Author Archives: Dan Slee

FREE LESSONS: A free webinar that Public Sector comms people may like

5960779696_e3f6d18b46_oYears ago, it was all about putting press releases out and managing the message. Now, a fifth of public sector comms teams have an income target to meet. An income target? Yup. Here’s some ideas if this is you and some advance warning if it isn’t.

The world has changed and we are changing with it.

Income targets have become a reality for 20 per cent of public sector comms teams and that figure is likely to rise.

What the heck does that mean? A survey we ran with Granicus UK gave some fascinating insight. At the conventional end of things the income target was getting targeted by web ads and ads in your residents’ magazine. At the more creative end was hiring out car parks, hiring out co-working space and a whole lot more.

What he heck does all that mean?

Well, trouble, if you are not careful. The issue isn’t straight forward. What will your organisation stand? What buy-in do you have? What ideas can you come up with? How do you turn-in a profit? What skills do you need?

Together with my comms2point0 colleague Darren Caveney and Granicus UK’s Emma Howard we produced a rather fine download on income targets, comms and the public sector. You can download it here.

Back in September, myself and Darren spoke at Granicus UK’s annual event in London. I’m really pleased that a flavour of that will be offered as part of a webinar on Thursday November 23 from 2pm to 3pm. If you struggled to get to London that day this is perfect. It’s free.

Also taking part are:

Nicola Goode, Marketing and PR Manager, Bournemouth Tourism at Bournemouth Borough Council. Imre Tolgyesi, Partnership Manager, Commercial Services, South Staffordshire Council.

Dave Worsell, managing director, Granicus Europe.

Pop by. If you are having to sort an income target, this is for you. If you want toget up to speed in case you do, this is for you too. I can’t promise cake but you can bring your own.

Webinar: Income Generation Strategies and the Comms You Need to Succeed takes place from 2pm to 3pm on Thursday November 23. You can register free HERE.

Picture credit: National Archives UK / Flickr.

DO A DONCASTER: The greatest piece of digital content from local government ever

Ladies and gentlemen, in Northern England this week a powerboat was dumped on the street and as a result Doncaster Council won the internet.

The speed boat will not be the only thing dumped across the country with the cost likely to top £50 million across the UK.

Every council across the country is forced to pay to clean-up illegally dumped waste. But aside the financial cost there’s the cost to communities blighted by bags of rubbish.

An everyday story told in GIFs

GIFs are short animations which date from the 1990s. For the past 30 years GIFs have been used across parts of the internet to make a point or tell a story. The public sector at first hesitant to use these animated devices have started slowly to use them.

Doncaster Council’s comms team decided to tell this everyday story using GIFs. It is magnificent. Human, witty, warm and engaging. Will it work for everthing? No. Does it work for this? Absolutely.

The great twin triumph of this is not the web architecture of GIFs that creates it. What makes it a triumph is the reaction it gets from people, firstly. They smile and connect. But most of all it is the willingness to experiment.

A story told as a thread of GIFs

And the story begins…

The chief praises the work…

But perhaps the cherry on top of the cake is that Doncaster Council’s chief executive used Twitter to send them a fist-bump.

The idea is to tell stories every week using the technique of Twitter thread and GIFs. That’s fine. But the real win in this is experimenting with how people are already using the internet. This won’t work in every piece of communications. That’s fine.

But where this does win is by creating human and engaging content. As a resident you’d want to follow the account.

LISTED: The 55 skills a comms team needs in 2017

 

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The best day to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best day is today. It’s the same for you and your team.

The skills you need to communicate have been changing. A few years back I blogged a list of skills that every team needed. This started as a list of 40 skills. No more. This is now 55. But do you want to know the good news? I don’t think everyone needs all of them. But your team’s strength should be drawn from different areas.

I’ve divided this into nine areas. Everyone should get the strategic. Everyone needs the core skills.

Strategic

  1. Be clear about your organisation’s priorities. Its priorities are the comms team’s priorities.
  2. Report up weekly on . List what you are doing against the heading of your priorities. Otherwise you are just making noise.
  3. Be able to look finance in the eye. Attach a financial value to the results you are achieving. Fewer GP appointents because of that YouTube clip and receptionists who triage? Attach a value to that.
  4. Have a team of specialist generalists. If you expect everyone to know all the skills they – and you – will fail. Have them know core skills and excel at others.
  5. Be gate openers not gatekeepers. Some of your best comms work will be done by frontline staff equipped with a smartphone. This is fine. It is to be encouraged.
  6. To know what an income target is and to either plan for them or offer evaluated comms savings. A fifth of public sector teams have an income target. If you have one you’ll need entrepreneurial skills in the team rather than relying on ex-hacks to sell ad space.

