Category Archives: communications

Twitter is either going through a death spiral or some temporary turbulence. Liz Halliday looks at making sense of potential long-term Twitter rival Mastodon.

With Twitter rapidly losing trust under the iron whims of its new CEO, many people – and advertisers – are walking away. But where are they going?

The maxim “go where the audience is” guides a lot of our practice as communications and PR professionals so learning where people are heading to is important. The Brandwatch State of Social, October 2022 report talks about fragmenting audiences and the use of smaller social media platforms. 

So now is a critical time to do a social media audit for your organisation and explore where your audiences are preferring to hang out. That way you can advise on where to focus your organisation’s social media resources, and what to do if or when Twitter’s fail whale returns permanently. 

For a project I run in my spare time I ran a poll on Twitter last week. I asked where people were planning to go if they left. Instagram was a clear winner, but over the course of the week I saw Mastodon go from a distant third to beating Facebook into second place. You’ve probably seen Mastodon starting to get headlines as an alternative ( the BBC, Guardian and Telegraph have all provided guides in the last week).

What is Mastodon, and what do you need to know about it?

At first glance Mastodon is confusing and technical. But so was Twitter in 2007. I remember when users created hashtags as a concept, and you had to type “D” before someone’s handle to DM them. (I also remember telling a boss in the 1990s that email might have a future.)

On Mastodon, you join a server and start following people on it. The different servers are federated to form the full network (known as the Fediverse). Friends on other servers can share their name (for example, I’m @magslhalliday@mstdn.social) so you can find and follow them – it’s a bit like swapping email addresses. You can also follow hashtags like #CatsOfMastodon (because of course there are cats). You have three feeds:

• Home are the people and hashtags you follow directly
• Local are posts from people on the samer server as you
• Federated are posts from people on all the servers your server is connected to.

You can learn about getting to grips with Mastodon in Francis Beaudet’s humane guide to Mastodon. There’s also an account called FediTips who explains things like how verification works.

The federation is what makes it a safer experience for users: the server I’m on can and will block entire servers posting lots of hate speech so I’ll never see those posts. Servers are generally run by individuals, who pay the running costs of activity on their server. Many are crowd-funded, and the admins are currently trying to increase stability as the influx of users slows server time – the same scaling up problems Twitter had in the 00s. 

This decentralized model is also what makes it harder for organizations at the moment. There are two reasons to wait and see from an organizational perspective.

What are the comms challenges?

There are no metrics. Since measuring reach and engagement are essential for comms and PR the lack of an analytical dashboard means there’s no proof of value. There’s also no algorithm reward for getting lots of likes, and no ‘trending hashtags’. You also can’t buy space in people’s feeds as there are no ads or sponsorship. It’s unclear if Mastodon will ever introduce metrics. It’s designed to work against users who are chasing #numbers on the grounds that any such chase incentivises toxic behaviour.

No third-party schedulers support posting to Mastodon. Yet. There is a scheduler interface, but you cannot attach images. That makes it difficult to simply switch Twitter content to Mastodon content. My workaround is scheduling text-only posts then using the ‘delete and re-draft’ function to add the images but that is incredibly labour intensive and is not a reasonable ask on social media managers. Rumour has it that Buffer might investigate adding Mastodon as a channel they support.

What is the comms potential?

There are some organisations already exploring how to use Mastodon. The Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information in Germany (BfDI) set up its own server on Mastodon back in April 2022. The only accounts on their server are German government authorities, but anyone can follow any of those accounts. That means any user handle that is @[name]@social.bund.de is, by default, an official German authority account. It also means they do not need to worry about a server folding. The EU also has its own server.

This model could prove valuable for public sector organizations. I can easily imagine a gov.uk server which all national and local government have accounts on. Or a publishing house could host a server for all its authors, or the BBC could host one for all its journalists. Obviously, it puts the costs of running the server onto the organizations, but it also means verification that is not subject to the whims of a man- child. 

What to do now

Mastodon may never be the solution for advertising as it does not care about capitalism. But it could be ready for public sector, media and arts organizations. It’s unlikely to be the whole answer to “what replaces Twitter?” but it has the potential to be a new tool for communicators. It also has the potential to be a lot safer for brands, with less risk of share prices being tanked by an activist with $8 to spend. 

Anyone working in comms and PR should be getting up to speed on Mastodon, if only to explain to senior leadership why not to move to it just yet.

Liz Halliday is a writer and public sector communicator. She’s only about two weeks’ ahead of you on Mastodon. Her website is here.

