Category Archives: communications

STOCK CLIPS: How to build a B-roll library for a public sector comms team

In the words of Mark Zuckerburg, video has been the prime way that people consume content online for several years.

You may be used to image libraries of visual assets but how do you now create a B-roll library of shots that can be re-used in future content?

B-roll is the name for the supporting footage that illustrates your film. Maybe, that’s things like buses in the town centre, summer in the park or social care staff talking to a client.

Now, I don’t think every film should feature it but it is certainly useful from time-to-time. 

Here’s some ideas for you and some pitfalls to avoid.

GDPR and shooting for the public sector 

Firstly, anything you do shoot in the public sector is subject to GDPR. So, under the ICO’s office’s rules you need ‘explicit permission’ from people if they are recognisable. 

If you are conducting an interview, then get their permission and explain exactly how the footage will be used. That’s what’s meant by the ‘explicit’. 

So, the resident saying: ‘I think Dudley Council is great’ can be used for the video of the park event the council stepped in to save. However, the quote can’t be re-used for the budget cuts video unless the speaker agrees.

My colleague Julia suggests using something like Google Forms to create a form which can then be adapted for each job. Each form URL can then be run through a tool like qr-code.io to generate a QR code you can take with you while you are out and about. The interviewee then uses the QR code from their phone to access the link. Smart.

This avoids the issue of building up a sheaf of paper that then gets rained on or left in the car.

For big events, the ICOs office suggests a catch-all permission sign by the gate to the park informing people that Dudley Council are filming for social media a film that celebrates the park fun day. People can contact a steward if they want to opt out and can be given a coloured lanyard. That way the videographer knows to avoid them on the day or in the edit.

With children make sure you get that explicit permission.

Interestingly, journalism isn’t covered by GDPR. The Councillor accused of punching the bus driver can’t tick a box saying ‘no publicity’ as they arrive at court. Nor should they. 

Shooting B-roll 

Most B-roll you’ll want to shoot probably won’t have people who are identifiable. It can be things like the park in summertime or buses running through the town centre. This stock footage can then be repurposed in future for other film projects.

There’s an obvious advantage for shooting your own B-roll. 

Whatever you do shoot is likely to have local landmarks or be recognisable. Where I live, the buses are National Express West Midlands. If I see London buses illustrating a film about subsidised buses through Quarry Bank all credibility in the film has gone.

Do get into the habit of shooting B-roll when you are out and about.

Here’s what to do:

  • Shoot 20 seconds of landscape footage
  • Shoot 20 seconds of vertical footage
  • Shoot some alternative perspectives of the same in landscape and vertical.

Creating your own B-roll library

The first thing to do is save the file with the right key words.

So, a file name “Transport_Halesowen_bus_station_landscape” may work for the landscape shot of the Queensway bus station and “Transport_Halesowen_bus_station_vertical” will work for the upright.

Remember to use the same system of labelling for all your B roll.

Now that’s been shot where to store it?

Well, there are commercial providers I’ve looked at, but they start from around £4k a year and your budgets may not stretch to them.

I’m not totally convinced they are needed.

A perfectly workable alternative is to use Google Drive or Microsoft’s OneDrive. Create folders for the subjects you’d like. So, Parks, transport, social care or whatever works best.

Here’s an example of the areas to save as part of your file name.

Having a file naming system like this will help you recover it again. Feel free to change, adapt or simplify. 

Here’s an example of wide and vertical B-roll. This is St John’s church, Halsowen outside my office.

And here’s the landscape shot. This was shot straight after the upright.

I’ve kept the low murmer of the churchyard on as audio in these cases but there is an argument for removing sound for general shots like these. Not everyone remembers to adjust sound levels on each clip in the edit.

Spending time creating B-roll

There may be an argument for either commissioning a videographer to create you some B-roll. If you can’t do that, you may want to devote some time for gathering footage you know you are likely to re-use. That time spent can very quickly pay for itself.

