Instagram and TikTok have emerged as key places under 35s get their news and information, so what do you do?
If you are older, you could rail at young people and how they find their information these days and do nothing.
Or you could start to think about using these vertical video platforms as a way to reach younger people. It’s something that news providers are light years ahead with and public sector comms again can learn a lesson.
Firstly, younger people are getting more news from social media so it makes sense for you to target them here. Print really is not an option to reach under 35s. Online and social media is.
Ofcom are also clear that TikTok and Instagram perform strongly with younger audiences. Their data shows 81 per cent of under 35s are using Instagram on average for 980 minutes a month while 59 per cent use TikTok for a smartphone-draining 1,667 minutes a month.
Elsewhere, some surprising names are performing well with video. The Daily Mail has 19 million Instagram Reels subscribers with 1.9 million views per post while The Sun has 2.7 million TikTok subscribers with 100,000 views.
Newer news providers are also performing well with the iconoclastic Pink News’s 1.2 million subscribers viewing each video upwards of 100,000 on average.
A news approach versus a trends approach
First things first. I’ve nothing against posting trends as part of an effective social media strategy. Trends can be a particular style of filmmaking. A recent one was Gen Z wrote the marketing script where old people using young people buzzwords. Get on it within days and you are riding the wave. Wait too long and you can appear painfully behind the curve.
The news approach may be easier to deliver for an organisation that doesn’t want dancing nurses at a time where waiting lists are growing.
If you haven’t got them in a second you haven’t got them
One key characteristic that every video shares is that it wins or loses in less than a second.
When I first started delivering video skills workshops the first five seconds were vital. That figure has shrunk with our attention span. As we scroll through Reels and TikToks unless we are captured immediately our audience will scroll past.
For me, the ability to write an absorbing intro – or first paragraph – to a news story here has been replaced by the ability to capture people. This is now best done through a white box. The white box is added using the platform’s editing tools before it is posted live. It is a place to tease, inform or intrigue your viewer into staying around.
For heaven’s sake, don’t start off with the interviewee’s name. Cllr John Smith telling you that he’s cabinet member for anything will only accelerate the scroll away. No, thanks.
The white box deconstructed
In this post, I thought I’d go through some examples of news content posted as vertical video to deconstruct what they were about.
BBC News Reels: ‘Why you could be SNEEZING more this weekend’
There’s a tease at work here. Why could you be sneezing more? The opening footage features a man in his 20s scratching at painful eyes while the voiceover gently leads the viewer towards the information that the pollen count is high, according to the University of Worcester. The voice is identified after 14 seconds as a BBC weather presenter. She then takes to the streets and shoots herself in the style of a selfie delivering the remainder of the warning. It’s the whitebox that has teased the viewer.
Bonus points for datestamping the clip so it it does resurface weeks later it’s got some built-in obsolescence.
Pink News TikTok: ‘Republicans claim ‘Sesame Street’ is ‘grooming’ children following a Pride Month post
The eyebrow raises at the assertion that a decades-old children’s TV show is trying to ensnare children in a less than positive way. They’ve said what? How so? Intrigue plays a part as well as the emotion of moral indignation one way or the other way with this. It’s a subject that is going to appeal to their core viewers who may be homosexual and alive to Pride month and attack by politicians.
The clip pulls in tweets and lasts barely more than 10 seconds. It uses trending audio which has been used for a variety of clips. There are algorithmic brownie points in this.
Daily Mail UK Reels ‘Kings Guard horse BITES tourist… and won’t let go.’
In this clip of user-generated content, the promise is a day gone wrong for an overly bold tourist. You stick around with the promise of footage that back in the day would have been on a show like ‘Beadles About’.
The text is needed because footage of a tourist with a horse isn’t that promising.
The Sun TikTok ‘Iconic Doctor Who pair set to reunite for huge special’
The whitebox here is red with white letters but does the same job. It sets up a reason to watch the clip. A huge special? What’s that about. The clip opens with a still of David Tennant and Billie Piper who led a successful reboot of the TV show 20 years ago. For fans, this is likely to be a hugely popular venture to see them return.
What’s also interesting is that there is just one hashtag on this video #doctorwho. This also underlines the relative lack of strategic importance of the hashtag. There’s no need for them to go overboard. The algorithm reads the images and the transcript of the video as well as the caption.
Conclusion
The whitebox on the screen acts as a way to tease, inform and draw the viewer in. It’s aim is to stop the viewer scrolling. It acts in the same way as a headline does in print but its purpose is slightly different. It rarely tells the whole story.
