other call-to-action posts.

A solutions journalism approach 

Instead of four press releases that won’t go anywhere, try a round-up of things that may help the budget-conscious time-poor parent or carer. Of the 12 things you can pull together four may have been press releases in the past and the rest may be made up of things you overlook. Like a stroll in the park. Borrow a book from the library. 

Why? Because solutions journalism content works effectively for outlets like the BBC and others.

Celebrate festive staff

On LinkedIn, the shot of the hospital porter in a Christmas hat pushing a trolley decked out with Christmas tinsel was the most popular content of the year for one NHS Trust.

Why? Because showing that you employ humans encourages people to work for you.

Show the Christmas card ideas

Often public figures like MPs or Mayors can choose a design from a Christmas-themed competition to design the next Christmas card. Share them all. You don’t have to identify them beyond a first name. 

Why? Because parents, siblings, aunts and uncles and grand parents have Facebook accounts too. Engaging with your page means they are more likely to see your calls to action.

Put the bin collection info as a graphic not a link

Facebook hates links. It will penalise your post. Don’t ask people to click because they either won’t see it or just plain won’t. Add the info as a graphic and for accessibility at this to the body text.

Why? Because links get penalised but graphics can be shared in community Facebook and Whats App groups.

The first and last baby 

If you are NHS and have a maternity ward setting up a last baby shot of 2025 and first baby of 2026 is pure win. You’ll have to send emails. You’lkl need to remember GDPR. It’ll be worth it.  

Why? Because cute babies can work across every platform.

A post-Christmas carousel

Post a carousel of images to flag up the twixtmas messages you need people to see. Often, they are about recycling, taking exercise, avoiding access and places to remember for mental health support be they MIND, Samaritans or elsewhere. What can you do with a Christmas tree? Or shiny wrapping paper? Or do you have leisure centres where people can carry out a New Year resolution?

Why? Because carousels work on Facebook and Instagram.

Where were the website hits on Christmas Day and Boxing Day 2025?

NHS England did a particularly good post they published on Christmas Eve in 2024. In it they went through the most popular pages over the previous Christmas. Booze, burns and bites topped the list.  

Why? Because people love data repackaged as a news story or fun content.

Pre-record a suitable 30-second video with a round-up of things to remember

Then post it at the right time over the festive period. If you plan ahead you can shoot, edit and post ahead of the game. 

Why? Because vertical video on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn works.

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 and 

ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

MARK UP: Your AI tip is to reduce the AI noise 

As a former journo, I do find attending journalism conferences thoroughly useful ways to spend time.

Like two relatives forced to live next door to each other with a shared drive journalism and PR & communications need to co-exist.

Sometimes this is an easy relationship and sometimes it isn’t. But always when you peer over the fence there are things that you can learn from.

One brilliant pearl came from an event in London last week where Anita Zielina from Better Leaders Lab spoke about what media leaders needed to know about AI. Of all the ideas that emerged one really shone through that can be applied by anybody in the comms industry be they long in the tooth or new.

Tip: “Reduce the noise”

By reducing the noise, this doesn’t mean turn down the volume and pretend AI isn’t happening. Far from it. What she meant is to protect your mental health you need to stop firing out emails about AI, reading them and making hand-break turn decisions based on what you’ve just read.

This makes lots of sense.

In the ‘always on’ culture we can think we need to be awake 24-hours and available seven days a week. But if we do that we make bad decisions.

Instead, put some time aside every week. Leave the AI for then. In that window, turn up the volume and dive into it. 

By protecting yourself you’ll make better progress.

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 and 

ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Creative Commons credit: Phillips boom box by Retired Electrician.

UPDATE: Eight things public sector communicators need to know about the COVID-19 reports so far

I’ve a theory that emergency planning is 9th on the ‘to do’ list of every public sector comms team.

There are things above it that need tackling but you need to show that you’re aware of it just in case anyone leans over your shoulder. So far down the list it never really gets tackled.

So, if you want to scroll away and wait for the next big thing be my guest.

If you want a summary of things you need to know stick around. 

I also know that this period is one of stress that people don’t much want to dwell on so I’ll make it short.

I’ve read the COVID-19 reports published in November 2025 so you don’t have to. Journalists have rightly concentrated on the political fall-out from a lack of leadership in UK Government at the time.

However, there’s plenty there for communicators in central, local and devolved government as well as regional police, fire and rescue and NHS. 

