There is a reason why I try and search for people outside my home sector.
While I love things I’m local government and the public sector you can always learn.
It’s why I follow Madeleine Sugdon on Twitter. She is third sector but she’s always on point.
Her delicious eye-roll of a post about cheque presentations is a good one. You can read it here. The post in three words?
‘Don’t do it.’
I liked it for three reasons.
It is a useful reminder of something I first heard as a junior reporter in the 1990s. It’s not a giant cheque that is of interest. It is what they did to raise it or who they will help.
News is people.
It’s also striking that 20 years on we still have to tell people to steer away from such old school things.
It’s a useful reminder that the job of a decent comms person is never done. Some battles need re-fighting over and over.
It all comes back to asking the question… ‘What is it you are trying to achieve?’
There is a point I keep coming back to over and over and over again from a blog post I wrote a while back.
It comes from a poster in Apple designer Jony Ive’s office.
“Believe in your f*cking self. Stay up all f*cking night. Work outside of your f*cking habits. Know when to f*cking speak up. F*cking collaborate. Don’t f*cking procrastinate. Get over your f*cking self. Keep f*cking learning. Form follows f*cking function. A computer is a Lite-Brite for bad f*cking ideas. Find f*cking inspiration everywhere. F*cking network. Educate your f*cking client. Trust your f*cking gut. Ask for f*cking help. Make it f*cking sustainable. Question f*cking everything. Have a f*cking concept. Learn to take some f*cking criticism. Make me f*cking care. Use f*cking spell check. Do your f*cking research. Sketch more f*cking ideas. The problem contains the f*cking solution. Think about all the f*cking possibilities.”
But especially ‘educate the f*cking client.’
This isn’t a rant at the nice people who I work with. Far from it. This is more a reminder that we need to remind people that the poster, Twitter account or press release they want isn’t maybe what they need.
You need good boots and a wise head to walk the Appalachian Trail. It is 2,190 miles long and cuts through the lonely American wilderness.
Almost 3,000 people walk it’s daunting dark length from end-to-end every year and from time-to-time people go missing.
Risks faced by the traveller include the American black bear, mosquitos, yellowjackets, poison ivy, biting flies and dangerous streams.
The trail is linked by camping points a day’s walk apart. Sometimes they are just clearings but they are places walkers pitch a tent, meet and swap trail stories. Knowing there is a ford ahead can make the next day safer.
Five years ago we launched commscamp on a clear blue sky excited about the power and possibility of exploring the green empty space of the internet.
This year, there was the sense that things have evolved. There was a feeling more people used the event as safety trail camp. New things to learn? Yes. But most of all a sanity check.
The world has changed and we are trying to all change with it. Fractured channels. New audiences. New demands on time. Income targets. Bad intranets. Bad comms plans. Bad managers. Not enough time. Time taken over by an emergency. Not enough budget.
Not enough regard for what we do.
There are still people looking to innovate and get good at new things. But there are less people wide-eyed at the possibility. The militant optimists from the early years have moved on. I miss them. Those that remain on the trail are quieter somehow but more determined. They know that they are still travelling through uncharted forests. Through the trees they can sometimes hear the crunch of nearby footsteps of fellow travellers. We are alone together. We know this path will take years to complete.
A couple of days on from the 5th commscamp in Birmingham and the dust has settled a little. I’m on a train reflecting.
1. There is a need for this. The first batch of tickets went in two minutes. The second in four. That’s 70 tickets in six minutes. There isn’t a need for gimmicks. Just a room and good people.
2. This is our tribe. Someone used these words to describe the people in the room. I get that. They’re people impatient to do a better job.
3. Around three quarters of the live video session had tried live video. That’s a figure that surprised me. Last year it would have been a handful.
4. You can’t get to all the sessions you want to even when you organise the thing.
5. Cake is a force for good.
6. Kate Bentham is a force for good.
7. We are starting to be faced with the idea of talking to people in Facebook groups. But we are very nervous about using our own profiles to do this.
8. The trend in sessions seems to have evolved from tech to safety net. It is important that people have moral support. It is tough in the public sector at the moment.
9. After a major incident, you need to look after the comms team weeks and month after the event.
10. It is getting harder not easier.
11. There is still a place for print.
12. Commscamp has led to other ideas and events just like other events led to commscamp.
13. If you are not competent at video you need to be.
14. The real value of an unconference comes not on the day but in six months time.
15. The fax is more popular than the press release.
16. With live video the important thing is just to do it. You can refine and improve with experience.
17. Windows phones and blackberries don’t allow you to fully communicate.
18. Steph Gray is very quick at writing good content. An engaging post within a couple of hours.
19. Nigel Bishop takes good pictures.
20. Emma Rodgers is a good person to plan an event with.
21. Anyone can run an unconference.
22. When we started these, it felt like the war to convince people to use digital wasn’t won. Now it is. But the struggle continues against ignorance, box-ticking and bad digital just as it always has done. Are we winning? I think we are. We can look over our shoulders and see where we’ve come from. But there are battles ahead. Nirvana isn’t instant. It is hard-won.