The whitebox is added when posting the video using the editing tools of the platform. The long term benefit is to put a title on each of the videos in an account’s back catalogue.
After agonising moments after a car ploughed into pedestrians at the Liverpool trophy parade Liverpool City Region’s strategic director of communications takes us through their response to a major incident.
It was just after 6pm on Monday 26 May and thousands of football fans who had lined the streets of Liverpool were thinking about heading home, catching a pint, or grabbing a bite to eat.
Those of us who had spent the day in the Transport Co-ordination Centre, the multi-agency combined control room or hunched over our laptops monitoring socials and producing content, were gearing up for a busy time on the transport network.
The bus carrying the red heroes had just about completed the full 10-mile route and the rain hadn’t dampened spirits. However, in the blink of an eye everything turned up a notch – police vehicles and ambulances were being dispatched, a major incident was declared, and the city centre was gripped by panic and fear.
Crisis comms
For those of us trained to deal with major incidents, or crisis comms, it was the moment to turn the rehearsals into reality. Phone call cascades were commenced, emergency social posts were produced and all scheduled content was stood down. Liverpool’s City Region’s Mayor Steve Rotheram – a self-declared red – had been watching the day’s events unfold. It was clear that he would soon be required to issue reassurance and details of the incident to the world’s press.
As transport colleagues launched their operation of ensuring that more than 150,000 people got home safely on the Merseyrail network and more than 165,000 people travelled through Lime Street station, with many more walking, cycling, travelling by bus, or driving home, we were picking up the phone and responding to press queries.
Interviews
Multiple interview requests were coming in thick and fast and a news conference was required. I was working on the first statement from the Mayor to be issued to the press and we were mindful of needing to move location to join the blue lights and Liverpool City Council’s leader in reassuring the public.
An emergency briefing was organised, the journalists took their seats and the principals made their way to the conference room. However, there was a notable absence, as a Combined Authority we are not officially classed as a category one responder and there wasn’t a seat at the table for the region’s Mayor.
In 2004, the Civil Contingencies Act was established, it defined the framework for the roles and responsibilities for local authorities and other organisations in emergency preparedness and response – at that time Combined Authorities did not exist. They were established after the legislation in 2014.
So, we sat on the sidelines and after the news conference was over, the Mayor was thronged with press wanting information. It was an interesting moment when the legislation and the real world were in conflict.
Over the next few days, the Mayor gave more than 20 regional, national and international media interviews in his role as civic leader. Phone calls were received from both the Prime Minister and Home Secretary, and we were delighted to welcome both to our city region as they met with senior police officers and local political leaders. Following the news that the injured were all recovering well, the Mayor issued a message of thanks on behalf of our region, paying tribute to those who had showed the ‘very best’ of our communities.
Speaking with one voice
Despite the noise on social media and the clamour from the traditional media, the strength of local partnerships and collaboration ensured that the Liverpool City Region leaders spoke with one voice and were able to quickly defuse misinformation and disinformation.
Here is City Mayor talking on Sky News.
And also with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. Here on the @metromayorsteve Instagram channel.
Another good reminder that nurturing those relationships in the good times pays off during the bad times.
Camilla Mankabady, director of strategic communications and corporate affairs, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority.
Within seconds of the event, the internet was rife with shock and then vary rapidly speculation.
It goes without saying an analysis of how the story played out online is secondary to the trauma of those injured or affected by the incident. It’s a relief that nobody was killed.
Like Southport, the incident gives a valuable lesson to public sector communicators on where communications needs to be in 2025. No doubt more detailed analysis will be produced in time.
Most attention has been given to Merseyside Police’s decision to identify the arrested man as 53, white and British. But an analysis of the online content in the first five hours of the major incident shows a high degree of co-ordination between not just Merseyside police, Liverpool City Council, North West Ambulance Service and Merseyside Fire and Rescue.
This is no surprise.
The public sector is used to working with partners in an emergency.
The timeline
On Monday May 26, Liverpool Football Club took part in a traditional open top bus parade through the city to show off the Premiership trophy. Roads are closed with a strong police, fire, ambulance and council presence.
This snapshot is by no means a comprehensive picture.
6.01pm a car strikes pedestrians and within minutes a man is arrested.
Within seconds footage starts circulating of the incident. We live in a post 9/11 world. The question ‘is it terrorism?’ quickly comes into play. In some people’s minds that question had already been answered.
While the world’s media have their eyes on Liverpool’s trophy parade the incident happened in a side street away from the parade route. The vacuum is quickly filled with video shot by people there for the trophy parade. It is quickly repurposed by those on the right of politics as well as traditional media such as Sky News, BBC and the Reach plc Liverpool Echo.