Nelson Sullivan was a vlogger 16 years before the word was invented.

He was a YouTuber almost a quarter century before the platform first uploaded a video.

If you’re even half interested in the history of the recorded image he is every bit as important as the Parisian Lumiere brothers who first charged an audience to see moving images.

Nelson first picked up an early video camera in 1983 to give a first person recording of the creative New York dance and arts scene. A few years before his death in 1989 he bought a lightweight Hi-8 camera which he experimented with turning on himself making him the star narrator of his day.

Watch his clip ‘Nelson Sullivan’s Rendezvous with his Brother in the East Village in 1989’ and you’re seeing a time traveller.

He addresses the camera to tell us he’s waiting for his brother at a coffee shop. Annoyed at his lateness he decides to call him. Rather than pull out a mobile phone he heads to the payphone.

Later, he decides to head to a friends’ house. So he walks round there rather than call him. But that’s what people did.

In other clips, he wanders the tatty graffiti’d streets of New York with friends that include an undiscovered Rupaul. He passes people on the street with ghetto blasters on their shoulder playing music because the ipod hadn’t been invented yet.

I don’t know New York, but I’m aware that the tatty meatpacking district of the 1980s was decades away from its current gentrified status. Yet Sullivan and his friends find beauty in what they see whether that be a view, a building, an experience, a pier or a piece of art.

Sullivan died suddenly of a heart attack aged 39 and footage shot on more than 1,000 video tapes went into storage from where they were rescued. More than 700 have been uploaded to the 5ninethanevenueproject YouTube channel.

It’s New York history, gay history, music history, tech history and plain community history.

It teaches what he analogue world was like a few years before the internet changed everything. It teaches what life was like before the mobile. It teaches how cities can change. It teaches how technology can change. It shows how the everyday should be captured because one day it’ll be the ancient past. Like this trip to a McDonalds in 1989, spending Sunday afternoon in the park or taking his Mum to the top of the World Trade Centre.

What’s also fascinating is how people respond. His artistic friends don’t bat an eyelid. Passers by often wave when they see the camera such is the novelty value.

It’s fascinating.

You can find more about Nelson Sullivan here.

How many times should you post a day to Facebook?

If you search the internet you’ll find studies that tell you to post to Facebook between and one or two times a day. Ignore them.

Your recipe should not be dictated by numbers but instead by quality. 

You could post any old tosh twice a day and think you were doing good. You won’t be. The algorithm will take one look and show it to one man and his dog.

Newspapers will post anything from 20 to 60 times a day. For them, if the story is good enough and the content passes muster then they’ll press the send button. 

Instead, don’t think about numbers think about how good your content is. Be a gatekeeper.

STEP ONE: Check your audience

First things first, think of your Facebook page as a room and the people who like your page as the audience in it. Go and check your insights to see where they live, how old they are and if they are male or female. This will tell you who is in your room.

Once, I was asked to run a social media review on an organisation who lived in a tourist town to see why their content wasn’t working. They had a page with lots of local people but also a tranche of visitors.

When they posted about dog mess and scooping up after it the visitors would leave. This wasn’t the vision of holiday beauty they had signed up for. The answer was to keep the page for residents and create a separate page for visitors. 

So, if your Facebook page is largely females aged 35 to 55 use that as the yardstick for work. Ask yourself before you post ‘Will this work with them?’ If the answer is ‘yes’ then post it. If it’s not, then don’t. 

If you get pushback on your refusal to pollute your Facebook page with content that won’t work with the audience sweeten the pill by taking a screen shot of the insights. Tell them how you’d love to post it but the insights say it won’t reach your audience. Then ask them what their audience is and see if you can help them by doing something else.

STEP TWO: Remember the 80/20 rule

If you’re only posting calls to action then your page will fail. 

People want to be entertained and informed as well as lectured. 

Police forces, for example, will often post pictures of their dogs and their horses because they know this gets a good reaction. If you’ve liked a pic of the new police puppy you’ve more chance of being served something the admin really wants you to see. 

STEP THREE: Links are bad

Mark Zuckerburg does not want you to leave Facebook if he can help it. He wants you to stay so putting a link to somewhere else will see you penalised by the algorithm.

Instead, tell the story on the platform itself. If you need to put the link in as a comment. It’s what joe.co.uk already do. 

STEP FOUR: If its good enough then post it

If it works with the audience then think about posting it.

Video is the most engaging content then pictures and then text.  