Core skills the team will need

  1. Know how to evaluate. If you are doing something, know why. Count the tweets and press releases you send. But count what people did as a result of all that. That’s far more important.
  2. Know that social media isn’t about calls to action. Its being human and engaging 80 per cent of the time.
  3. Know all the channels and who uses them. There is no one size fits all channel that will reach everyone. You need to know the online and offline channels and their strengths and weaknesses.
  4. Be more human. Everyone’s job in comms is to carry a Field Marshall’s baton to see the big picture, wear a lab coat to know the data and have a plate of cake to speak human.
  5. Always be learning.
  6. Educate the client. Comms’ job is to help the organisation communicate better. Your job is to advise them how to do that by knowing backwards the complex and fractured media landscape. You are a professional. Give professional advice.
  7. Be a diplomat, be small ‘p’ and big ‘P’ politically aware. Know how to handle people and give advice.
  8. Speak truth to power. Know that you are able to give the right advice.
  9. To listen to the public. Don’t be afraid to reflect their views back to the organisation even when it is critical.
  10. To be able to tell stories. In different formats.
  11. To know media law. McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists is your friend.
  12. To know the value of internal comms. Engage for Success is a good starting point.
  13. To know how to write a comms plan. Like this one.
  14. To know how to interpret data. And know the right data to interpret.
  15. To know how to respond as an organisation in an emergency. Increasingly, the emergency is what tests a team. This will happen to you at a time you need it least.
  16. Look for the influencers who can influence networks. The blogger. The community leader. The campaigner.
  17. To be able to communicate to the head and the heart. And know the difference.
  18. To manage time. To know what meetings to make and those to break.

In person

  1. To be professional, warm and engaging.
  2. To present. To create a deck of slides and stand up and speak to an audience.

In words

  1. To understand jargon but to communicate in plain English.
  2. To write effective emails.
  3. To write effective email campaigns.
  4. To evaluate and improve email campaigns.
  5. To write a press release.
  6. To be able to write for the web.
  7. To create and run a survey.

In pictures

  1. To find copyright free images.
  2. To take and edit
  3. To record the permission of those who are photographed, update and maintain a model consent database.
  4. To select information and create an infographic.
  5. To know what branding is and why it is.

In video

  1. Know the optimum lengths of video per channel.
  2. Know how to plan, edit, film and add text and music to a video shot in-house.
  3. Know how to plan and commission and external video.

In print

  1. To know when a leaflet works and to liaise with designers.
  2. To know when a newsletter or magazine works and to liase with designers.

In data

  1. To know what data to look for and what data to count.
  2. To know what open data is.

On Social media

  1. Know the Paretto Principle. The 80-20 split is what works on social media. Make 80 per cent of your content social and engaging to earn the right 20 per cent of the time to make calls to action. People don’t want to be sold to on social media.
  2. Think of Facebook as a broad landscape rather than just your page. Most people who use your organisation aren’t following your page but they are using Facebook. But they are members of groups and pages. So go looking for them there.
  3. Make friends with Facebook group and page admin. They can help share content for you.
  4. Join Facebook groups and pages as yourself. By being a human being you can show that real human beings work for the organisation.
  5. To know what audience uses the main social media accounts.
  6. To create on each platform engaging content with words, text and video for them with the right tone for the right occasion.
  7. To know how customer services works with social media.
  8. To respond using social media in an emergency.
  9. To know new platforms and be able to experiment with them.
  10. To be able to create and schedule content at the right time.

Picture credit: Ryan Dickey / Flickr

SURE SHOT: 5 videos that show that video is thriving as a comms channel

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Three years ago when we started to train people on how and when to use video for comms it felt like the early days.

The business case was there and the stats pointed clearly why it was a massively important comms channel. But examples were still thin on the ground. That’s all changed. There are more and more effective videos to be found.

Here are five that caught my eye over the last few months. Shot in-house. Engaging. Funny at times. Sad at others. This isn’t hard.

Being a real voice

Newcastle City Council are the Martin Scorcese of public sector video. They are sketching a new language on how to use the medium. They are letting real people speak. Sometimes those real people work for the council. Sometimes it has rough edges. But the rough edges make the content work.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FNewcastleCityCouncil%2Fvideos%2F10155081344978790%2F&show_text=1&width=560

Being a 360-degree Red Arrows watcher

I’ve long argued that content on social media shouldn’t always be call-to-action. It should be mixed. So, when the RAF’s Red Arrows came to town the day was a celebration. This 360 video catches the jets but so much more. It captures the crowd, the enthusiasm and the comms officer filming. But that’s fine. Good work Denbighshire Council.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fdenbighshirecountycouncil%2Fvideos%2F1592989687390081%2F&show_text=1&width=560

Being eye-catching with a dancing GIF

Bath and North East Somerset Council have been good at video for a while. When they delivered a wheelie bin they were surprised to see a mobile resident. Marvellously, they also turned it into a GIF.