If you are out and about filming once you’ve posted your video take a few minutes to add your individual shots to the library. 

B-roll libraries

Depending on who you are, B-roll libraries could be an option. They can be quite generic and the danger would be to use some footage which clearly wasn’t from the area you are talking about. A few years ago, a designer for Birmingham City Council famously used a shot of Birmingham, Alabama in some literature to wide Brummie derision. This is a risk you need to be aware of if you go down this path.

They can also be quite pricey. 

A good tip would be to make a search for what content is available. 

Here’s an example of bus B-roll from Pixabay. It was found using the search ‘UK bus’. Closer examination indicates it was shot in Liverpool.

Here’s an example of some footage from Pixabay:

Under the terms and conditions of Pixabay, you don’t have to credit the website or even the person who uploaded it, although they say they encourage it. You can also give the uploader a few quid, too. Again, that’s optional.

Almost all footage in B-roll libraries are landscape so if you were looking to create in vertical you’d need to import the clip as a cutaway and layer it over so it overlaps in the edit.

I’ve had a look at different B-roll providers and made some test searches along UK, UK regional and UK rural options. The cost and quality varied.

Most libraries allow their assets to be downloaded and stored within your own libraries. Double check. 

Of course, you also need to be alive to the fact that a slick drone shot of a town centre at night you are using in a film to illustrate your council’s night time economy may lead to questions. Like ‘how much was that drone?’ 

External B-roll libraries I’ve looked at aren’t strong on people content. So, if you are making content for the NHS or social care there may not be anything down for you.

Lastly, be alert to the fact that some external libraries may have AI-generated footage. This may or may not be in line with your AI policy.


I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

BBC TV WINS: The media landscape in Wales in 2025 

In Wales, BBC One remains the main source of news with Facebook in second place.

The social challenger to the news crown emerges in Ofcom’s breakdown for the Principality found in Ofcom’s Media Nations: Wales 2025 and Cyfryngau’r Genedl 2025: Cymru.

Overall, TV is a source for news for 60 per cent of the population of the country with social media second on 52 per cent, radio on 34 per cent and print newspapers 19 per cent.

The full table is here:

As with other parts of the UK, the figures underline the growing importance of social media as a whole. This is not new. But I’m not convinced all communications teams across Wales have invested staff time in the area.

From the league table, Welsh specific platforms that perform well are ITV Cymru Wales / ITV 1 which is in third place with 35 per cent and The Western Mail / Wales on Sunday with 13 per cent.

Elsewhere in the report

In 2024, the most watched TV show was the Gavin & Stacey: The Finale which was partly set in Barry, South Wales. 

Wales is a country of video watchers with the five hours and six minutes consumed daily the highest of any of the UK countries. Within this, the 50 minutes of video on demand was also highest in the UK. Over 65s are increasing their TV viewing. 

Also the highest in the UK, 88 per cent of the Principality connects their TV to the internet to allow access to Netflix, YouTube and other platforms.

YouTube is watched by 12 per cent of the county which is at the same rate as ITV channels. Unlike other countries, ‘how to’ videos are the most popular content with 41 per cent also watching YouTube Shorts. Short form video of less than 15 minutes is the most popular content with just one in 10 watching complete TV programmes uploaded to the platform.

Radio also performs strongly in Wales with 89 per cent of adults listening at some stage every week.

BBC Channels are watched by the most number of people per head of population with 72 per cent tuning in from Colwyn Bay to Cardiff and Bridgend to Bethesda. 

Internet connection is available to 96 per cent of homes. 

Eighty per cent of adults in Wales are ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ interested in news which focuses on the country.

I’ve blogged a summary for the UK here, Northern Ireland here and Scotland here.

You can find the full Ofcom Media Nations 2025 report here. 

I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Creative commons credit: Spar Shop on the A5, Betws-y-Coed by Ian S.