Eight things you need to know 

The slogan ‘Stay home…’ worked at first and then didn’t

Go to any photo library that maps lockdown and you’ll find the UK Government message ‘Stay home, save lives and protect the NHS.’ The black text on a yellow background is horribly iconic. 

It worked in the first lockdown and then struggled with nuance as different towns, cities and countries had different lockdown regimes. 

Lesson: Your initial slogan may not carry weight all the way through.

Prepare to communicate with minorities

There are some great examples of communicating to minorities during lockdown. Taking NHS staff from a particular community to deliver a message was particularly effective. But these only really came into effect after it was noticed that the core message wasn’t working with a particular group.

In Northern Ireland, for example, British Sign Language translations were not available for announcements. 

Do comms teams have a map of their minorities and how best to communicate with them? I’d guess not always. 

Lesson: Remember minority communities from the start.

Police had to enforce unclear and complex legislation  

This will come as no surprise to police communicators who tracker surveys showed were the most stressed group of all during the pandemic.

Matters were made worse by Ministers asserting that laws were in place that weren’t.

In one place, lawbreakers were facing a £10,000 fine, a £60 fixed penalty or no action at all. These variants have been logged by the inquiry.

Lesson: Police are unlikely to face a similarly confused picture in the future. 

Expect future planning… possibly

While the recommendation is for future scenario planning to take place it’s not clear on what level this will take place. The report certainly flags up the poor working between UK Government and the devolved governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Top level planning between civil servants is one thing. Training for war preparedness for the soldiers on the ground is another thing. There is talk about better sharing of the results of national exercises. But unless you have some spare time to fill who is actrively goingh to read a report of an exercise you weren’t involved with? 

Lesson: it’s unclear just how much future planning there may be. 

Radical transparency

If politicians change their minds they must say they have and explain why they have, the report argues.

But beyond that, if there are long term risks to being exposed they need to be communicated. In this case, long COVID. In the future it may be something else. But the report says people can be left to work out how much risk they want to take.

Lesson: Be brutally honest.

Knarly clearly defined objectives

On the one level, it’s odd that one of the biggest comms efforts of the last 80 years didn’t have detailed objectives. But maybe that minimises the shock of the wave that COVID had. Next time, you’ll be asked to communicate what the acceptable death rate looks like.

Lesson: Talk about how many dead is acceptable. 

More map re-drawing

In some areas, Local Resilience Forums worked on police areas that didn’t marry with council areas. This led to confusion.

Lesson: Expat map drawing ‘tidying up’.

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 isn’t going away

Things didn’t always work well but aside from tweaking it’s not going away. 

Lesson: Tweaks rather than wholesale reform for disaster preparedness.

You can read the reports here.
Creative commons credit: Cameras by Andrea Sandini.

FILM CONNECT: Your 2026 essential LinkedIn video guide (with examples) 

There was a joke doing the rounds when Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016.

‘Yes, but who will keep LinkedIn as the fun place now the suits have turned up,? The gag went.

The gag was that the platform has always had a reputation as being a bit staid. 

Since the demise of Twitter, LinkedIn has now been where a lot of the job-related discussions are now taking place. As a resource, its timeline has been incredibly useful. I will scroll it daily.

So, video. 

It’s a platform that has allowed video since 2017.

Like other platforms, success comes from treating it like its own landscape. 

LinkedIn’s UK audience

Around 20 per cent of all age demographics are on LinkedIn. It peaks with 29 per cent of 35 to 44-year-olds.

It tends to be a professional audience.

It’s also an audience that on average will dip in before leaving. One estimate is that UK people will spend a mere two minutes a day on the platform. In comparison, the average TikToker is spending around half an hour a day scrolling. 

The business case for LinkedIn video 

Video is rising as a tactic on the platform. Frustratingly, they don’t report use in the same way that Meta do. So while we can point to Meta’s figures that 60 per cent of Facebook user’s time is spent watching video we can’t do the same for Linkedin.

Instead, we can point to a flight of different stats that point upward.

  • Time spent on watching video was up 36 per cent. (source: LinkedIn).
  • Video creation is increasing at double the rate of other tools (source: socialmediatoday.)
  • Video creates 1.4 times as much engagement as other content (source: socialmediatoday.)
  • Video is shared twenty times as much as other content (source: LinkedIn.)

What LinkedIn content works best

In the public sector, research I’ve carried out shows video as the second most effective form of content behind carousels of images. This makes it something that should be part of the repertoire.