Facebook is keen on content that will lead to meaningful interactions. Ask yourself if the content will lead to debate and discussion. 

Avoid at all costs repetition. The same picture of gritters when you go out gritting is a bad idea. The image of the police car wit the text ‘breaking news’ needs to be avoided. Familiarity breeds contempt. The algorithm hates it because it wants to be fed with fresh content. 

If all this means you post three times a day then post five times a day. If its only three times a week then do that.

For more content creation and algorithm sign-up for the ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER workshop. More here.  

It’s fair to say that Twitter has been undergoing turbulence these past few weeks.

Entrepreneur Elon Musk has paid £44 billion for a platform that’s been failing to grow past 300 million users globally for too many years.

First, there was talk about charging for verification and now there’s talk about charging for access to the whole platform. If that’s not enough as a barometer of the times early Twitter pioneer Stephen Fry has walked out on 12.5 million users.

https://twitter.com/queencharlot/status/1590293158331547650

Is it now time to talk about the public sector and Twitter? I think it probably is.

The argument for

Twitter is still a space where journalists hang out. It’s where you can find them.

Twitter is still good for breaking news. In a crisis, the platform does itsd best in the first five minutes and its worst five minutes later. Having a presence to correct misinformation in a crisis remains important.

Twitter still has some professional networks. There are corners of good practice still.

The argument against

Twitter at its worst is rancid. It damages the people you employ to monitor it.

Twitter’s best days of being a professional network are behind it. LinkedIn and Facebook groups fulfil the role 140 characters used to. We’ve swapped serendipity for security. This only follows a trend of fractured platforms and smaller spaces often semi-private like WhatsApp groups 

Twitter’s charging for blue ticks at a stroke undermines the trust in established voices.

Twitter feels like its a plaything for a spoilt billionaire. Every platform has a cut off point for free speech. With 4Chan it was anime child porn, with Facebook it was militant Islamic snuff videos with Twitter under new ownership its people who laugh at Elon Musk. 

The bottom line

While the arguments for and against are perfectly valid the acid test comes down to your audience. 

Are they still using it? 

In the UK, Twitter is the 6th largest platform whose future is magnified by an unhealthy fascinating shown by journalists.

You are already unlikely to be reaching your audience directly through Twitter.

Is this something to worry about? For me, not really. The time to worry if you don’t check what you’re doing like a good navigator.

Once, Friends Reunited and MySpace felt like the future. Now they are nowhere. This week, Sam Bankman-Friend’s $15.6 billion crypto fortune was wiped out in 24-hours. 

The pace of change then is unforgiving and constant.  

Right now, rather than take a Stephen Fry approach I’d be scaling back on Twitter use and take the nudge to research the wider comms landscape. There are other platforms. How are they being used? 

At some point, we’ll look back at Twitter with some fond memories and we’ll know how it all went wrong. It feels like that day is closer than Elon Musk thinks.

Back in 2013, the BBC’s former tech correspondent was invited to make predictions for the future as he had been on the money 40 years previously.

When asked about predictions for the next four decades that the pace of change would never be as slow as it was then.

I’ve thought of that comment often this year, as we emerged from lockdown into Westminster meltdown and the forecast of the worst recession in a hundred years. 

Public sector communicators need to be constantly learning and evolving.

You’re in luck. I read hundreds of blog sports and report every month so you don’t have to so I can make future comms easier.  

Nine bullet points and what to make of them 

Facebook makes a big change to its algorithm

“Our discovery engine work allows us to recommend all types of content beyond Reels as well, including photos, text, links, communities, short and long-form videos, and more. Second is that we can mix this content alongside posts from your family and friends, which can’t be generated by AI alone.” (Meta earnings call, October 2022)

This is huge. I need to translate its hugeness. Up until this year, Meta’s algorithm has been powered by connections. So, friends, families and accounts followed have been the driver. TikTok changed all that. They put interests first. It’s been a resounding hit with its audience. So much so that Meta have copied the idea with what they call their Discovery Engine. It’s basically a change for the algorithm to put things you may like in front of me rather than what my mate David Fradley has been up to this week.  

You lost control of the conversation a long time ago   

“On Twitter, just 3 per cent of conversations about a brand come from the brand’s own account. There is little influence over what people are saying about them.” (Brandwatch State of Social, October 2022).

A few years ago, the late Robert Philips published the iconoclastic ‘Trust Me: PR is Dead’. Industry voices were stung into outrage at the title. Not one took issue with the salient points he made in the book. One of the points is that we can no longer manage the message. We have lost control of it.  