TV & RADIO WIN: What the media landscape looks like in Northern Ireland in 2025 

In Northern Ireland, TV news has an unassailable lead as the most popular channel for news. 

BBC One with 42 per cent is the single most popular channel narrowly beating by one per cent UTV / ITV1.

Facebook is in the third place with 29 per cent.

The figures come from Media Nations 2025: Northern Ireland. 

For news, television as a whole reaches 64 per cent of the population beating radio stations and social media which are tied on 46 per cent each. Print media lags behind on 16 per cent.

Elsewhere in the report

In Northern Ireland, adults watch the most TV of any UK nation at two hours six minutes per day. 

Local radio out performs in the country. A total of 64 per cent pick up news from local radio which is twice the level of other parts of the UK. BBC local radio is listened to by 18 per cent and with commercial radio 44 per cent.

Superfast broadband is ubiquitous with 99 per cent of the population able to access this.

The largest TV audience in 2024 with 630,000 was The Grinch on Netflix.

Two-thirds of the population watch at least three minutes of YouTube at home but the country has the lowest rate of watching the platform – 35 per cent – in the UK. 

Adults in Northern Ireland are more likely to watch the news on TV than anywhere else in the UK. Sixty per cent watch in Belfast, Lisburn and Omagh compared to 51 per cent in England.

Podcast listening at 19 per cent is the lowest in the UK. 

You can find the full Ofcom Media Nations 2025 here. 

I’ve blogged a summary for the UK here, Wales here and Scotland here.


I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Creative commons credit: The Book Stop, Omagh By Kenneth Allen. 

FACEBOOK FIRST: What the media landscape looks like in Scotland in 2025

Facebook has now overtaken BBC One in Scotland as the single most used place news is consumed.

That’s the surprise verdict of Ofcom’s Media Nations 2025: Scotland report  a detailed investigation into how media is consumed across the UK.

This, I have to say, is huge for public sector communicators. In 2013, just two per cent of the UK were getting their news from the Meta platform. In Scotland in 2025, this is now the largest single channel with 38 per cent taking news from the platform.

However, the BBC when counted across web, live TV, TV on demand and radio can still piece together the largest combined audience with 64 per cent.

There’s a couple of things comms teams can take from this. Firstly, public sector comms needs to put more focus on Facebook. Many people mistakenly think that it’s an inconvenient bolt on. It’s not. It’s where the Scottish audience is. It needs to be fully resourced.

I’ve blogged before on what content works best on Facebook in the public sector.

Here’s the data: 

The revelation, and yes, a newspaper word like that is fitting, comes as social media has climbed across the UK to the second most consumed media after video on demand. 

If you are wondering where printed news is, it’s at 20 per cent with TV as a whole 65 per cent. Radio is 42 per cent with social media in general 57 per cent.

Elsewhere in the table, STV /ITV 1 comes in third at 35 per cent with almost a quarter consuming BBC iPlayer just ahead of Sky News.

In Scotland, around one in ten are tuning into BBC Scotland, STV Player and a number of regional radio stations including Clyde 1, Forth 1, West Sound, Tay FM, Northsound and MFR.

Elsewhere in the report 

More people in Scotland watch YouTube at home than anywhere else in the UK. The figure of 44 minutes a day is the highest in the UK. 

The highest-rated TV programme in 2024 was the Scotland men’s team football game versus Switzerland, with 1.3 million viewers.

The connectivity gap has almost ended. The report shows 94 per cent have broadband at home.

YouTube viewing (14 per cent) is close to the amount of BBC watched at home (17 per cent). 

There is more interest in Scotland – 88 per cent – into news about their country than anywhere else in the UK. Almost nine in 10 were ‘very’ or ‘quite interested’. This is higher by eight per cent than Wales the next comparable nation. 

I’ve blogged a summary for the UK here, Wales here and Northern Ireland here.

You can find the full Ofcom Media Nations 2025 here. 


