Author Archives: Dan Slee

1 – Vertical video is all about the hook

When I first offered video training 10 years ago, the first three seconds were important. Now, the first second is. A text hook has been increasingly used to reel people in. You are not telling the whole story but you are teasing a reason to watch. 

For example:

‘I’m the luckiest man alive,’ says Air India survivor – BBC News on TikTok, 214,000 views.

‘Welcome to our giant inflatable bowel’ – BBC Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust on TikTok, 1.5 million views.

‘Shocking footage of a patient attacking a paramedic’ – London Ambulance Service on Reels, 21,000 views.

Lesson: Adding a text hook to your vertical video can stop people scrolling past.

2 – A carousel on LinkedIn is the most engaging content

All the big tech companies don’t want you to leave their platforms. Why would they?

The more time you spent the more attractive you are to advertisers. With that in mind, the carousel of images is the surprising choice perhaps for the most effective content for engagement on LinkedIn. 

What’s a carousel? It’s a spread of four or five pictures on a topic.

For example:

As the clocks go back this week we’re taking a moment to enjoy our city from day to night. 🌅 🌇 🌙

In this LinkedIn post Manchester City Council have approached amateur photographers on Instagram for permission to share images which celebrate the city. And why not? 

Lesson: Approach amateur photographers on Instagram for permission to reshare images. Don’t forget to credit them. 

3 – Using Nextdoor ads to reach over 55s

Nextdoor can be something of a curate’s egg by being be both good and bad. 

Advocates would argue that it reaches over 55s while detractors would point to the lack of real insight around user figures. There is no analysis from Ofcom, for example, that thoroughly interrogates user numbers. 

However, advertising to particular geographic communities can be done through the platform as UK Government have been doing. 

For example: 

Here, the Environment Agency used an ad to promote flood preparedness targeted at people in Grimsby.

Lesson: Targeted ads on Nextdoor are a way to reach over 55s in targeted locations.

4 – Take a leaf from solutions journalism

A new school of journalism is evolving away from the one we have known for decades. 

In this approach, instead of large story counts and multiple stories the emphasis is on understanding the audience. Once you have an idea of who the audience is you can then understands what issues they have and you can design something for them.

So, for example, the council with half-term activities may have once issued a number of press releases on things you’d like them to know. The new approach puts all of those things in the one place by creating a huge listicle of all the things you can do during half term.

For example:

Half term activities to keep your children busy.

People are time poor. They want something with one click rather than spending hours online. If that’s the case then shape your own content accordingly.

Lesson: Use solutions journalism techniques to set out what help or advice you can give to a particular demographic at a particular moment in time. 

5 – Have an AI policy and communicate it

As AI becomes more prevalent, the temptation is to use it on everything. This probably wouldn’t be a great idea. But drawing up some guidance on how to use it would be really useful.

As a starting point, the UK Government AI Playbook is startlingly good document that at the very least you can use as a reference point and to de-block issue-by-issue.

For example:

Lesson: The UK Government playbook is an important resource for communicators to understand how to use AI safely. 

6 – Use Facebook pages safely by limiting who can comment

The day are over as social media as a wonderful town hall where people can exchange views.

What has followed has often become what Stephen Fry described as a wonderful pool that now has a turd floating in it.

But the public sector can still use it to communicate. The technique of adjusting who can comment on a post should be part of the skill set. Some issues will just attract people trying to spread hate. 

For example: 

Here, the Mayor London’s office has limited who can comment and guess what? It’s not inundated with abuse from ther far right.

It’s important to keep that handy for the racists rather than people who may disagree with you respectfully. 

Lesson: Look to limit who can comment on Facebook when topics are posted that will attract extremists. 

7 – Get your crib sheet ready for hot topics

We all know the issues that will trouble some people so get rready for that.

What troubles some people? Pride, Black History Month, Christmas, Easter, International Womens’ Day, Diwali, Yom Kippur and other religious festivals.

So, have a crib sheet in advance to tackle expected comments. 