City centre live updates as emergency services cordon off area.
The page received 500 shares in 72 hours. Commenting was limited by the page admin, with more than 200 comments remaining focusing on the people affected not speculation about the religion of the culprit. The Liverpool Echo Facebook posts 13 updates in the next six hours and maintains coverage in the coming days.
6.43pm Turning Point UK the UK arm of a far right American body of the same name posts footage from the scene to Instagram with the caption: ‘A car has been driven into a car in Liverpool.’ Comments speculate that this was a Muslim.
6.46pm Facebook groups such as The Football Community are starting to share the news along with a Merseyside Police message confirming the incident. As time passes, there is isolated speculation that this may be the work of a Muslim but the comments on this page are self-policed by other members.
“We are currently dealing with reports of an RTC in Liverpool city centre. We were contacted at just after 6pm today, Mon 26 May, following reports a car had been in collision with a number of pedestrians on Water Street. The car stopped at the scene and a male detained.”
Within 48-hours the tweet has been viewed 1.9 million times with the Facebook post shared more than 700 times. To limit disinformation the police limited who could respond to the Facebook post.
We would ask people not to speculate on the circumstances surrounding tonight’s incident on Water Street in Liverpool city centre.
We can confirm the man arrested is a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area.
Extensive enquiries are ongoing to establish the circumstances leading up to the collision.
We would ask people not to share distressing content online but to send the footage or information directly to us @MerPolCC or pass on information by calling 101 quoting log 784.
Information can also be passed on anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
The tweet 48-hours later has received 3.9 million views with the Facebook post shared 602 times.
8.54pm. Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Mayor Steve Rotheram’s Facebook page posted.
This was shared three times. In the coming days the office would be a strategically important link with 10 Downing Street and the Home Office.
10.51pm. A brief Merseyside Police press conference was live streamed on Facebook. Sympathy was given to those involved and basic details of the incident in Water Street were set out. Assistant Chief Constable Jenny Sims also thanked those who came to the aid of those injured. She announces that a 53-year-old man has been arrested who is white British and from the Liverpool area. The incident is not being treated as terrorism, she says.
Dave Kitchen from North West Ambulance Service, Nick Searle Merseyside Fire and Rescue Chief Fire Officer and Liverpool City Council Leader Cllr Liam Robinson also read prepared statements.
The Facebook post has been shared 1,200 times within 48-hours. After 200 comments commenting was switched off.
11.52pm Liverpool City Council post a short clip of their Leader’s comments at the press conference earlier.
The post was shared five times.
There were no posts to TikTok by public sector channels but there was strong coverage of the police statements to the channel by all UK news sources on the channel.
A recording of the Merseyside Police press conference was later shared to Instagram by the force with UK news sources also sharing police messages on this channel too.
Drawing a line in the sand
It’s clear that by identifying the race and nationality of the arrested man Merseyside Police looked to head off the rioting that took place of the Southport murders. This steer will have come from a high level and no doubt draws on previous experience.
What happened in the 2011 riots online has been researched in forensic detail in the landmark ‘Reading the Riots’ study published in The Guardian with research from Reading University. Back then, when misinformation circulated police shooting down rumour in realtime on Twitter halted the Twitter rumours.
Often, they would start again when people had seen them for the first time then shared them. Back then, official accounts had to damp down the fire multiple times by repeating the correct information. Respected voices on the internet also used reason to debunk several rumours.
However, the Liverpool incident shows that landscape in 2025 is a different.
Basically, a first piece of misinformation can be spread between a number of accounts and cause a stir, he says. That stir and the vacuum of information is filled by people who are looking to capitalise on the attention to monetise it or cause mischief.
So, did the intervention from Merseyside Police put a stop to rumour, speculation and disinformation?
Of course it didn’t.
8.21pm Former footballer Joey Barton tweeted that:
Everyone know what’s gone on.
When will it end.
After the picture became clearer he deleted these lines.
Within 48-hours the tweet receives 1 million views.
A rash of small accounts with limited followings also spread messages contrary to the Merseyside Police message.
9.40pm @AbsolutelkyFab11 for example tweets an image of a man in a car he claims is involved in the incident.
The driver from the Liverpool attack has been identified as Samir Al-Hyderi, a 53 years old naturalised British citizen.
10.27pm Former SAS member, TV personality and aspiring London Mayor Ant Middleton was one of many who added to the noise.
Do not believe anything that comes from police statements or the msm… Corruption runs deep and lessons were well and truly learnt from the not too distant past! God bless all the scousers and to all involved in this terrible ‘terror type’ incident, may strength be with you! You are in my prays this evening! Romans 8:26
Within 48-hours 58,000 see this tweet.