I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Creative commons credit: David McMumm / Newsagents shop at corner of Harley St and Ibrox St.

NUMBERS UP: How to make that big number stick… make it relatable

There’s a task I run in a workshop I run where we de-construct a news package that tells its own lesson.

An environmental campaiigner talks about how she went scuba diving in the 1950s off the coast of Bali and the sea was crystal clear. Now? It’s full of rubbish.

So far so good, but she pulls out two facts to illustrate what she is doing to the planet. We dump 12 million tonnes of plastic into the sea, she opens. That’s the equivalent of a truckful of waste every minute, she adds.

What stat is most powerful?, I ask.

It’s always the truck a minute. 

Why? Because it’s more relatable. We can see the picture of the truck dumping rubbish into the sea and if you were brought up correctly we are slightly morally offended. 

There is something uniquely effective about making something relatable.

I was reminded about this walking to work this morning listening to the Rest is Entertainment podcast. Apparently, the new Grand Theft Auto game has cost £2 billion to develop. That’s more expensive than the Grand Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai.

Now, working in and around the public sector not everything can be compared to a Middle Eastern property development. 

So what can? 

An Olympic-sized swimming pool is 2,500 square metres.

A football pitch is 90 metres long and at least 45 metres wide.

The Royal Albert Hall is 99,000 square metres of volume.

You can park 25,000 double-deckers in Wembley Stadium.

But real stats can also paint a picture.

More than 120,000 pints of lager were sold at Glastonbury 2025.

At Wimbledon, 1.9 million strawberries are eaten every year.

To quote Russian dictator Joseph Stalin, one death is a tragedy and a million a statistic.

What’s your favourite comparison stat?

I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Creative commons credit: Wembley stadium: the old stadium from the stands by Christopher Hilton, CC BY-SA 2.0.

NEW DATA: The continued rise of Facebook groups in 2025

A chance conversation a few years ago led me to explore Facebook groups and detail. What I found out showed how critically important they are to public sector communicators.

Firstly, why Braintree? Because it’s a useful mix of the urban of the new town built in the 1960s and also the patchwork of rural villages that surround it.

It’s a district of 150,000 and since that first piece of research I’ve gone back in subsequent years to map the role Facebook groups play in the district. That is apart from 2023. I think I was doing other things.

Here’s the 2025 research.

In 2025, the population of Braintree is155,000 people.

Across the district there are 569 Facebook groups across the area. Everything from sports teams, clubs, campaigns, village noticeboards and pet pages.

The overall number sometimes fluctuates. In early years, very small groups with a handful of people were unearthed by Facebook’s search engine. Search now finds the larger and more established groups.

For example, the village of Ashen with 300 residents has just one Facebook group with just over 300 members.

In larger places there are more Facebook groups. So, in Gestingthorpe where more than 400 live there are seven groups including the Gestingthorpe Village Facebook group with 600 members.

In the bright lights of Braintree itself, 48 Facebook groups can be found with almost 200,000 members combined. There are a number of groups from Braintree Hub with 30,000 members, Braintree and Surrounding (Buy and Sell) almost 8,000 with the local history group Braintree as it was with 10,000 members.

Across the whole of Braintree district there are almost 600 groups with a combined membership of more than 825,000.

If you are a nerd about this, all this means that are roughly 5.5 Facebook group memberships per head of population.

Sceptics would reasonably point out that some people who are members of groups don’t live in the area. Maybe they moved away but still want to check in on what’s going on. Maybe their parents live there.

But the figure is sizable enough to be a yardstick of how important Facebook groups are in a community.

The critical significance of Facebook groups

Newspapers and newsrooms are in established decline and they have moved away from the business model which they ran successfully for more than a century.

Advertising has moved online, Reach plc websites have moved away from covering the local area in the frantic search for clicks. Reach’s Black Country Live Facebook page near me may promise Black Country stories but delivers entertainment news and stories from across the UK almost 50 per cent of the time.