For example: 

• We recognise black history month to recognise the great contributions that black people have made to British life. 
• Four per cent of the UK are black and they have a unique story to tell, of course we should recognise that just as we recognise other stories.
• In World War Two 20,000 people from the Carribbean served in the armed forces. We should absolutely recognise that just as we recognise many other contributions.

Lesson: Have a crib sheet when covering a hot topic of expected responses and how to deal with them. This can range from responses in the comments to the grounds to block people 

who are abusive.

8 – Experiment with an Instagram broadcast channel

Broadcasts can reach your existing audience through their direct messages.  They can be a handy way to reach and engage with your existing followers.

For example:

This broadcast from the Meta channel is promoting Oakley glasses which have an AI element to them. That’s lovely but what could you talk to your Instagram audience about? 

Lesson: Broadcasts on Instagram are a handy way to talk to existing users directly.

9 – Trial pdfs on LinkedIn

A vastly underused piece of functionality of LinkedIn is the PDF. Really? Isn’t that a bit old school?

There are those who reasonably have a death wish for the pdf. I can see why. They are not visible to search engines and they are inaccessible. If used well, they can contain information in a more visible way.

LinkedIn allows you to upload a pdf to allow the user to stop and scroll through it. So, if you have pdfs tucked away in people’s hard drives shouldn’t you let them be free?

For example: 

In this example, The National Trust have details about a Reminiscence session for people with mild dementia in Birmingham. Of course, that information would also need to be available in an accessible way, too.

Lesson: Don’t hide your pdfs away. They can work as LinkedIn content.

10 – Don’t use AI translators unless you are satisfied they are 100 per cent accurate or can be verified

So far, there have been nine do’s but here also is a don’t.

Some AI tools will promise they can translate your text for you. Don’t take that at face value unless you verify that with a speaker of the language. Trials I’ve done has seen examples about 80 per cent accurate. If you are looking to share important information that’s not good enough.

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: Cromemco systems, 1982 used under a creative commons licence.

There is now only a single UK regional newspaper that sells more than 20,000 copies a day.

The largest seller in the country is the Belfast-based Irish News which shifts slightly more than the threshold.

The lack of fanfare to this news, slipped out without much comment in UK Press Gazette, is probably the most striking think to an old hack like myself.

The figures are from the UK Press Gazette [paywall]. 

The Express & Star, which I used to work for, sold more than 180,000 copies a day around 2005. 

Rupert Murdoch’s recent prediction that there is maybe five years of profit left in newspapers is if anything optimistic. At current rates of decline there will be no copies sold.

We avoid news 

Yet, we are less bothered about news. For a functioning democracy this is bad news.

More females in the UK avoid the news than actually are interested in it, according to the Reuters Digital News report. There is an eight per cent majority of men who are more interested in news than avoiding it.

We get news online

The declining print figures don’t mean the end of news but rather how we consume it.

Online news is where most news is consumer in 2025, according to the Reuters study. Almost 75 per cent turned to the web for updates.

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: Harrogate newsganet mtaylor848

Alarming research on how local Facebook groups are being used to spread hate has been published which public sector communicators need to know about.

A small number of interlinked groups have become the engine room of far-right opinion that has sought to normalise racism, disinformation and conspiracy theories, findings show.

Results of the 12-month investigation have been peer-reviewed by academics and published in The Guardian. 

As someone who has researched local Facebook groups for the past seven years this comes as no surprise. While some groups are cornerstones of their communities other groups spread hate. 

Before I go through the research’s findings I need to address public sector communicators directly. If that’s you, I know the urge to click away is strong. You’re busy but I’d urge you to stay. This has the potential to undermine everything you are doing.

Why Facebook groups are important

The data is really clear here.