Lengths of LinkedIn video

The minimum length uploaded from a desktop is three seconds and two seconds from a mobile. The maximum length is 15 minutes. The optimum length is far shorter. 

46 seconds for a Linkedin video is one recommendation.

A second estimate is 30 to 90 seconds. 

Under two minutes but more than 15-seconds is what the platform itself appears to suggest. 

Whereas, Sprout Social calculate the most effective time is less than 15-seconds. 

In summary: brevity. 

So what content works?

LinkedIn’s own advice mirrors much of short-form video. Create a text hook that will stop people scrolling and hold attention. I’ve blogged on this. Focus on a single topic, they suggest.

Plan for people to watch your video on a mobile phone. This means shooting in 9:16 or vertical. LinkedIn also suggest using a microphone. There’s no surprises here. 

They are also pushing influencers as an effective way to tell your story. If you can find them that’s great but within your organisation you employ real people with their own networks. They can be your most persuasive way of communicating with people. It’s no accident that LinkedIn communicates so often not via a nameless void as Meta does but instead through individual LinkedIn employees. 

Human centred communication is one strand that LinkedIn has been pushing. That’s real people telling their story. This is something the public sector can really excel at.

Here’s three examples from the public sector:

Example #1 London Ambulance Service 

This is 1’20” long and accompanies a nameless ambulance operative. There is strong engagement and its striking that GDPR is preserved during two incidents. There’s no footage of the fire or road traffic collision.

Example #2 NHS England

A cute five-year-old is always a win especiually when one is a type one diabetes patient showing what their equipment to keep it in check looks like.

Example #3 National Trust

Always work with children and animals. Here, some red squirrel footage clocks in at less than 30 seconds. You really don’t have to be always be selling. That’s Glengarry Glenross.

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

ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, 

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STONE LOVE: Promotion, marketing, The Beatles and The Stone Roses

In the 1980s, there was a sign in the Island Records offices as you walked onto the promotions and marketing floor.

Over the label’s distinctive palm tree logo painted large were: “What happens to good music without good promotion and marketing?” 

At the bottom of the design in tiny lettering was the word: “Nothing.”

Forget talent, it said, music goes nowhere without those two ingredients. 

The great conceit of Danny Boyle’s ‘2019’ film ‘Yesterday’ was to imagine a world where The Beatles didn’t exist. In this world, all Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) needed to do was to appear and pass off old Lennon & McCartney songs as his own to have the audience eating out of his hand.

The irony, of course, was that film spent £57.3 million pounds on promotion.

Beatles without promotion went nowhere

When The Beatles first emerged their music was not enough. Mark Lewisohn’s superb book ‘Tune In’ deals with the early years. Before the guiding hand of Brian Epstein The Beatles were persuaded by an enthusiastic fan to play a showcase for record companies in the South of England. Talent scouts were invited but on the night none showed up. Without management, promotion and marketing they were nothing.

The great overlooked hero in The Beatles story was a man called Kim Bennett, a radio plugger who fought to secure radio plays. He worked for early Beatles music publisher Ardmore & Beechwood. He got the Beatles’ demo in front of EMI. Derek Taylor was their press officer. Dick James was instrumental in constructing Northern Songs which went on to publish Lennonj and McCartney’s music. Without these figures and Epstein The Beatles would have stayed merely big in Liverpool.

Since 2015, The Beatles have repackaged and release eight of their albums and released four films. They are poised to re-release 1995’s ‘Anthology’ series tracing their history ahead of Sir Sam Mendes’ ambitious release of not one but four films about the four Beatles.

Overall, The Beatles have sold more than 500 million units across the globe. Their talent is undeniable but their off-stage talent for marketing and promotion has also been peerless. No Christmas passes without Beatle product in the shops.

The Stone Roses legacy without promotion

When I was 21, my band was The Stone Roses. I’d tried to ignore them but falling in love with them was indeed as Ian Brown had said inevitable.

Yet, in 2004’s Observer Music Monthly best British album of all time poll, it was The Stone Roses that beat The Beatles’ Revolver to number one. In 2010, when the NME repeated the exercise it was The Stone Roses’ debut album. They rank at 31 on The Rolling Stone’s greatest album of all time.

I say this not to suggest that The Stone Roses are better than The Beatles. The Beatles released 12 studio albums in eight years and revolutionised music. 

What I’m suggesting is that The Stone Roses’ legacy is all the more remarkable since they consciously rejected so many forms of marketing and promotion. They stopped giving interviews at their peak and only gave one interview for the launch of their delayed second album in 1995.