There are two main reasons why Facebook groups are significant to public sector communicators.

The first is Ofcom data that shows they are the prime route to find council news in their area.

In other words, Facebook groups are not only where people are but it’s also where people are finding out about what’s going on locally.

The figures here are for local government, but I’d argue police, NHS and fire and rescue will be close behind.

The second reason why Facebook groups are significant is because they are still taking up a big chunk of people’s Facebook timelines.

A couple of weeks ago I used this table published by Meta to show that links from Facebook pages are still not cutting through.

Just 1.3 per cent of people’s timelines are taken up with a page with a link. That’s vanishingly small.

But if you also look at the column to the left you’ll see 14.4 per cent of people’s timelines are from Facebook groups which don’t have links.

That’s a big chunk of attention.

Some Facebook groups are going to be good and some are not.

Navigating all this is why I run ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER workshops.

I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Creative commons credit: Marine Parade with commercial vehicles and crowds, 1989 by Robin Webster, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

LONG READ: 7/7 was also the day the future of communications arrived

Trigger warning: terrorism.

We have passed the 20th anniversary of the 7/7 attack on London and the day rightly was spent reflecting and allowing those involved to speak.

On the day, there were some powerful testimonies from survivors. For example, the TikTok clip of the woman whose life was saved by an off-duty police officer who was reunited for the first time in years was pure emotion. 

But also on LinkedIn, posts from former Metropolitan Police comms people recalling their day. 

The attacks killed 52 people and injured almost 800 people. 

In 2025, the 7/7 attack found me by dropping into my timeline.

But in 2005, there was no timeline to drop into. Mobile phones were for phone calls and texting and when an emergency happened people’s attention turned to TV and radio. So it was for me twenty years ago in a council press office. We followed on BBC News 24 as the timeline moved from ‘power surge’ to ‘explosion’ and then grimly to ‘terror attack.’

What I didn’t know then was that day was a true watershed moment in communications.

For the first time, the internet overtook the newsroom as the prime source of breaking news. 

It was the early crowdsourced web – Wikipedia – which emerged as the most updated source. Breaking news was not being set by newsrooms but by people on the street with camera phones. Images were coming from survivors first not TV news crews. The primary images of 9/11 four years before had come from TV news. In 2005, they started to come from people in the Tube carriages.

Let me explain. 

The timeline

It’s striking to compare how 7/7 played out to how things now routinely play out. Back then there was the luxury of time. 

8.50am – Simultaneous explosions.

9.15am – Metropolitan Police announced an ‘incident’ prompting London radio radio stations to report ‘incidents’ on the Tube.

9.28am – The first mention of the incident on the Wikinews arm of Wikipedia.

10.18am – The Wikipedia page that captures the incident is created with the first of thousands of edits.

10.30am – Gold Control starts at Metropolitan Police signifying a major incident.

10.40am – Government sources confirm 20 dead.

11.10am – Met Police confirm a co-ordinated terror attack.

11.15am – Met Police begin a live press conference.

User generated content 

Mobile phones in 2005 could take grainy pictures which could then be emailed and texted. Tube passenger Adam Stacey takes an image of himself trapped in the Tube tunnel with dust, light and other passengers. He sends it to Eliot Ward who then uploads it to Wikipedia and to the internet. He adds a creative commons licence allowing re-use. It becomes a defining image of the incident. Today, it looks grainy and amateurish. Then, it was a glimpse into the future just as cannon balls on a post-battle in Crimea had been in 1855. 

How did people get their breaking news in 2005?

In 2005, traditional news channels reigned supreme. TV and radio were the prime sources although BBC News and ITN were taking the challenge from the emerging Sky News.

Martin Blunt was a Sky reporter in 2005 and 20 years on he retraced his step that day in this news package. You can se it here:

What’s striking is the way the news was reported. Unattributed sources shaped the Sky News package including the suggestion that this could be a suicide bomb – or multiple bombs. 