Audiences are fragmenting

“Given the audience fragmentation, brands are now turning to smaller social media platforms and sites where they have a better shot at capturing the audience.” (Brandwatch State of Social, October 2022).

This captures a trend that has been accelerating for several years. We have moved away from the Town Square. We moved away because wankers with loudspeakers insisted on abusing anyone with an opinion. We have moved into smaller safer spaces. We have swapped serendipity for safety. 

TV is heading to be a minority past time

“TV’s golden age may be nearing the beginning of its end. Deloitte Global predicts that, in the United Kingdom, 2022 will be the final year that traditional television from broadcasters, whether live, time-shifted, or on demand, collectively makes up more than 50% of video viewing on all screens. We expect traditional TV broadcasters’ share of viewing hours among UK consumers, which was 73 per cent as recently as 2017, to fall to 53 per cent in 2022 and then to 49 per cent in 2023.” (Deloitte Insight, TMT Predictions, 2022).

I’m going to make the point again that how we consume video – as in moving images – is changing. In the UK of anywhere in the world they are changing fastest.

Music works

“As well as making content on TikTok more relatable, music also generates longer watch times on average and makes people less likely to skip content. It also impacts mood, making people feel more positive. Research show that instrumental music generates the strongest brand recall, while R&B, pop and rap are most related with brand likeability.” (TikTok Whats Next).

Music has become a key tool for communications. For TikTok there’s a huge library of sounds. For Reels there’s also a huge library and if anything, the Reels music list is more in tune with my own personal tastes than TikTok. Beatles? On Reels there is.

It’s still video, people

“Video continues to gain popularity, becoming the most engaging content format online, and Meta is the latest platform to launch a new Reel feature.” (Brandwatch State of Social, October 2022).

Look, I’ve been saying this for years but Brandwatch’s study concurs with this. The tech in your hand means you can watch as well as shoot video. The more time you spend watching video the more time you spend on the platform. So, of course video is going to make sense.

Reels is making progress

“There are now more than 140 billion Reels plays across Facebook and Instagram each day. That’s a 50% increase from six months ago.” (Meta earnings call, October 2022)

To say Meta have been pushing Reels strongly is something of an understatement. They’ve been going at it like the clappers. The numbers in this Meta announcement are that a corner has been turned by the platform. However, I’m still not quite convinced they’ve captured the creative fun of TikTok.  

Elections are still at risk

“At the Election Integrity Partnership, we have identified 10 factors that help determine a rumor’s potential to gain traction: uncertainty/ambiguity, diminished trust in media and authoritative sources of information, significance/impact, familiarity/repetition, compellingness of evidence, emotional appeal, novelty, participatory potential, origins and amplification in the social network and Inauthentic amplification or manipulation.” (Stanford Internet Observatory and the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. What makes an election rumour go viral? Look at these 10 factors. October, 2022)

Election interference is well mapped and well researched. Some things have taken place to prevent it but not nearly enough to be confident that democracy will survive to see the second half of the 21st century. It’s very easy as an individual to feel overwhelmed by the scale of the task. 

Facebook groups are evolving

“We’re adding more options for people to connect over shared interests, including Reels in Facebook Groups and updates to your Group profile.” (Meta, Introducing New Features to Facebook Groups. October 2022) 

New tools for Facebook groups indicate the value that Meta places on groups. Oh, and they’re allowing Reels. Did I mention that they’re quite keen on Reels? And that video is a thing?

Thanks for reading.

To get more fully up to speed on comms basics I deliver ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER training.

A major piece of benchmarking research has been launched in council, combined authority and fire comms. CIPR vice chair and experienced public sector communicator Mandy Pearse explains how yo can help.

One thing in life is guaranteed – everyone always has an opinion on their local council. 

What is interesting is what shapes that opinion and ultimately the reputation of the council. We assume that the Council’s communications should play a significant role, but equally the actions of the local politicians, the service delivery and the customer service may all impact.

When we start looking for hard evidence on what are the most influential factors it becomes more murky. 

Work has showed the importance of internal communications so that employees who are engaged in their workplace are more likely to speak highly of the organisation unprompted. I think of this advocacy as the pub test where someone is asked down the pub what they do for a living  and they will actually say they work for the Council and speak up for it.

Back in the days when we used to undertake the three-yearly BVPI survey we had some indicators such as resident satisfaction, value for money, how well informed and service satisfaction which we could compare across all authorities. The elements influencing that satisfaction score were how well informed people felt and their satisfaction with services such as refuse collection, recycling and green spaces.

