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.
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.
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
Don’t rush to tell the whole story unless it’s a heck of a story.
Tease.
Intrigue works.
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:
What does the film do?
What story does it tell?
How can it be helpful?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Facebook group memberships across a bellweather town have risen 39 per cent in 12-months.
The rise was recorded in Braintree, Essex further underlining the importance of Facebook groups in the media landscape.
Almost a million individual Facebook group memberships was recorded in the district with a combined population of more than 150,000.
With two-thirds of the UK population using Facebook and two-thirds of them using Facebook groups, this means 67,000 people in the district are connected to more than FOURTEEN individual Facebook groups.
Overall, 155,000 people live in the wider Braintree district which ranges from the urban deprivation of parts of Braintree built as a post-war new town and now houses 43,000 people to the rural village of Foxearth with just 300 people.
The findings are part of the eight year of research I’ve carried out on the district to better understand how Facebook groups work in communities. This helps my training for public sector comms people.
Why Facebook groups are significant to public sector
Facebook groups are key to how people find out news and information in their area.
As with other parts of the country, groups include community noticeboards which cover all aspect of community life. An example is Braintree Community Hub with 20,000 members serving a town of more than 40,000 right through to the Nounsley Community group with 300 members in a community of 3,200.
The sharp communicator should not focus solely on the large groups which can be busy with posts rapidly disappearing. But groups can help the communicator better target. So, the 1,000 members of the Wickham St Pauls group may be the right people to tackle an issue in the village.
Alternatively, the communicator needs to knit together a network of receptive Facebook groups to share a particular message.
Elsewhere, there are also niche groups which can be useful for reaching smaller sections of the community. So, Braintree Mums with 660 members can be valuable if the audience you are looking for is parents with 1,600 members of the Romani in Braintree group also representing a place to find a particular community.
Groups by community
The breakdown of Facebook groups mirrors the population of each community.
Notes on the research
I first chose Braintree district to research in 2018. The area was chosen because of a mix of urban and rural areas. The research was carried out manually searching more than 50 wards, communities, villages and towns in the wider district.
Right now, we are firmly in the Wild West period of AI in the public sector.
We know it’s getting used but we don’t have policies in place.
In summer 2025, I carried out research that showed almost half of public sector comms people are using AI without permission and almost 60 per cent of organisations don’t have a policy.
These were worrying numbers.
A policy means you have some guardrails and a licence to operate safely.
Yet, national policies increasingly exist
Yet, the picture towards the end of 2025 is that policies are starting to exist.
Maybe people don’t know about them.
As more and more policies are being published I’ve taken a look at seven of the main documents to compare and contrast.
From the public sector:
NHSConfederation (October 2025) which operates in Northern Ireland, England and Wales
In addition I’ve added the Friends of the Earth AI policy as a leading example of a charity approach.
But first…
The first thing to mention is that any review is subjective. This was a human review of the documents. Any organisation will frame their AI policy in accordance with their organisation’s priorities.
I’ve tried to review the documents fairly. For example, if encouraging future research was mentioned in the principle directly I’ve classed that as a ‘yes’. If it’s mentioned obliquely, I’ve classed this as ‘indirectly’. If it’s not mentioned in the principles I’ve classed this as ‘no’.
It’s perfectly possible to talk about something within the document without mentioning them as a clear principle and no criticism is implied by not adopting a principle clearly.
But what are the core areas of AI policies?
There are a few areas that shine through in all the approaches.
These are big picture documents that don’t go into the specifics of only recommending a particular tool. This makes sense. Who wants an outdated social media policy that mandates MySpace and Twitter?
Here’s some key words.
Fairness shines through in the policies and demands that AI is used fairly for people who will be affected.
Transparency also runs through the approaches. We need to have a dialogue between civil society and others on how we are using AI and in addition be clear that content is AI. In social media, we are obliged to mark what we post to channels such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok. But organisations should be clear too on how they are using tools.
Human oversight in one form or another is also demanded in all the policies’ principles except Friends of the Earth.
In other areas there is broad agreement including the importance of such areas as working with commercial colleagues and encouraging curiosity.
While the documents often don’t set it out explicitly, there are paths set out to using AI safely in an organisation. For example, the College of Policing demands testing of tools by academics or with other forces. That’s quite a high bar.
Elsewhere, there is less agreement on which factors are important. This is understandable. International co-operation is made explicitly clear in Friends of the Earth and Scottish Government’s principles but not so much in others.
Where are the gaps?
In late 2025, there are a number of gaps in guidance for parts of the public sector.
In local government, there is no national set of UK-wide principles. There is no bespoke framework offered in England by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government while the LGA has been making representations to UK Government on AI issues.
In the UK Fire & Rescue, the National Fire Chief Council has drawn up an ethical framework for AI with transparency as a core, but frustratingly, it has not been published online by them or the UK Fire Standards Board who may enforce it.
In the third sector, there is no universal guidance set out by the Charity Commission nor is there in the UK hosuing sector.
Besides this, there are some grey areas. Transparency is mentioned yet in training, this is the area most likely to be flagged for being problematic. People see the principle but in comms are often alert to the potential for incoming criticism.
My argument here is that it’s national guidance. It’s better to pick and choose how and when you have the conversation rather than wait for AI use to be leaked through an FOI as it surely will do.
What about you?
All of this feels very top down. In many ways, it really should. There should be leadership on this and a pathway to using AI safely. The encouraging thing is that there is. But how about you? Should you sit back and wait to be spoon-fed the central thinking?
I’d encourage for you to take a different path.
For me, a healthy curiosity in innovation and doing what you can to lead your organisation to the available guidance is critically important.
The future is out there it’s just unevenly distributed. Making sure the decision makers in the organisation can find their way to the future would be a wise use of time.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