• Two thirds of the UK population in your area use Facebook.
• Two thirds of all Facebook users are members of Facebook groups. That’s about half the population.
• Facebook groups are the most important sources of local government information for everyone between the ages of 25 and 65.
• Facebook groups are more than three times as likely to be a source of local news than a Reach plc website for a 30-year-old.
• There is five times more local news than national news in Facebook groups.
• On average, there are more than four local Facebook group memberships per head of population in London rising to 12 per head in parts of Scotland.

For more reading, I’ve blogged on Ofcom research here, the importance of Facebook groups to Meta and the importance of news to Facebook groups 

So, that’s setting out why Facebook groups are important. I’ll look at the research and then go through some strategies you can use. 

If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?

The research findings: ‘Inside the everyday Facebook networks where far-right ideas grow’

In 2024, rioting took place across England in response to the murder of children in Southport and was fueled by far-right disinformation. Researchers traced a handful of those charged and then researched their publicly-available Facebook groups.

They found they were members of overlapping Facebook group networks with 600,000 members with many posts supporting those charged. An analysis using AI of 51,000 posts made in summer 2024 in those groups showed:

• A distrust of mainstream institutions.
• Scapegoating immigrants.
• ‘White British people are fed-up.’ 
• ‘I’m not far-right I’m just right.’
• Conspiracy theories. 

Sander van der Linden, a professor of social psychology at Cambridge University, sums up: 

“Regular people interacting with this content often don’t know that they’re part of some playbook or agenda. Political elites and opinion leaders such as Farage, [the far-right party] Homeland, or Tommy Robinson do take a page out of the fascist playbook and are using it to dupe regular people into engaging with their rhetoric. So they come up with a narrative such as ‘the mainstream media is lying to you’, or ‘scientific institutions are looking to censor people’.

“And then they try to get regular people to support, amplify and engage with those topics.”

If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?

This is a community cohesion thing not a politics thing

The copout way of this is to think this is that it is ‘political’ and that’s not something public sector comms people do. You are politically restricted, yes? This isn’t. This is community cohesion. This is protecting democracy against radicalisation.

This is not about the comms team getting involved in ‘he said she said’ arguments. But it is about using Facebook groups as a place to communicate. Some won’t be receptive but many others will be.

Having concerns is part of the political process and its for politicians to take up the issue. Making comments that lead to arrest and conviction is breaking the law. Plain and simple. 

If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?

To engage online or to not 

I’ve spoken to many public sector people who roll their eyes and despair at online behaviour. I feel for them. I’m proud to say I was part of the first wave of local government communicators who pioneered how social media was used. There were many of us. But those pre-COVId days feel far away.

There’s no doubt that since COVID the way people can speak to each other has fallen into the gutter and in some cases far worse.

But this poses a very serious question. Should the public sector engage online?

I’ve heard of people ducking out of posting on some key topics because they know there’ll be comments. I feel for them too but for me the main issue here is a lack of support for those who are monitoring pages and a lack of any strategic plan to deal with incoming comments.

If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?

Social media house rules

The ditch I’m prepared to die in are social media house rules. Every organisation that uses the internet needs one. It’s not a nice to have. It’s an essential to have. Indeed the Health and Safety Executive place a responsibility on employers to protect their staff from abuse in the workplace. 

With a set of house rules you can firmly draw a line in the sand to block those who can’t talk online without shouting and swearing. Comms here is re-inventing the wheel that customer services has long been using. If you turn up to the council one stop shop and shout and swear there are consequences. So it should be online, too.

If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?

Engaging in awkward spaces in an emergency is sometimes a necessity

When a car drove into Liverpool supporters at the club’s city centre trophy parade the far right disinformation started within minutes. It was an immigrant, they said. It was an ‘illegal’.  

Within hours, Merseyside Police had staged a press conference identifying the culprit as a British-born local man. News outlets such as BBC News, Sky News, the Liverpool Echo and other mainstream news outlets reported this development. As a result, the misinformation withered.

Had Merseyside Police not made the press conference and posted on X as well as other places the field would have been left for bad actors. 

It is important to post in all spaces in an emergency.

If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?

Posting on your page with a plan is a necessity 

First, posting to your own page. 