But in our current digital but polarised society how much of this holds true? In one sense we can track our impact digitally more accurately than ever in terms of views, likes, shares, engagement, sentiment and links to action. 

We definitely see some stellar numbers on platforms like TikTok and some brilliant creative campaigns. But how much of that affects the reputation of the Council with the residents, tax payers, service users, partners and funders? How do you measure your reputation?

I’m keen to explore this and I’m starting with a major benchmarking survey. It’s open to any Head of Comms at a Council, combined authority or fire authority and all those who take part will get a summary of the findings.

You can complete the survey https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/Dan_benchmarking

It will take 20 minutes so have a break with a cuppa while you fill it in.

Mandy Pearse is director at Seashell Communications and CIPR Vice-President.

Changes at Twitter are a perfect nudge for public sector communicators to re-think their digital comms strategy.

Since Elon Musk took over the platform the debate has centred around relaxing the moderation policies. More strident voices and abuse have been predicted.

But for me the real tipping point are proposals to charge from having the verified blue tick. 

Many corporate accounts have this status and in an emergency it can help to cut through the noise as a trusted voice. In times of renewed austerity paying out what’s likely to be £200 a year isn’t going to be on top of many people’s lists.

So what to do?

A question of ownership

For me, ownership is largely irrelevant. As a press officer, I took calls on occasion from the News of the World. This title wasn’t one I would go out and buy but in that’s where the audience is that’s where it is. 

It’s largely irrelevant that Elon Musk owns it.

A question of behaviour 

What is more relevant is behaviour on the platform. A loosely moderated platform can expose staff to abuse strongly reinforces the need for a social media policy to set out what’s acceptable and what’s not. It’s the basic building block. All organisations who use social media need to have a set of house rules in place. If you are going to maintain a Twitter account – or any account – then such a policy is essential.

A question of trust 

If the blue tick is priced out of the market then people will need to think about other ways to establish trust. A page on the website with links to corporate accounts is a straight forward way of doing this. So is using platforms other than Twitter.

A question of where people go in an emergency

In 2011, riots flared across England. Rumour and misinformation circulated across Twitter as the seminal Reading the Riots research was to show. Some Home Office voices argued that this meant the power to close the internet in a time of crisis. Those views lost out to the more sensible approach of embracing the platform and posting credible information in real time. 

In other words, it was important to be on Twitter to establish a trusted voice. After the Manchester Arena attack in 2017, the first alert was posted by Greater Manchester Police within minutes. It did not give a detailed breakdown merely that they were aware of an incident. The move established the corporate account as a place for updates. It was an approach widely adopted.

I’m not wholly convinced that everyone now heads to Twitter in a crisis. Sure, reporters do and that’s maybe enough to keep this approach as part of the strategy. But for me, community Facebook groups and Nextdoor are also where the discussion of a local incident are likely to play out. WhatsApp too is where information spreads.

And that’s the point. There is no single place to communicate.  

A question of review

Most social media was set up by 2010 and still bears the hallmarks of that landscape. A Twitter and a Facebook are the default platforms. So too is the request to ‘post this to Twitter’ in the mistaken belief that this will reach as if by magic the desired audience.

It is beyond question high time to review your audiences and review your channels. For younger people, TikTok is the platform of choice for news in the UK as well as the US. It needs to be based on science and data rather than habit. I keep meaning to set out how to run a social media review and one of these days I will. 

In short 

We have become a society of fractured and splintered online communities and our approach to communicating needs to reflect that.  

Your couple of hundred quid would be better spent not on maintaining a blue tick but elsewhere.

Good communications is working out the audience and deciding the best tool to reach them. It’s not always using the tool of a poster, a Twitter account… or a video. Telford & Wrekin Council’s digital communications and campaigns manager Emily Taylor reports from CommscampNorth.

As the manager of a digital comms team which includes a film team, my response should perhaps always be, yep, let’s make a video. But *whispers* sometimes, it just doesn’t need another video.

Immediately that someone pitched her idea at CommscampNorth, I knew it was a session I’d be attending. It’s nice to know I’m not alone in the near daily struggle to convince the good and the great that their very important subject just doesn’t need a video.

The conversation during the session showed, perhaps frustratingly, perhaps reassuringly, that we all face the same challenges. Indeed someone likened the video to the press release of old. Got something you want to shout about? Where once you might have asked for a press release, now you ask for a video. It’s the new shiny thing to be coveted.