The 7/7 attack saw a surge in visits to traditional websites with more than a billion page views across the day on the BBC website. The BBC hosted a ‘Your Photo’s page which captured first hand images. Blogs started to be published mapping the news in realtime.

When updates landed they were often on Wikipedia first

It’s hard to fathom looking back in 2025 but Wikipedia showed the first stirrings of what the social web would look like. The first update on the site was one hour 28 minutes after the explosions by an editor called Morwena who had heard about the explosions from colleagues. It’s interesting to reflect she refrained from posting until the attacks were confirmed by traditional media inline with site policy.

In the next 24-hours, there were more than 2,000 edits from 800 volunteers to update the July 7 attack page. Even a week later the page was still being updated 100 times a day.

The page also changed its title from ‘London Underground power surge incident’ to ‘London Underground explosions’ as the information clarified. Malicious edits were also an issue, Wikipedia’s account sets out with a core team of editors fighting to maintain standards.

All this is significant because the site was being updated faster than other online news sources. Also significant, The New York Times and Newsday began quoting Wikipedia as a source of their reporting. This was unprecedented.

Yet, for all the firsts that had been created, it is worth noting that a quarter of a million people saw the updates on the day. The days of social media taking over with millions of impressions were yet to come. In the wake of the Southport murders and riots, there were more than 27 millionb impressions on Twitter alone of misinformation.

This was the first major citizen journalist UK incident

As The Guardian reported five years after 7/7, this was the first realtime incident that the UK saw through the breaking news prism of citizen reporting, the internet and early camera phones. 

It was a new kind of story. Not in the sense of what happened, which was thoroughly and depressingly as anticipated, but in the way it was reported and disseminated. The mobile phone photographers, the text messagers and the bloggers – a new advance guard of amateur reporters had the London bomb story in the can before the news crews got anywhere near the scene.

The blogging platform LiveJournal also became a hub for news and personal experience. This new platform in its own way was soon to be replaced by Facebook and in particular Twitter in the London riots seven years later.

It’s interesting to read in The Guardian piece that SMS and email was the main way that the BBC got updates of the incident. There’s no surprise when you realise that SMS was the main way that people communicated with each other in 2005. Mobile networks like 4G were a long way off.

Not only that but early photo sharing site Flickr was the place online where people shared images. The site holds a place in my own heart as being the place where the Walsall Flickr group coalesced. These early social photographers would come along to several photo walks I organised.

Camera phones

The grainy image at the top of the piece was taken by a Tube passenger Adam Stacey who was trapped between Kings Cross and Russell Square. Titled ‘Trapped Underground’ the image was taken with an early camera phone and sent to his friend Alfie Dennan who published it on moblog with a creative commons licence allowing it to be reused.

Looking back its clear that people were starting to realise that a survivor could also be a reporter

The BBC itself had 50 images within the hour and almost 1,000 by the end of the day texted and emailed by people who were very often eyewitnesses.

To today’s eye, the images are low grade. They are pictures. They are not video. Yet looking back on accounts from the time its clear the surprise of commentators. Looking back five years later The Guardian commented:

“The mobile phone photographers, the text messagers and the bloggers – a new advance guard of amateur reporters – had the story in the can before the news crews got anywhere near the scene.”

Conclusion

The 7/7 attack was not the first heinous terror attack in Britain but was the very first major incident where eyewitnesses with mobile phones were shaping journalism and the first draft of history.

Just a few years later, Clay Shirky’s ‘Here Comes Everybody’ would paint an optimistic picture of how the wisdom of crowds could be connected through the social web. In 2025, the driver is not how to tap into crowdsourced content but rather how to protect people from the disinformation it can bring. 

In 2005, there were traces of disinformation and the need to gatekeep. Wikipedia editors held the line that they would not post information without it first being verified. But across the available channels, there were no far-right or Russian commentators online looking to turn people against a minority.  