I’ve heard of people who pull a punch rather than communicate on some issues. I can sympathise with that but for me it’s a team failing to do their job.

Instead, I’m impressed with the approach of organisations like Edinburgh Zoo, Sheffield City Council and Royal British Legion which stick to their guns and post on topics that will attract hate but have a plan to challenge it.

I’m pretty sure those organisations will remove the hateful content but they’ll also challenge snark pushing back. They’ll post a link to their house rules in the comments and push back at people criticising things like Black History Month or Pride. That’s so refreshing to see.

They’ll often do this by having a few bullet points up their sleeve around how to respond. 

All of this is a time-honoured approach. In the early days of Twitter when we would post gritting updates, we’d have a link to the grit map as a stock response to someone asking if their street had been gritted when the trucks had gone out.

If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?

Sharing content into Facebook groups is a good idea

In training, when I’ve gone through the importance of Facebook groups, one observation from a comms team is that they are really busy. Do they really have to monitor every conversation?

The answer is of course ‘no.’

But going to where the eyeballs are has always been one of the laws of the internet. If there’s a Facebook group for a town where there’s a large fire it makes sense for the fire and rescue service to post an update there. 

If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?

Getting help to share content into Facebook groups is an even better idea

Here’s where it gets interesting. 

If capacity is a problem then getting help with sharing messages is a good idea. 

In the past, I’ve worked with part of the NHS in a diverse area. Recruiting staff from across the Trust into a WhatsApp group to share messages in their own networks of Facebook group, Nextdoor or WhatsApp makes perfect sense.

A Romanian-speaker employed by the Trust can do a better job of sharing a message into Romanian networks than the comms team ever can.

In the public sector, it may be a mix of staff or community groups who are a waiting pool of people who are happy to share content. 

If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?

The risk of not doing anything with Facebook groups is high

Facebook groups are an important part of the media landscape for communities.

The public sector has moral duty to engage with people whether that’s to educate, inform, sell tickets to shows, flag-up community events or drive behaviour change.

It also has a duty to use the most relevant tools to reach people where they are. It needs to be flexible and adaptable. If people are using Facebook groups then that’s where they need to be.

For me, this has moved from a nice to have to an essential to have. If the far right are using groups to radicalise then it’s a moral duty on all of us to push back. 

If we ignore this, we may not like the society we may find ourselves living in. 

If these spaces are important to extremists, shouldn’t they be important to you?

The full research can be found here.

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: Grapes Hill Underpass by Evelyn Simak.

It appears that great myth ‘more with less’ is in circulation so I thought I’d give you tools to help you manage expectations.

The weasel of all slippery phrases is no stranger to anyone who worked in local government around the 2007 financial crisis. Budgets across the board were cut but nobody really wanted to face up to reality.

I recall an SLT request that a long list of stories be included in the residents’ magazine.

It was pointed out that they had cut this publication at the last meeting.

What ‘more for less’ actually is is a hope that the cuts won’t have an impact. Reader, they will and do.

Why ‘more with less’ is a myth

With the amazing power of AI I’ve produced this image.

Visually, this shows three machines that between them produce 15 widgets a week. If two of them are removed you are left with one machine that produces five widgets a week. 

Breaking: if you remove capacity you have less capacity.

Yes, you can cut some corners and with experience do things faster but fundamentally there is no escape from mathematics. One machine will produce less than three.

But how to push back at this?

Why ‘less with less’ is the argument to make

Your task is to be realistic. 

With less capacity, five things can be done with one member of staff instead of 15 things produced by three. 

I can tell you this with absolute certainty with a story to illustrate it.

When I started in local government there was six full time members of staff in the team. After about 12-months the head of comms left was not replaced and the other members of staff filtered out of the door too. For a spell, I was effectively left to do the work of six. Being quite junior I looked forward to the challenge of learning. However, what this meant in practice was if I worked until midnight five days a week I could go backwards at a slightly more acceptable way.