The conversation certainly provided a few top tips.

How to say no:

1.       Have guidelines. When do you use video – and, more importantly, when do you not? How long will a video be? What style? Etc etc.

2.       Don’t just say no. Come back with alternatives. A manager I used to work with always said, don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions. I think this holds true here. Don’t tell someone what you can’t do for them, tell them what you can do.

3.       Use data. In a digital world we have tonnes of data at our finger tips. We need to use this to show what is working and what isn’t.

4.       Sometimes you might need to say yes, so that you can then say no. Hear me out here. Even when we know we should say no – so that we can gather the evidence to say no next time.

5.       Not every video has to go on every platform. We should be creating specific videos for specific platforms. Each platforms appeals to very different audiences and different length films work better on different platforms too. Just because you CAN post a video that is 240 minutes long on Facebook definitely doesn’t mean you SHOULD. In fact, you should probably be looking to say what you want to say in 60 seconds or LESS!

6.       Have a YouTube strategy. Someone suggested having a separate strategy for YouTube. This was a completely new idea for me. We use YouTube – as the person who suggested this very correctly surmised – as a dumping ground for videos.

The session did give me a very clear lightbulb moment. Someone was talking about design (slightly off-topic) and how much time was wasted with a lack of clear guidelines (mentioned above) and understanding when something is finished (designed) and the client decides they want to tweek it. 

Comms certainly seems to be a profession that those outside of it think they can do. It would seem highly presumptuous of me to try to tell my highways colleagues, who have trained for years, how to build a bridge or repair a road. And yet, many colleagues (and I’m not picking on highways here) seem to think they can “do” communications.

I digress.

The lightbulb moment came and it was this: we often have colleagues/managers/whoever who give their subjective feedback on design work or a press release or social media but I realised, that is rarely the case with video.

That actually, we are often trusted as the experts when it comes to video. I remember giving feedback to a senior elected member that most people won’t watch much beyond 8-10 seconds of a video on Facebook and so any introduction was just long enough to lose any viewers.

Without question, he agreed to cut the intro and launch straight into the video. Clearly there are exceptions to the rule but very more often than not, when it comes to videos, we are regarded as experts. And we need to harness this and not be afraid to say no when a video really isn’t necessary.

For me, I’m coming away from the session with a clear goal in mind for my own film team: to make shorter videos. I feel like this is constantly my mantra: I’m always asking, what can we cut. But I want to be even more ruthless.

Emily Taylor (she/her) is digital communications and campaigns manager at Telford & Wrekin Council. You can follow her on Twitter as @EA_Taylor84

We staged a second cost of living comms workshop this week.

This time we collected a range of web resources that people have built.

Dig in, take a look and see what you can learn.

Thanks to David Grindlay for logging these from the Public Sectior Comms Headspace session.

Links and resources

Cost of Living Support in Suffolk

Cost of Living Support in Basingstoke

Cost of Living support in Bristol

South Hams District Council Support Directory

Cost of Living Help in West Devon Borough Council

Cost of Living Support in Bromsgrove Council

Partners join forces to combat cost of living crisis

More money in my pocket by Wakefield Council

Support from Northumberland Council

Money advice Darlington Council

Benefits calculator by Falkirk Council

Cost of living help by Dorset Council

Cost of living support North Tyneside Council

I’m listening to the Alastair Campbell diaries at the moment as an audio book.

It’s the story of how the driven to the point of destruction Daily Mirror political correspondent was recruited by the Labour opposition to become Tony Blair’s Press Secretary.

He’s acknowledged as a consummate media operator by his admirers and as the architect of some of the darker chapters in politics by critics.

One thing shines through the diaries and that’s self doubt and self reflection.

Am I good enough? 

Should I be here? 

There is a lot discussed in PR circles about Imposter Syndrome but not enough, frankly, about the polar opposite of this in PR or public life.

Dunning Kruger sets out the anti-imposter syndrome. In this theory, those who suffer from it have a greatly overstated opinion of their own abilities but they are doubly cursed by not knowing it. 

The original research from 1999 has been developed to show that people who think they can often cannot. 

It got me thinking to Liz Truss and her 44-day reign as Prime Minister.

There is unlikely to be a market for a thick Thatcher diaries-style account of her rise to power, how she navigated events and how she fell from grace.

But there is for a self-reflective study of her own limitations and her account of where things went wrong.

But, of course, that would need self-reflection. I’ll leave that for others to decide how much she may have.