10.34pm a rash of accounts on Twitter spread disinformation that this WAS a terror attack. A two-year-old account called @abbyy_085 with 800 followers is one of many that repurposes footage.
This was shared with more than 30 comments praising firefighter’s role.
The disinformation didn’t leap the fence and cause rioting
While figures on X, Instagram and TikTok and other places were energetic in trying to claim this was a terror attack their messages didn’t cut through. There was no disorder in Liverpool.
For example, a sample of Facebook groups I visited in Rotherham, Stoke-on-Trent and Tamworth didn not spread the disinformation. The Southport Facebook group was scrupulous in sharing screenshots of coverage of the Merseyside Police. Liverpool fan Facebook groups also did not bite on the speculation.
News of the identity of the car driver did not kill speculation.
Instead, the speculation got even more fevered. A review of TikTok and X includes speculation on:
A police sniper.
A man wearing latex gloves ripping off the number plate.
Allegations that this was a false flag operation by freemasons.
He was a police officer.
That’s actually the suspect. He doesn’t look 53, does he?
What can public sector learn from this?
Firstly, that police giving out the race of the person arrested can defuse potential disorder. As others have said, I’m not sure what this says about Britain in 2025.
That the public sector when it works in co-ordination can amplify a message. Liverpool City Council, Merseyside Police, North West Ambulance Service and Merseyside Fire & Rescue comms teams should be satisfied that they performed in difficult circumstances. Their messages did not cut across or undermine each other.
That traditional media have a huge role to play in an emergency. The Liverpool Echo was giving rolling online coverage on the day and into the recovery phase. National media’s voice on Instagram and TikTok was significant not just as their own channel but for content to be screenshotted and shared.
Police set out the facts of the story, reporters reported them and then a small element of click chasers speculated on the facts. But without the facts and the reporting those voices would be the only voice.
A well-run press conference works. Here is the message. Everyone gets it at the same time. Mind, the incident has to be significant and the demand for information has to be there.
The information war is fought through video and screenshots of video. On the one hand, repurposed user-generated content is used and on the other live-streamed police press conferences are used. The quality of the video in an emergency doesn’t matter too much so long as the sound is okay.
TikTok and Instagram are places where a message is needed too. The audience for news is huge. It’s no longer one channel it’s multi-channel.
That limiting who can comment on Facebook in an emergency is shrewd. Both the public sector and the Liverpool Echo deployed this tactic. It kept the disinformation away from the coverage.
The surge for web searches lasted 24 hours. After that the mentions and posts tailed off.
That the disinformation doesn’t stop once it is debunked. In 2025, it just evolves.
Thankfully, nobody was injured and swift action stopped the situation from escalating. It will be fascianting reading more detailed accounts from the protagonists.
This is the six-part catch-all to bring you up to speed in one blast. Media landscape, comms planning and evaluation, creating content, algorithm updates, underused channels, to stay or go from X, Facebook groups, LinkedIn, dealing with comment, criticism and abuse, AI basics.
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In 2025, if you work in public sector comms you’re likely to be worried about AI while also using it while not admitting you are.
You are also likely to be using AI tools secretly on your own devices.
But if you are using AI, you are generating ideas rather than generating audio, video or images.
These are the findings of a poll of more than communicators I conducted in early summer 2025.
It’s a set of figures that exposes a sector being asked to meet Sillicon Valley expectations with depleted analogue resources.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has talked about AI being the challenge of the generation. UK Government have also talked about £45 billion savings being powered by AI despite Gartner still placing AI in the ‘peak of inflated expectations’ section of the hype cycle.
Right now, the challenge of the century is being put on hold with sector reorganisation often a far higher priority.
Let’s go through the numbers.
The sector is both worried and excited
Firstly, the public sector is torn between being worried and being excited. Almost three quarters told the survey that they felt both worried and excited by AI. This is understandable. New technology brings opportunities as well as downsides. With AI, we’ve not even begun to work through them.
Worryingly, much of the sector is operating without a policy
UK Government guidance in the AI playbook has set out 10 principles that can be used to use AI safely. Government Communications Service have also produced guidance around generative AI. If you are part of the UK Civil Service you are covered. However, while wise communicators can learn from these approaches there is no obligation for them to be enacted by arms length bodies, NHS, Police, Fire & Rescue or by devolved Governments.
Alarmingly, more than half of public sector people who took part in the poll said they had no corporate AI policy. Just 26 per cent said they had such a document to map out how AI will be used.