Looking back, the lesson it taught me was to manage upwards and adjust expectations.

Why ‘make AI do it’ isn’t an argument to make

Right now, it feels like AI is sometimes seen as a wonderful cure all. We’re at the edge of the Gartner hype cycle where we are working out how to make this new tool work. We are in 1997 before the dot com bubble rather than ten years later where it’s clear that a handful of web tools are really useful and others have fallen by the side of the path.

What less with less actually looks like

The only way that less with less can be made to work in an organisation with sky high expectations is to ask SLT to make a choice of where they are prepared to cut back.

What are the organisations priorities?

I’ll give you a tip here. An organisation that has 30 priorities has no priorities at all. 

If everything is a priority nothing is. 

Senior people need to see that list and work out for themselves what’s most important. What’s the top five? What’s the gold, silver and bronze? Gold gets done to a gold standard. Silver gets reduced support while bronze gets a minimum.

Without this senior buy in you will be trapped in an unsustainable hamster wheel destined to fail because one machine can only ever make five widgets a week.

Creative commons credit: Classroom by Fotothek.

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.

There’s no question that AI has become the buzzword but like all trends there’s quality and some fluff. 

For every pre-Be Here Now Oasis banger there is a small army of indie landfill that really never added much beyond wearing a cagoule.

So, here’s some potential AI tools and their drawbacks around video content creation.

But first, have a policy 

Remember, a lot of what is being written or created about AI is from vendors or people who work in the private sector. Neither have to work under the constraints public sector comms do. If you are looking to use a tool in earnest, have a framework to use it safely.

I’ve blogged before on the importance of drawing from the UK Government AI playbook for drawing-up your policy. Don’t leave home without it.

Remember, that if you post AI assisted video onto a social channel you need to declare it as you upload to meet their terms and conditions.

A tool to animate an existing interview 

You have someone who is happy to speak about being a foster carer but doesn’t want their identity revealed. That’s fine. You can use the audio from the video to create a chat. You keep the local accent, but you mask the identity through a cartoon rather than shooting the interview in silhouette to make them look like a gunman on the run.

There are plenty of tools that tell you they’ll take a video and then animate for you, but precious few actually do. In this example, I converted an mp4 video file into an audio mp3 and then uploaded it to the Adobe Express tool.

You can use Adobe Express or other tools to take a video and turn it into a cartoon.

Drawbacks: Be careful not to trivialise the subject.  

A tool to create an avatar of a real person

You may need to create a series of training videos on a subject but you may not have the time ot the subject.

Creating an avatar may be one way to tackle this. But, beware. GDPR still applies and you’ll need to check with the subject each time you want to make a film.

There’s also the issue that a long video with the subject looking straight at the camera may not be the most engaging thing imaginable. 

In this example, I’ve used HeyGen to create an avatar of me. I did this by using their website and my webcam to ensure I don’t just take a random video from the internet and create an avatar of them.

In the script I refer to ‘veed.io’. It’s actually created using HeyGen.

You can use HeyGen or other tools to create a video.

Drawbacks: GDPR and the voice clone may not be authentic.

A tool to make sure the subject makes eye contact with the camera

Some subjects are camera shy or may be looking at someone off camera. A lot of the time that’s probably fine. But just in case you have a subject that is shifting their eyeline an additional tool may be useful.

Here, I’ve used a tool to ensure the eyeline is always to the camera itself. I’m not entirely bowled over but it is worth pointing out that the finished results does what it says on the tin and also allows existing blinks.

You can use veed.io or other tools to make this correction

Drawbacks: the finished result may not look authentic.

A tool to create a cartoon of an existing video

Not satisfied with a straightforward video, here I’ve tried to give myself a cartoon look. Weirdly, it’s given me some grey hair at the sides and it’s also only allowed the export of three seconds. This isn’t the most generous of terms. You have to pay more than a free trial for longer.

You can use domoai for this.

Drawbacks: It’ll cost and you may want to be careful what subjects are chosen for this. 