They have no Apple operation to back them up after their demise as recording artists. They have no website, their Twitter was last updated in 2016 and their Facebook is token.

They are the model of how not to do it.

When they finished their last tour in 2016 there was no press announcement to announce their end. Instead, singer Ian Brown bade farewell to the crowd: ‘Don’t be sad it’s over, just be happy that it happened.’

The Stone Roses’ bass player Mani died last week.

I rewatched Shane Meadows’ 2013 tour documentary ‘Made of Stone’ to remind myself what was lost.

The love for the band from those audiences in the film was overwhelming.

Reading the tributes to Mani it still is.

The Stone Roses are the act that seem to defy the Island Records’ marketing and promotions motto.

STOP & WATCH: Tips for writing a good short-form video hook

It’s all about the hook. If I don’t write a useful hook here why on earth would you read on? 

If you picked up a novel and the first sentence didn’t work for you why would you read on?

Take Charles Dickens’ ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ (1859). 

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

A good hook in literature is an opening sentence demands you read on.

Good short-form video is the same.

Makers have also learned a hook can act as a way to stop people from scrolling. 

A hook can sometimes be visual. A block of flats blowing up is visual. So is a chip pan fire demonstration. 

But more often than not it’s words that are doing the work.

How? 

The two types of text on a video: the midscroll hook

As you scroll, you come across the first few seconds of a short-form film. 

Whoever has posted it is mighty lucky if your attention is taken long enough to stop. All too often poor visuals and no hook means the audience scrolls on.

It’s important to add some text to stop the audience from scrolling. 

The second type is the text you add as a title. This is the text you add so when someone scrolls to your page as Reels or TikTok so they can see what you have on offer.

Firstly, the mid-scroll hook. That’s the one that captures you as you are scrolling.

Good lessons for the mid-scroll hook 

You want something to catch people’s eye.

Here’s four things to think about

  1. Don’t rush to tell the whole story unless it’s a heck of a story.
  2. Tease.
  3. Intrigue works.
  4. What’s your stand-out quote?

Here’s some examples (with the number of engagements and channel in brackets).

‘They said I’d never sing again.’ MacMillan Cancer (8,000 on TikTok).

‘Phone thief. Unmarked police car.’ Metropolitan Police (40k on Instagram).

‘Look at it go,’ RNLI (80k on TikTok).

‘10 questions for couples,’ Police Scotland (100 on Facebook).

‘You’re about to witness a historic moment,’ National Trust (730k on TikTok).

‘Watch this incredible moment a donor heart is brought in…’  NHS England (4k on LinkedIn).

‘What’s the difference between radiotherapy and chemotherapy?’ MacMillan Cancer (1k on Facebook).

‘No matter the challenge, no matter the obstacle,’ United Nations (10k on Facebook).

‘I am seeing my dream realised.’ National Trust (112k on Instagram).

All of these can persuade people to stop and watch and in this case react.

The National Trust historic moment that captured almost three quarters of a million reactions? Wildlife being reintroduced to a river. 

Most attention needs to be paid to this but there is also a secondary hook.

The library title hook

If someone has seen some of your content and they like the look they can head to your page and look for more content. This applies to TikTok and to a lesser extent YouTube Shorts. It doesn’t really work right now for Linkedin as videos are stored in a different way.

Here’s what they can look like:

Here. people aren’t scrolling through a timeline they are searching for that book on the shelf. With this in mind you would be well served to be a bit more literal. 

Here’s four things to think about:

  1. What does the film do?
  2. What story does it tell?
  3. How can it be helpful?
  4. Is it evergreen?

‘Do you leave stuff to charge overnight?’ South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue (2.5 million on TikTok).

‘Who are we?’ National Trust (5.4 million on TikTok).

‘A message for Londoners’, Mayor of London (15k on Instagram).

‘Every 12 minutes a family in England become homeless.’ Shelter (2k on Instagram).

‘Speak out about bullying’ 10 Downing Street (10k on TikTok).

‘Hello, 999? How do I remove my car charger lead?’ Metropolitan Police (7k on TikTok).

‘What do public spaces mean to you?’ Oxfam (7k on TikTok).

‘Dear Merseyside. A poem of hope.’ Merseyside Police (2k on Instagram).

‘Ways we support you.’ Royal British Legion (1k on Instagram).

‘It’s 1868 and you’ve just about had enough of him.’ Black Country Living Museum (944k on TikTok).

See what I mean?