Looking back to 2005 and you can see the future of communications emerging. This was not a moment where switch was flicked and everyone looked online for eyewitness accounts and hot takes. But it did signal a profound change that communicators are still struggling with.

The future of communications arrived in 2005. It showed that bystanders would shape the narrative and bad actors would also try and influence the story. It showed the speed of the internet was faster than more traditional ways of communicating.

It also showed that public sector comms teams needed to be faster, clearer and more accurate and were one voice in a sea of noise.

I think we’re still wrestling with this.

Creative Commons credit: ‘Trapped Underground’ taken by Adam Stacey on 7/7, 2005.

IN 2025: Yes, Facebook still penalises links

This is your quarterly reminder that yes, Facebook still hates it when you put links into your post.

Data for the first three months of 2025 has been published by Meta that show that a meagure 1.3 per cent of people’s timelines were taken up with posts with links.

However, there is a bit of a comeback for content from pages without links. It now stands at 12.7 per cent. That’s almost as much as the long-favoured Facebook groups content.

This compares to a rock bottom 0.0 per cent of people’s Facebook timelines that had pages content in early 2024.

So, in short, there’s oxygen for your Facebook page but not really if you post a link. Even Meta themselves have begun to advise posting in the comments.

A third of content comes from an AI selection based on your viewing, scrolling and engaging habits. This is classed as ‘unconnected.’ It’s Facebook’s idea of a ‘For You’ page where content is selected for you on what you’ve been engaging with. This explains the midweek recipe idea from a recipe group after you’ve been complaining about the lack of cookery ideas, for example.

I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Creative commons credit: Prospect Hill, Galway in 1985 by John Baker.

AI HELP: I think a couch to 5k guide to write AI policies has just been published and I love it

One of the great things when something is new is that you get innovation in the most unexpected places.

For example, the Arts Council have published a new resource that can be adapted by any organisation looking to develop how they use an AI policy.

While you’re reading this your brain may saying incredulously: ‘The Arts Council? How can they help me exactly? Don’t they pay for opera?

That’s the joy of what they’ve produced. Sure, they’ve made a ‘Responsible AI at Arts Council England’ resource that shows what their AI policy is and what their workings out were. Tidy.

But what really catches my eye is the Responsible AI Practical Toolkit they’ve published alongside it. This seven step workbook acts as a breadcrumb trail from hesitant first step through to having something really robust and well thought through on your desk. Huge credit to Kate Hughes for spotting this and sharing it.

Runners have couch to 5K and I think the AI equivalent has been produced. I think you’ll like it.

What the AI Practical Toolkit does

There are seven stages to the process and each one has a handy pdf for your to download and follow.

They are:

First step. Starting the AI Conversation

I love that they have identified that pressure to come up with a policy can lead you to cut and paste someone else’s. While there is no doubt that the UK Government AI Playbook should be revered, framed and placed above the mantlepiece your organisation may need to factor in some other things.

What’s really lovely is a set of questions to ask to start the ball rolling.

Are you already using AI tools?

If so, what tools are you using?

What excites you?

What concerns you?

The secret sauce to this may well be that it looks to bring bright people along. When social media was new, these used to be called the militant optimists. Opening the door for discussion to these people can only be good. Just as good is asking the views of people who are inherently concerned about AI. 

Some national organisations have produced guidance that feels more top down than anything and I wonder if that’s the best way forward. The wisdom of the crowd can still sometimes be a positive force.

Second step. Internal stakeholder mapping 

And here, a form that asks several more questions that includes these

Who has concerns?

Who may block the project?

Who has decision making authority?

Asking who can block and who can make decisions seems so obvious but its striking how rarely this is done. A group of people agreeing in a meeting is a taxi-full of positivity when the organisation is Regimental or Division sized. Spot the issues now and you could do something with it.

Third step. Developing an AI policy 

There is a saying that perfection is the enemy of progress.