A tool to create a cartoon internal training video

If you have a process you need to explain then using a tool to create a ‘how to’ video may be useful. 

You can use steve.ai or other tools to come up with a script and then produce the video using cartoon, AI generated footage or actual footage.

I’m not at all convinced with this level of outsourcing even if it had a decent stab at saying ‘Worcestershire sauce.’

You can use steve.ai or other tools for this.

Drawbacks: insincerity.

Using an AI-powered tool for subtitling

In the olden days, sub-titles needed to be added manually by a cycle of listening, pausing and then typing in words. This was very boring. It’s just the sort of thing that AI can devour. So, when the Kinemaster editing tool was upgraded to allow AI to transcribe clips I was very happy.

However, I quickly realised that the AI tool was making a guess at what was being said.

Someone I trained who made a video with the speaker talking about ‘Halesowen’ had the AI tool transcribe that as ‘Hell Zone’ in the sub-titles. This was not ideal when it was only spotted when it was published.

Always check against delivery.

You can use Kinemaster or a range of tools for this.

Downside: Be careful to spot mistranslations that could be embarrassing.

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: Audrey Hepburn and crew on Wikimedia Commons.

There’s a great scene in journalism memoir ‘Panic as Man Burns Crumpets’ where the author is left in an almost deserted newsroom and reads about how his company is ‘investing in frontline journalism.’

To bring that up to date, today there’d probably be no newsroom and maybe a hub miles away where the title was put together by people who’d never been to that town.

But, all this comes from a place where local titles and local journalism is seen as important. I’d say those days in many parts of the UK are over.

A couple of years ago, I ran some research on how much content was local in local titles. In Reach titles online, this was hovering at just over 50 per cent for the content posted to Facebook. Changes announced this month are likely to push that lower.

But what is it? 

And what does it mean?

Breaking: the announcement

Reach plc have announced plans to put 600 journalists ‘at risk’ and make just over half of this figure redundant. A further 135 new roles will be created and offered first to those at risk.

The company will blur the lines between the newsrooms of national titles and regional titles with reporters writing for the Daily Mirror and say Birmingham Live which is the online version for Birmingham Post & Mail. The aim, the company say, is to remove duplication.

More video and less text will be produced under the new approach.

Here’s what’s likely to be the impact for public sector comms teams. 

Fewer reporters to speak to

Speaking to comms teams, there’s already a frustration at being unable to identify and build a relationship with reporters. There are fewer of them and they move on far quicker. This trend can only increase.

Of course, the decline in relationships will harm both sides. A press officer is less likely to trust a journo they’ve never spoken to and has a shaky understanding of the patch or the backstory. Take this important element out and a decline in the quality of local stories is inevitable.

More Facebook comments as a bin fire

Newspapers post to Facebook and then often don’t monitor comments. Comments can sometimes be racist, vile and borderline actionable. Some Reach journalists, to their credit, are bothered by this. Let’s hope they are the ones who are retained and have the time to keep an eye out, eh?

Report, complain, act. 

More complaining about inaccurate stories

Stories produced by a reporter with poor knowledge of an area will lead to more inaccuracy and error. The need to pick up the phone and complain has never been greater. That said, people may not even have a number to call.

Report, complain and act (again).

Damage to civic society

Evidence has shown that there is a direct link between the decline in local newsrooms and local democracy. A council being publicly held to account in the Press leads to greater confidence and voter turnout. Fewer reporters with local knowledge isn’t a positive.

Less words and more video

The move from Reach plc towards more video and less text chimes with how people consume media in the UK. It’s a sensible approach. We spend a vanishingly small amount of time reading print local newspapers and lots of time consuming social media. Within that social media figure is a big chunk of video. Lord knows, I’ve been banging on about this.

However, I can recognise the pain this is likely to cause for reporters whose skills as a writer are suddenly less in demand.

A public sector comms team needs to be producing more video and less text. The reminder from Reach plc’s direction is a welcome reminder that should not be ignored.