Being creative with Superheroes

Video isn’t just point and film a vox pop. You can be creative too. Here Kent Fire and Rescue have a more polished video that tells a story. Firefighters are secret super heroes. But you can be too if you test your smoke alarm.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fkentfirerescue%2Fvideos%2F10154082530404520%2F&show_text=1&width=560

Being a teller of an emotional story

The daughter of a police officer killed while on duty came to Bedfordshire Police to be the Chief Constable for the day. It was about the force saying ‘thank you’ and showing what being a police officer involved. It is a mix of video, stills, text, music and it works beautifully.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fbedspolice%2Fvideos%2F10155283704926311%2F&show_text=1&width=560

Can I help?

Over the past two-and-a-half years I’ve helped train more than 1,000 comms, PR, marketing and frontline people in when and how to use video. This has been delivered together with Steven Davies. It’s something I’m massively proud of. Full disclaimer: we’ve trained people from Newcastle City Council, Bath and North East Somerset and Kent Fire and Rescue. 

You can find out more about our Essential Video Skills for Comms workshops here or shout me on Twitter @danslee and by email dan@comms2point0.co.uk. 

DEAD SIMPLE: Windows phone is dead and what that means for comms people

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For the past three years I’ve been running training for comms people on how, why and when to use video.

Delivered with Steven Davies the sessions are a genuine delight.

One regular issue crops up and that’s the quality of tech that comms teams are served with. In a word it is ‘patchy.’

What comms people need to communicate is a phone that will help them communicate.

That’s a simple concept, isn’t it? But in practice this simple request can go through the prism of IT.

This is what you need:

  • An android or an Apple phone or tablet.

This is often what people get:

  • A Windows phone or blackberry that has no applications to edit video and post through social media to the internet.

The whole debate got a whole lot simpler this week when it emerged that Windows were no longer developing for the phone. In effect, as a product it is dead. Don’t buy it. But more importantly, don’t be railroaded by your IT team to buy them particularly at a time when the market will be flooded by cheap product.

I’m not suggesting the work-arounds to make email safe. I’m suggesting that with Windows or blackberry you aren’t able to communicate. Which for a comms person is fundamental.

 

THESE WORDS: If you are looking for a blog post for something you are thinking of doing…

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If you are looking for a blog post for something you are thinking of doing…

If you find one, great. Learn. Do it better.
If you don’t find one. Great. Do it then write one and share it.
There really is no law that says you can’t do something unless there already is a blog post, case study or template.
Invent your own.
Good Luck.

CATALAN VIDEO: Who wins the PR battle when the police storm polling stations?

Scrolling through Twitter a question struck me. From a PR perspective who wins when the national government’s riot police storm the local government’s polling stations?

At the weekend, footage was posted from Catalonia of police looking to seize ballots from an independence referendum. You can see it here:

There was much more disturbing footage online. But it was the prosaic backdrop of an election centre that caught my eye.

Elsewhere, the internet was full of stories. Firefighters acted as human shields to protect voters. A girl getting her fingers broken by the police. All of these were told through video posted to the internet.

In law, the regional poll was declared illegal so the national government held the high ground.

But in PR terms, sending in the police to act aggressively feels like a monumental own goal. Why? Because it plugs into a narrative that even small children can grasp. In the story of the Big Man versus the Little Man, it is the instinct of the passer-by to side with the Little Man. It is the instinct of the tribe under attack to be politicized.

Any independence campaign would need the majority of the population from the area looking to break away in support. From the wider Spanish population it would need grudging acceptance.

As a student of history, this weekend may yet prove to be an even bigger own goal. I’m reminded of the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin. History shows that a population filled with revulsion at acts carried out by the country’s government moved to side with the revolutionaries.

At an event at Reuters earlier this year it was mentioned that people trust words only a little, pictures a little more and video most of all.

In Catalonia and Spain, history isn’t defined by video clips as the 19th century was by war and diplomacy. But the campaign for independence is being shaped by the 30-second clips on the internet.

 

 

 

 

SPOT ON: Why GDS’s Social Media House Rules rule

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For three years I was the sole voice of the council’s Twitter and for five years drew-up its social media strategy and tactics.

We started with one account and when I left there were more than 70 many of which I was really proud of.

There were many things I learned along the way. One that stands out is setting out how you’ll use social media and how you expect others to use it. In other words, ‘Play nice. We’ll talk to you so long as you don’t swear, okay?’ This is only what front counter staff have pinned up and most of the time we never needed it.