In this part of the Arts Council approach, the advice is agreeably relaxed.

When developing an AI Policy, it is important to identify its scope. Your first policy does not need to cover all potential future uses of these technologies, nor does it need to be a definitive text. 

The pressure is off.

Fourth step. Risk List 

Now, this I also love. Maybe, it should be called the ‘AI tools list’ rather than ‘Risk list’ but this is the place they suggest a Red? Don’t use, Amber? Proceed with caution and green it’s been checked and you are fine to use it.

What this does well is create a workable list that people in the organisation can turn to. A recent list of tools has 14,000 AI tools marketed at marketing people. That’s in keeping for AI being on the hype cycle and can’t be medium term sustainable.

Fifth step. Responsible AI checklist

Now the green light has been given, here’s a checklist on how to use tools in the wild. That’s a really good approach.

Fifth step: AI Pilot Project Management Template

And we’re away…

This now keeps things on track and keeps tabs on who is in charge and what they are doing.

Seventh step: Delivering a Successful AI Pilot Project 

This set of steps captures what is working and what isn’t so the rest of the organisation can learn.

Make sure managers in the business area are on board AI pilot projects are likely to encounter blockers and may attract differing opinions from colleagues. Having senior-level support from the relevant business area is vital to keeping things moving. 

Why this is good

It’s quite clear that AI will have far ranging uses and benefits. But in 2025, there is nervousness and the public sector can’t perform like it is a Californian start-up. Nor should it. It is answerable to the people it serves and they should be brought along. 

Organisations need to share their workings out with the public. So many pieces of AI guidance talk about the need for transparency. If your part of the public sector is being transparent and having open conversations it is picking the date and time of where AI will be discussed. Failure to do that is slowly and surely building a path to the phone ringing and you having an hour to debunk sometimes wild accusations.

I’ve had a great many conversations with people whose organisation has not tackled many of these steps. To my mind, it doesn’t make sense to release a tool like Copilot without there appearing to be either a policy or a discussion about one.

While the document doesn’t directly stress public transparency that the public sector needs the act of gathering information is a valuable approach. While this Arts Council document is for their sector the bright person can lean across the garden fence and take some lessons.
I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS.

Creative commons credit: Roger Cornfoot ‘Jogging Along the Beach.’

VIDEO NUMBERS: Optimum lengths for short form video in 2025

Interesting things are happening with video in 2025, the algorithm loves them even more and they are getting slightly longer.

When I first started to help deliver video skills training back in 2014, the landscape was emerging. MySpace was still in Ofcom’s top 10 list of social channels and LinkedIn sniffily wouldn’t even let you post video.

Fast forward to 2025 and all the social channels are pushing video strongly. Why? Because the more time you spent watching and scrolling on a platform is more time you spend on that platform. More time on a platform means you are more attractive to advertisers.

It’s getting longer

One observation about optimum lengths is that they are getting slightly longer. They are also getting more platform-specific. Over the last few years, a short form portrait video like TikTok and Reels had an optimum length of 15 to 20 seconds.

In the 2025 figures, that’s lengthened. The social insider blog has some good data on video lengths. For this table, I’ve used that and other sources.

So, optimum lengths for TikTok is around 30 seconds with the healthwarning that TikToks over 60-seconds are also working well. For Instagram Reels its around 30 sconds while it is 90-seconds for Facebook Reels.

The difference between the lengths of two Reels is intriguing.

These numbers are definitely to take into account when you are looking to shoot content.

Don’t make a video make a TikTok, Reel, Short, YouTube clip…

The early advice from TikTok was not to make a video but a TikTok. It’s a great line which basically advises to make something bespoke for the platform. That advice is nailed on for all the platforms.

But filmmakers shouldn’t use the optimum length as the only yardstick. If its good enough its long enough. Don’t pad things out just for the sake of it. Besides, there’s always the opportunity to make more than one video.

I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

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