News sites as emergency planning concerns

When the car drove into the Liverpool FC trophy parade, we saw Merseyside Police’s messaging move quickly to fill a void that was rapidly being filled by the far right. Those messages were picked up quickly by the Reach-run Liverpool Echo as well as national media. What followed was responsible reporting. A potential tinderbox was made safe that bad actors were desperate to try and set fire to.

However, had that incident happened in the Black Country where Reach plc are weak I’m not sure there would have been the staff to cover it properly. Under these changes, more flexibility to move assets in an emergency would appear possible. However, let’s see, shall we?

There will be more ‘clickbait’… much more

The  Collins online definition ‘verb. to encourage website viewers to click through to another website using an enticing hyperlink’ would cover much of what is posted to my local Black Country Live Facebook page.  

This is likely to play out as more content from other parts of the country. If it clicks in Belfast, it’ll click in Plymouth. Only the fact its in Belfast will likely be buried deep in the story for other parts of the country. A simple visit to comments sections shows how irritated people are with this. But hey, those messages count as engagement, right?

It would be more honest if Reach plc admitted their titles were now national with a bit of a local flavour rather than the other way round.

Invest in video and their own channels

Your corporate channels and your other owned media become more important. On Facebook, go and share it to the right Facebook groups. I keep banging on about this. There’s other 2026 strategies you can adopt but this isn’t the place to go through all of them. Do so. 

Where Reach go others may follow

If Reach make this work other newspaper groups may follow. Just because you don’t have a Reach title in your area doesn’t mean you will not affected. They may be inventing a template for how to make journalism pay in the UK. But by retreating from local knowledge they may also be opening a gap for others to move into. The email-first subscription Manchester Mill, for example, shows that people will pay for something local and quality. Whether enough do to make a difference is an open question.

More educate the client

I keep banging on about this. The most important thing a comms person needs to do in 2025 is educate the client. By this, I mean educating the chief executive, cabinet member, Councillor, clinician, civil servant or firefighter. Take data with you for this. It’s important to remember that this is a painting the Forth Bridge operation. You will never complete it but you must keep doing it. 

The councillor who is worried about the frontpage of the local paper is literally in the wrong century. It’s your job with data to educate them. Be their guide.

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: Newspaper shop by Dominic Alves.

A truth I keep repeating is there’s been more change in the last 12 months than the last 12 years.

But that’s all well and good but where’s the evidence, I idly wondered to myself. Here’s some randomly selected changes from earlier in my career.

Press offices sending out press releases as a way to manage the message

Earlier in my career, the emphasis of the communications team I was working in was largely about the local paper. A dozen media queries was not uncommon and between 15 and 20 press releases was about par. In 2025, the idea of ‘managing the message’ sounds archaic. You can contribute to the debate but local information gets shared in different spaces. The local news title plays an important but diminished role. 

In 2025, the Facebook group is twice as likely to be the source of local government information for over 18s. Source: Ofcom. Sharable content posted to Facebook groups is more effective.

Posting toolkit content to your social channels

Toolkit content is the generic national messaging that’s centrally created. Those that created mean well. It’s just that it no longer cuts through with engagement.

In 2025, toolkit content is 36 times less likely to get engagement on Facebook. Source: my own research of 250 public sector posts from the UK.

Posting content routinely with the nominated person

At the start of my career, the press release was signed off with the quote from the cabinet member pretty much regardless. Those were different times. If you want your message to truly connect with an audience it would be better served to create content that reflected them. Someone like me is far more likely to be given house room.

In 2025, ‘someone like myself’ was the second most trusted group of people with 71 per cent two per cent behind the most trusted group which is scientists. Source: Edelman Trust Barometer.

Posting a piece of designed artwork 

Someone has designed a poster. It’s been printed off and pinned to noticeboards. Can you just post this to Facebook and Instagram? When this is done, you need to repeat the text on that poster as body text to the update. But even if you do, the content is often not that engaging.