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ACTION REACTION: Here’s a flow-chart to help a comms team combat a wave of online hate 

Here’s a question. If social media is generating more hate and abuse than ever what can public sector comms people do about it?

It’s an issue that goes right to the heart of communicating.

Three quarters of people get news online. 

If the public sector can’t navigate these stormy waters safely we are all in trouble.

In this post I’ll go through some tips and strategies that a responsible organisation needs to take into account.

Is online hate a problem?

Yes, it is a problem. A straw poll of members of the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group showed 83 per cent seeing an increase in abuse and racism over the last three months.

This has an impact.

In the last CIPR mental health audit, 91 per cent of members experienced some kind of mental health issue in the previous 12-months. Opening up a laptop and seeing hate may have been a factor for some of those. 

Indeed, you don’t have to travel far to see this. 

A quick search for London Mayor Sadiq Khan on X while writing this showed four pieces of disinformation in the ten latest tweets. But beyond that the figures aren’t great. In the UK, 97 percent of complaints to X about Muslim abuse have not been followed up, according to the Center for Counting Digital Hate. The same body also found evidence of anti-semitism in a related study. 

Sky News’ inve

So what can you do?

Not post? Anecdotally, I’m also hearing of organisations not posting about certain issues like Black History Month or Pride to avoid the risk of abuse.

While I can sympathise with this, this is allowing people on the margins to dictate what you can and can’t talk about. That can’t be a strategy.

Leave the platform? While I can sympathise with organisations who have left X the aftermath of the Liverpool trophy parade showed the importance of maintaining a presence on the platform. I’ve blogged before how Merseyside Police used X to share updates aimed at undermining far right disinformation. Their tweets were amplified by every major news outlet in the UK drowning out the bad actors. Dial back but don’t check out would be a sensible strategy there.

Time a post? I first came across the idea of posting at certain times of day when I was researching elected members and Twitter as it was then called. ‘Don’t expect sensible debate after 9pm on a Friday,’ one elected member said. That stuck with me. So, if its controversial, posting something mid-morning to side-step some of this. You are also likely to be online to monitor comments.

Have a plan? This is where the Army adage of fail to prepare and prepare to fail comes in.

So what can you do?

Have a plan to combat abuse online

Here are some pointers.

You are obliged to have a plan. The Health and Safety Executive requires that you have a plan to protect staff from violence in the workplace. Abuse is classed as exactly that. Violence in the workplace. You need to have a set of standards for workplace behahiour. This is where the house rules come in.

But don’t tolerate abuse. I have banged on about the need for social media house rules more than anything else. This does two things. What you’ll do for residents with social media and in return setting a standard of behaviour. Have within those house rules that you won’t tolerate abuse, racism, homophobia, anti-semitism and other objectionable ways to behave.

Criticism of policy is fine… listen to it. It’s fine for people not to be very happy with that planning application, those NHS waiting lists, that crime or the coverage of that fire station. This is democracy. Your social media should be the canary in the mine for issues. Every place I’ve ever worked has made three types of decision, broadly. Good decisions, good decisions poorly explained and bad decisions. It’s your job to report back a flavour of that feedback.

But block those who won’t stick to the rules. If you go to your local shop and you abuse members of staff, the company and other shoppers you’d expect to be barred and the police be called if you persist. This should also happen online. Take a screen shot of the offending evidence and make a note of the person who has been blocked and why. They can still contact your organisation through the phone, by post, email and face-to-face. Your staff deserve to be protected.

Get prepared when there’s an issue. Remembrance Sunday, Easter, Christmas, Black History Month, Pride, Hanukkah and other religious festivals can bring the worst offenders out. So, come up with some bullet points on how to handle these comments. Abuse? Block. But there’s also other ways.

Push back to educate . Tell the cynic why you are posting about Black History Month and maybe the important role people with an Afro-Caribbean background have played in your community. Often, other users of your site will thank you. But try and avoid a ‘he said, she said’ running argument.

Switch off comments. On some issues people like the Mayor of London’s office just switch off comments. On those hot topic issues this is a sensible idea.

Don’t say it’s getting to you. All this does is encourage people. I’ve seen some great campaigns while using London Underground to ask people not to abuse staff. Blowing a gasket at a delay at London Euston is totally different to a co-ordinated campaign run by racists.

A rough graphic

Here’s a rough graphic based on this blogpost.

What have I missed out?

Do let me know in the comments.

Creative commons credit: Edelmaus Banksy Munchen.

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