This represents a worrying gap in governance and leaves open the chance of some potentially catastrophic errors being made. An AI notetaker that is not secure being used to log a potentially sensitive meeting may be accessed by a bad actor. The serious case review being exposed to an unsafe notetaker has the power to be career ending as well as put people in harm’s way.
Much of the sector is not declaring how AI is being used
Transparency is a key word in many published AI policies in the public sector and also the third sector. Trust is built by being open, the GCS generative AI policy says. So does Friends of the Earth.
A lack of openness is storing up problems. Organisations have a chance to dictate when and where the story is first discussed. They have, as some would say, a chance to shape the narrative. That window is small and is gone for good when someone discovers that AI is being used and starts asking questions. Those questions are not unreasonable.
Just five per cent have a dedicated webpage disclosing what AI is used while less than one in ten disclose AI on every piece of content that’s produced with it. Just 11 per cent have had a conversation with stakeholders while 47 per cent say their organisation doesn’t admit they are using it.
‘We use AI ethically but we don’t declare it,’ caught my eye. One reading of this is that intentions are good. Another is that there is an unresolved struggle between what is the right thing to do.
Much of the sector are using AI on their own devices
The internet doesn’t care about a block, as the saying goes. It just moves around it like water moves around a boulder.
Anecdotally, people admit to using a tool like ChatGPT on their own devices because they are blocked from using them on work devices. This entirely mirrors early policies which blocked social media from public sector networks. Being charitable, perhaps bans are put in place with the best interests of the organisation at heart as an AI policy is missing.
Either way, people using AI tools at home are likely to be taking risks.
The additional comment ‘we don’t use AI… officially’ was enlightening in this section.
Most public sector comms are using AI to create ideas, not bad pictures
Interestingly, the top reason for using AI for public sector comms is to generate ideas with three quarters citing this as a purpose. Spell checking and grammar came in second at just less than half while a third generated press releases and just over two in 10 generate images.
So, it is the inspiration part of the process that AI is helping with as opposed to the hard content.
Within the additional comments, creating social media content appeared strongly. There were honourable mentions for using AI to summarise existing content as well as to make a start on creating text be that policy or comms plans. Transcription was also a frequent use.
The most popular tool is ChatGPT
Surprisingly, although Copilot is Microsoft’s AI tool for Office 365, it was not the most used tool in the public sector. This crown went to ChatGPT.
In the additional comments, there was slim pickings with occasional mentions of UK Civil Services’ in-house GCS Assist was mentioned in the comments but was not featured in the initial survey. I’d love to see the numbers for these in the coming months.
Elsewhere, there was not a lot of declared adventure with occasional references to DaVinci Resolve the video editing tool as well as other Adobe tools such as Photo Shop.
Conslusion
Walking to work this morning, I listened to a podcast where the presenter was interviewing an author who had wrote some poems. He told the author, a comedy writer and comedian, if he minded if he ran a poem through Google Notebook LM which then produced a podcast-style conversation to critique the work.
After the author’s indignance that this was possible the clip of the AI generated chat was played. There was much shock and surprise that this was possible.
I have a theory that these moments are getting faster and don’t last as long as they used to.
I’ve no doubt that I’ll look at this clip as an example of people in 2025 being amazed at something that will become something as straight forward as a web search.
It’s clear that in 2025, the public sector may have been told that AI is important but it is falling behind the rapid path it needs to take to do it well.
Methodology and prize winners
The survey was run in May 2025 and received 350 replies. A total of 291 were from the public sector which forms the basis of the results published.
As an incentive, a place on my ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS and a box of Gower Cottage brownies was offered as part of prize draw to people who completed the survey. Everyone who completed the survey and indicated they wanted to take part were included in the prize draw. First prize of a training place and brownies was won in the random draw by Nick Moore of Leeds City Council. A box of brownies was also won by Kia Newland (Notts Hospice) and Anna Toone (Tamworth Council).
Thanks everyone who took part.
AI disclosure: I used Grammarly to check spelling and grammar in this post.
There’s so much to shake a weary head at in journalism.
For starters, there’s lack of investment, cuts, clickbait, the slow death of print, reporters who don’t know the area, a lack of senior guidance and the lack of local stories on local news sites.
But there are intriguing trends that an old hack like me thinks the public sector can learn from.
In short, it’s asking yourself what people would like and then creating content with that in mind.
The two trends are solutions journalism and user needs. They’re a lot of crossover between the two.
itself is an idea that emerged in a New York Times column after 2010 that news isn’t just reporting what’s gone wrong but what people are doing to tackle the problem
What I’ve not been aware of so much is ‘user needs’ in journalism. The more I hear about it the more I wonder if this is also something to pay attention to.