In 2025, a carousel of suitable images is twice as engaging as a piece of artwork on Facebook and three times as engaging on Instagram. Source: My own research based on 250 public sector posts on both channels. 

Not responding to comments on Facebook

We’re all busy, it’s far easier to ignore or hide questions and comments. There’s a time and place for that, sure but as a policy this is not a good approach. Take the complaints offline but try and engage and if needs be draw a line in the sand on challenging views.

In 2025, a more nuanced approach of engagement is needed. Evidence: Cheng, Bala and Yang academic research ‘Engaging users on social media business pages.’

Not having an AI policy to shape your communications

We’re all busy (still) but using a cheeky five minutes to create an image to share is likely to be challenged. Trust is important and it can be burnt far quicker than it is earned.

In 2025, a policy to shape your communications is important. Evidence: GCS policy for generative AI. 

Not including traditional media in your emergency planning 

As the Liverpool trophy parade incident shows, far-right misinformation can land online within minutes of an incident. So, it’s far better to have a message to share swiftly and with traditional media. A press conference and message were shared widely by an array of news channels which drowned out the misinformation.

In 2025, a message to social media during an incident can be followed by a press conference or media statement. Evidence: Merseyside Police following the trophy parade incident.

Sending out multiple press releases

Newspapers have changed. For a start, they don’t call themselves newspapers anymore. For a second, they are more bothered about clicks. Yes, this can mean recycling contentious content. But it can also be an approach of ‘solutions journalism’ where the audience is put first. What’s bothering them and what can help with the solution? So, 10 things to do for free and for nothing for parents with under 12s can cover several press releases you may have once sold.

In 2025, solutions journalism is an approach your organisation should tap into. Evidence: BBC policy.

Sharing one piece of content everywhere

Back in the olden days, one video or form of words was shared everywhere. We live in a fractured media landscape where people consume media in different ways. A 30-second video to an audience of professional people may work on LinkedIn but wouldn’t on TikTok.

In 2025, the media landscape across demographics is varied. Source: Ofcom.

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.

As a kid I HATED the Back to School signs in the shops at the start of the summer holiday.

So, I’ve held back about shouting too much about training slots in the rest of 2025.

But now August is over, heck here’s a gentle nudge towards workshops and what you’ll learn.

There is no question that the pace of change is increasing and communications is evolving. 

• Video now makes up a staggering 60 per cent of people’s time on Facebook.
• 84 per cent of UK adults use social media.
• A majority of all age ranges use YouTube.
• 80 per cent of people say they still click on Google links despite AI summaries.

Back in 2013, I left local government to become a freelancer with the aim of doing more in the public sector. That’s been the case. My aim was to be ahead of the game by reading and researching because people didn’t have the time. That’s been bang on.

The strapline I have but rarely lean on is ‘future comms made easy’. That’s my aim. I’d like to put tools in people’s hands so they can do a better job.

One of the reasons why I use old pictures is to make the whole thing a bit less scary. 

Here’s dates:

ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER

Five sessions to cover all the basics you need to be up to speed and ready for 2026. 

Workshop #64 – Starts on 24.9.25 – SOLD OUT

Workshop #65 – Starts on 7.10.25 – SPACES

Workshop #66 – Starts on 10.11.25 – NEW

ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS 

Five sessions to give you the basics to approach AI without fear and use it to help you.

Workshop #10 – Starts on 24.9.25 – SOLD OUT

Workshop #11 – Starts on 27.10.25 – SPACES

ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED 

A rebooted video skills workshop that aims to help you plan, shoot and post effective video for landscape and vertical.

Workshop #38 – Starts on 3.10.25 – SOLD OUT

Workshop #39 – Starts on 27.11.25 – NEW

ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS

A basics guide to give you skills and confidence to help you pitch a story and deal with a reporter.

Workshop #25 – Starts on 24.9.25 

Drop me a note if you’d like a chat. I’d also be happy to talk about delivering a session for you and your team online or face-to-face. 

Creative commons credit: School children by Steven Miller