I noticed these social media house rules from GDS. They’ve been around for a while but I’ve not seen them before. You can see the original here.

Why they are great

They set out what’s covered, what they’ll do, when they’ll do it, what they can’t do, what they won’t tolerate and what they expect of you. So, if someone shouts and swears they can point at these and show them the red card. Or a user can tweet them and know roughly what to expect.

I’m sure GDS won’t mind if you cut and paste but you’ll need to tweak them a little for your organisation.

The social media team at GDS are responsible for several different social media accounts on a variety of platforms.

We’re happy to help you in any way that we can and look forward to seeing your views and feedback. We do however expect our users to offer us the same level of courtesy that we offer them, so we have a short set of house rules:

  1. All users must comply with the social media platform’s Terms of Use as well as these Terms of Use.
  2. We will remove, in whole or in part, posts that we feel are inappropriate.
  3. We will report and remove any social media profiles that are set up using GOV.UK imagery, including fonts, without permission.
  4. We will block and/or report users on Twitter who direct tweets at us which we believe are:
    1. Abusive or obscene
    2. Deceptive or misleading
    3. In violation of any intellectual property rights
    4. In violation of any law or regulation
    5. Spam (persistent negative and/or abusive tweeting in which the aim is to provoke a response)
  5. You are wholly responsible for any content you post including content that you choose to share.

Anyone repeatedly engaging with us using content or language which falls into the above categories will be blocked and/or reported to the associated social media platform.

Responding to users:

  1. We’ll do our best to respond to your enquiries within four working hours.
  2. We’ll try to help you, or direct you to people and/or departments who can, wherever possible.
  3. Our working hours are 9.00 – 17.00 Monday to Friday. We’ll deal with enquiries sent outside of this time as soon as possible when working hours resume.
  4. The @GOVUK twitter account is here to provide information and support for users of the GOV.UK website.
  5. The @GOVUK Twitter account is not a political account and cannot respond to political tweets.

We do not respond to tweets of a commercial nature

Whilst we are happy to receive such material, we will not respond as we are governed by strict procurement rules. You can keep up to date on our procurement platform, Digital Marketplace by visiting https://digitalmarketplace.blog.gov.uk/ or by contacting enquiries@digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk.

We reserve the right to modify or change these conditions at any time.

We look forward to hearing from you!

CAKE STOP: My most depressing moment in local government involved chocolate cake

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“The thing is, Dan,” someone very senior once told me, “if we asked people what they want, they’d just say chocolate cake.”

So, the senior person described what he thought they’d like instead rather than asking people.

In many ups and downs it was the most depressing moment I had in eight years of local government.

I’ve always felt uneasy with this ‘we know best’ concept of public service for people.

Earlier this month I saw something different that has hardwired putting people at the heart of things.

I was in London and could make a meet-up – or teacamp – for local government people. The meet-up was tremendous. A room in a pub. Some tea and coffee and some shared learning. It reminded me of brewcamp meet-ups in the West Midlands. Hats off to the excellent Natalie Taylor of the GLA for organising.

What was hugely good was a quick exercise that spelt out what ‘agile’ looked like. It’s a process I’ve leard lots about but never really come into close contact with. In short, this is looking at a service you want to change in the organisation and going through step-by-step.

But at each step, looking at what will benefit the service user… the real person public sector people are trying to help.

It was hugely refreshing to focus on the user not the organisation. Not to say a little difficult.

There is nothing new about this process. It has been used for years and has been a mantra for places like GDS. But seeing it at close hand it’s clear there is a lesson there for communications people.

The question for communicators is not about chocolate cake…. it’s ‘does what you are communicating help real people?’

SHOW, TELL: Great ideas are likely to die if they’re not well communicated

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The earlier you involve your comms team in a new project the more chance it has of being a success.

There’s some stats behind this, too.

If comms are involved in the early planning stage its an 82 per cent chance of success.

If they are involved after the scheme has been approved its 68 per cent.

If comms are called in just before launch its 40 per cent.

If its after launch its 26 per cent.

If its not at all its 15 per cent.

These statistics emerged from a survey from the #commsforchange event I was involved with a while back in the early days of comms2point0. It’s a figure In keep referring back to.

It was a figure that came into my head when I saw the stream from localgovcamp in Bristol last weekend. Loads of great ideas were being kicked around by bright people in local government. Yet, there was very little talk of who to communicate with. That’s not a criticism of the event or the ideas. Far from it. It’s an event that’s very dear to my heart and has shaped what I do today.

But something nagged at me. The landscape is littered with great ideas badly communicated.

And if you want the idea to succeed you need to tell the right people at the right time in the right way.