The user needs model is focusing on what users literally need first. The apoproach, it seems comes from the BBC circa 2016 and has been refined through data science.
Brighter people than me insist that ‘solutions’ journalism’ and ‘users needs’ are slightly different in approach with solutions more tactical and user needs adopted on a newsroom-wide basis. That’s fine. It’s an argument I’ll steer clear of.
But what can public sector comms learn from all this?
For me, the really interesting approach both share is thinking about what will work for the member of the public. What matters to them?
On the one hand, encouraging people to stay longer on your website is not strictly a metric the public sector goes after. You want to find out swimming pool opening tikes and then go. But the concept of ‘user needs’ is something that the public sector web is used to.
What it can mean, and I think this is wonderfully attractive, is to wonder what happens if you put the interests of users first. Maybe some of the time. Going back to the health term activities, councils are used to writing three press releases to give each a moment in the sun. One is a free swimming at the pool, another is a town centre fun day and the third is an event in the park. But what happens when you parcel them up differently, so they can be one compelling piece of content that gets more eyeballs?
The reality is that newspapers don’t have the same need for press releases anymore because they have stopped being newspapers.
Instead, they are digital-first news brands who put greater value on clicks than they do print readers.
I started to look at these two approaches with a view to advise reshaping content sent to news titles in the area.
I’m coming round to the idea that maybe its public sector content itself that needs to experiment with these approaches.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if it did.
I enjoyed Paul Masterman’s LinkledIn post the other week. Strolling through Paris, he came across a statue.
Who was the great man being celebrated? A poet? Artist? Footballer?
No, it was a Clerk of Works Adolphe Alphand who had helped build what the 19th century French capital would look like. In other words, a council worker.
Paul’s post – you can read it here – came in the same week that a politician threatened public servants with the sack for working in a field he didn’t approve. A cheaper stunt I struggle to recall.
It got me thinking of how public service has been constantly cheapened. The drip-drip of ‘non-jobs’, ‘gold plated pensions’ and ‘lazy council workers.’ Teachers are the enemy. Then doctors and nurses were the enemy. Then council workers again.
The celebration of a civil engineer with a statue made me recall a visit to Plymouth City Council. The entrance hall to the council building was a celebration of the post-war vision of rebuilding the city better.
I loved it because my Dad was a town planner. He became one because he was captured by the vision of building a better place for people to live. He was a dedicated man who took early retirement but never once regretted his career path.
The regeneratiuon of Plymouth was celebrated in the 1946 film ‘The Way We Live’ which was part documentary and part communications piece. You can watch it on the BFI website here.
In the film, a visitor tours the city and sees how a family in cramped housing will benefit from the rebui;ld masterminded by planners. It’s optimism is overpowering.
The public sector is full of people who make a difference. Let’s build a statue to all of them.
Just recently, I was asked for some examples of what good content looked like on Facebook that didn’t have links. So, here they are.
Firstly, a reminder of the kind of content that works well on the platform.
But why is engagement such an important thing? Because facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg has correctedly identified the link between engagement and spending more time on his platform. You can ‘like’ a post because you feel something is broadly positive. It’s helpful, maybe. Or you express support.
Or, maybe you don’t ‘like’ but you want to give your opinion on the team’s tactics or the litter in the park when you took your children. Either way, engagement means you are spending more time on the platform.
There are many ways we can post alternative content rather than a link.
A carousel of images
Firstly, a carousel of images. This is the most engaged with content in the public sector content study. It also performs well in other studies here, here and here.
In this Tamworth Council post new cherry trees have been planted. Rather than try and drive people off to a website the council tells the story on the platform itself. Text explains the biodiversity benefits and the 150 years of Anglo Japanese relations.
The images are a stunning set of pictures which showcase the colours.
In addition, the carousel approach works well with the softer non-call to action content. Social media is supposed to be social, after all. Manchester CityCouncil have adapted the tactic of making friends with Instagram users. They spot nice pictures of Manchester taken by Manchester people and they use they with their permission for a round-up of images.
“I love how this city wears its past with pride. It doesn’t hide the grit—it embraces it, blending heritage and modernity in a way few places can. Look closer and you’ll see history in the textures, emotion in the light, and character in the corners.”
Here’s the images:
Reels video
Of course, you’ve also got Reels video being strongly rewarded by the Facebook algorithm. It’s also a very effective way of communicating without having to add a link.
Here, Southwark Council featured an interview with a lady who remembers VE Day when she was a child.
You can find this approach ten a penny across news sites who are actually quite keen to get people to click. Their approach is absolutely to tease and intrigue the reader to click the link.
Finally. Here’s some good news if you look after a Facebook page.
Content from pages is being seen again in people’s timelines.
But before you start celebrating and dusting off the 2010-era comms plan, links haven’t come back and I really don’t think they ever will. Yes, I know your web team like them but they don’t run Facebook. The last time driving traffic to the website was a winning strategy Donald Trump was just a reality TV star.
The first chart is from 2021 and shows 14 per cent of people’s Facebook timelines coming from pages. A meagre 6.6 per cent of this have come from posts with a link. Almost a fifth of all content came from Facebook groups.
How things got
This is the chart that led to dry mouths and rising panic. In early 2024, Facebook page content in timeline has literally disappeared. It didn’t matter if you had a link or not it was 0.0 per cent of people’s timelines were from a page. Unless you were paying people were not seeing your content.
Facebook group content was staying buoyant.
The other change was what is classed as ‘unconnected posts’. This is content served-up by Facebook’s AI-powered ‘discovery engine’ which seeks to put content in front of you that it think you’ll like.
To illustrate this, one night I was on Facebook discussing Brunton Park, home of Carlisle United, with my brother. A few hours later, I was served content from a group I wasn’t in showing how Bruntomn Park looked in the 1980s. Niche. But it chimed with the niche chat I was having. Posts like these attuned to users’ discussions rose to just over a quarter of everything that was seen.
How things are now
Right now, the numbers have returned slightly for Facebook pages. Just over 11 per cent of content is from pages but less than one per cent of it contains links. Interestingly, this link penalising is replicated with Facebook groups you’ve joined as well as unconnected posts. The moral of the story is that links remain algorithmic poison.
The unconnected posts numbers remain really strong at just over a third.
What’s the message?
Overall, keep away from links but there’s also potentially mileage in posting content that people may be talking about or may be interested in. So, maybe content directly about what to do to keep children busy in the holidays may be a strategy to double down on.
Regardless of political orientation, Prime Minister Keir Starmer was right in saying that AI is the challenge for our generation.
How we respond to this and make it work will make a profound impact on the Britain we live in in decades to come.
How we get the foundations right will have a big bearing on how the future will pan out.
UK Government has been quietly doing some excellent work in the field for a number of years now. Their AI Play Book which I’ll look at in the post is a gold standard for any organisation. Boiled down, it has 10 principles which are jargon-free.
Transparency shines through this approach as it does through so many well written AI policies I’ve looked at. The question of transparency is a critically important one. In 2025, people are nervous about AI and maintaining trust is important.
I put it to you that no organisation can use AI on the quiet. It will come out. It is far better for you to pick when and where you shape this conversation. Do it at a time of your choosing. Don’t be left with an hour to draw-up a statement in response to a media query based on an FOI request. You will curse that you didn’t do it sooner.
This is a comms issue and comms would be well served to help the organisation drive this conversation.
As the UK Government principles show, AI is not an IT issue. It is IT, legal, information governance, senior leadership team, equalities, HR, comms and frontline services issue.
So, here are some policies from a range of organisations.
Remember to communicate
What needs to be made clear is that things do not stop with publishing a policy as a pdf as an attachment to some meeting notes. That’s not communicating. That’s shuffling paper.
In the public sector, the RNLI have made a public appeal for staff to get involved with their national AI review. They have set-up an AI review group to evaluate the best path forward. I love this as an approach. By casting the net wide they are encouraging voices to come forward not the usual suspects. That’s brilliant. It’s also the opposite of IT in a room Googling to come up with a policy.
Why you need an AI policy
Much can go wrong with thoughtlessly applied AI. One nightmare scenario is the serious case review discussed over a Teams call where a meeting note taker summarises the points. That personal data is later extracted by a bad actor and published online.
Or how about personal data on a member of your family also being extracted from an AI tool.
Or people thinking you are up to no good because you use voice-generating software that doesn’t quite ring true.
The NHS is trusted by 80 per cent of the UK population to act in your best interest while UK Government on 38 per cent narrowly beats social media companies. Trust is best gathered in drips over time and can be lost quickly.
This is a magnificent piece of work that UK Government have published. This does the job of an AI policy for the Civil Service. Even better than that, it also gives a template or at the very least signposting for how AI can be used in the public sector.
Principle 1: You know what AI is and what its limitations are.
Principle 2: You use AI lawfully, ethically and responsibly.
Principle 3: You know how to use AI securely.
Principle 4: You have meaningful human control at the right stage.
Principle 5: You understand how to manage the full AI lifecycle.
Principle 6: You use the right tool for the job.
Principle 7: You are open and collaborative.
Principle 8: You work with commercial colleagues from the start.
Principle 9: You have the skills and expertise that you need to implement and use AI
Principle 10: You use these principles alongside your organisation’s policies and have the right assurance in place.
This should be part of your reading if you are looking to understand how AI can be made to work in the UK public sector. In particular, the emphasis is on transparency.
As a campaign group to save the environment Friends of the Earth can be pulled in two ways on AI. Yes, it uses electricity and by doing so can be harmful to the environment. But it can also be a useful tool.
I love what the campaign group have done with their approach. They’ve distilled it to seven main principles.
Curiosity around AI creates opportunities for better choices.
Transparency around usage, data and algorithms builds trust.
Holding tech companies and governments accountable leads to responsible action.
Including diverse voices strengthens decision making around AI.
Sustainability in AI systems helps reduce environmental impact and protect natural ecosystems.
Community collaboration in AI is key to planetary resilience.
Advocating with an intersectional approach supports humane AI.
None of these will frighten the horses. By being broad principles, they are likely to be more adaptable and flexible. In a fast-moving environment this makes sense. Set out how to use ChatGPT all you like but what happens when a new tool is launched?
The charity also mark content they produce as being created with the help of AI and also set out how it was used. For example, the downloadable version of this on page 29 gives an appendix to set out how AI was used to produce it.
For example:
In addition to accepting low-level autocomplete suggestions from Google Docs and fixing spelling mistakes, we used a collaborative notebook through NotebookLM.
I love this approach. This is the most granular exemple I’ve come across. Maximum transparency like this will start a conversation on how AI is being used
This is a good example of what a policy should look like. It also builds into it a review every six months which is absolutely on the money. The approach also asks council staff to set out what they are using and why they are using it. This is good to see. They point to the rather jargon-filled algorithmic transparency recording standard set out by UK Government as a template to complete. This is not mandatory – yet – for the public sector but I do admire the approach. Using it, you can set out what you are using and why you are using it.
I very much like the AI footnote that it sets out where content created with AI needs to be marked with the footnote:
Note: This document contains content generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI generated content has been reviewed by the author for accuracy and edited/revised where necessary. The author takes responsibility for this content.
The curious journo in me wonders what tools were used and how in a granular way. Again, this is a pdf and I’d love to see how Watford Council communicate all this to the public in an accessible way.
I also like the requirement to test new APIs and plug-ins. How it deals with hate or discriminatory inputs seems sensible, for example.
Like Watford, Leicester also require a disclaimer to mark out content that has been created through AI. It also looks to capture the use of tools on council machines as well as staff’s own devices being used for AI. This is quite canny as there’s going to be many people using AI on the quiet.
It also requires a data protection impact assessment to be carried out before a tool can be used. I’d love to know if there is a central repository of the tools that are being used and why.
I’m not a fan of it being presented as a pdf. But the five points at the heart of this are simple to understand. In a nutshell, this encourages Universities to support staff and students to use AI so it can be used appropriately and effectively. That teaching should be adapted to include generative AI while academic rigour is maintained and Universities work together in the field.
By the looks of things, this is a one off declaration rather than marking each piece of content when and where it is AI-created.
This seems more public-facing. It’s presented as a webpage and in plain English. It sets out how the University will use generative AI.
It also rules several things out. The University won’t create images from scratch although there is one to illustrate the post. It also won’t create text entirely using AI. It rules out using deepfake videos and also using voice generators unless it is demonstrating how these tools can be used. But it will use AI for photo editing and tools like ChatGPT for inspiration.
Interestingly, this is posted in the ‘staff’ tab when an audience is also the public.
This is a really thorough example that covers a lot of bases. It sets out what it is and how it will be used. It’s thorough and robust. It sets out who is ultimately responsible. It names what it calls a Senior Information Risk Owner. A SIRO. God bless the NHS for it’s acronyms. Clearly, a great deal of work has gone into this and this looks like it’s not just been cobbled-together on the hoof by IT.
However, it’s a pdf and I’d love to see what extra steps are being made to communicate this to staff and to patients.
This policy document covers the ground but also acknowledges the tactics needed in the scenario of drafting a letter to patients. Add a placeholder, it recommends. By the looks of it, the only stakeholders to have some input have come from within the organisation. I’m not convinced this is as transparent as its possible to be.
It’s fascinating to see a Parish Council also publishing an AI policy. It’s well thought through and covers the important bases. If a Shropshire parish of 11,000 souls can manage as an organisation to get their act together then what’s your excuse?