23. The volunteers, sponsors and attendees who came and made this a success are brilliant.
24. I’m glad we tried Friday but it feels too close to the weekend and I’m not sure its the best day for the event.
The next commscamp will be in Birmingham on July 12 2018. There may be others before. You can sign-up for updates here.
Almost a decade ago there was a drive to encourage people to have a say about the future of their city.
At first glance, it was bold, imaginative and ambitious with posters splashed across Birmingham. It had a catchy name. The Big City Plan.
It’s aim was to fire imaginations and to capture ideas. It had two flaws. It was written for planners and to have a say you had to send your views to one email address. All that buzz online? Ignored.
So, the Brum Bloggers group built a website with a plain English translation, captured opinion and sent them to the council themselves. Almost 300 of the 1,600 comments came from the site. Birmingham City Council managed to incorporate those comments. Eventually, the city council copied the approach which made it easier for people to make a comment and for the city council to listen.
Please speak human
Eight years on from the lessons of Big City Plan, a Facebook ad dropped into my timeline one Sunday afternoon from my local council. A good piece of targeting, I thought.
It asked me to comment on the Black Country Core Strategy. I don’t know what this means. Even after eight years in local government and being the son of a planner I don’t know what this means.
So, what would the man on the 404A guess it was? I’ve no idea.
On the site were pdfs. There is much written as to why pdfs are a bad idea. There are email addresses and a list of events. Gamely, I found a survey to comment on. But that didn’t render all that well on a mobile phone.
Please listen to people
Back on the Facebook page there was a lively debate about building houses on the green belt and a host of other things. Debate there had come alive and people were – in council speak – engaging. Or in other words, talking.
But as a resident what really got my goat was the council pages’ disclaimer half way down the thread that comments on Facebook wouldn’t be accepted. It had to be the official consultation.
Or in other words, a Facebook campaign that wouldn’t allow people to have their say on Facebook.
(Disclaimer: I worked for eight years at Walsall Council which is one of four Black Country councils behind the campaign. I have a high regard for many people who work at all four of those councils.)
Local government does a brilliant job. My council does a good job. My children go to school there. There are good parks and the roads are gritted (thank you!).
So, when I blog this, I do it with love and because I want local government to communicate better with me as someone who lives here.
Please, please, please…
So, please, have a website that speaks human.
Please call the website something more interesting than ‘core strategy.’
But above all and I really do mean this, please listen to what people say on Facebook. Particularly when your campaign is on Facebook itself.
You may need to speak truth to power on this. But fail to do this really simple step and I don’t know what you can tell people when they next tell people their council is remote and don’t care what they think.
The BBC are known for quite a few things… Wimbledon coverage, Comic Relief, the Nine O’Clock News and now cutting rebuttals.
What is a rebuttal?
This is when a media organisation has written something which you disagree with.
Take the case of the Daily Mail. They hung a story on the back of digital figures which show the screening of Blue Peter had zero figures. Zip.
This, ladies and gents, is a national outrage.
Only thing was that it was being economical with the truth.
The episode had almost 300,000 viewers. The screening in question was a repeat at 2.30pm in the afternoon when kids were at school in sign-language.
Rather than sit and seethe the BBC Press Office did what every organisation should do now the internet is here. It used the web to challenge and rebut the piece.
Something rather marvellous happened on the train this morning.
Free coffee? WiFi that worked? No, I found that Facebook groups now have insights. Lots of them. And yes, I do know being the grinning man in the carriage sounds a bit sad. But bear with me.
Why is this marvellous? Because it shows that Facebook is taking them more seriously and if you haven’t already it is time to sit up and take notice.
Groups have long been a Cinderella corner of Facebook. Anyone can start a group. They’re a lot more democratic than pages. They are rallying points around a common theme. A village. A town. A football club. They can be big or small. There is a simple guide here.
Importantly, they don’t yet suffer from Facebook zero. You also get to see posts in chronological order.
You should care because they are quietly being used more and more by people. In my experience, an average sized borough of 250,000 can expect to have 2,000 Facebook groups and pages. That’s a serious set of numbers. I’ve blogged on this before.
What do the Facebook group analytics look like?
Data tracks back up to 60 days and logs new members, top contributors, comments, posts and reactions. The Public Sector Facebook Group that I started earlier in the year shows, for example, a staggering 7,500 interactions in the last 28 days.
Sure, they’re not as advanced as pages. You don’t get a age group breakdown. But you do find out what day of the week is busiest. For my group? 9pm on a Wednesday.
What groups are you in?
There’s a good chance you’ll be in a Facebook group. Me? I’m in a number. A Stone Roses fan group, one for the area I live, a Down’s Syndrome support group that my brother runs, a virtual reality video group, a freelance PR ghroup and others.
But what can communicators do with groups?
All this got me thinking. The trajectory of Facebook is projected to carry on rising with 41.3 million UK users by 2021. And with groups playing a key role they need to be taken as seriously as a press release or Facebook advertising.
Community groups and pages
If you want to reach a sub-set of a community there is now a chance that a Facebook group is the best way to reach them. If you are in Birmingham and want to reach Poles this Facebook group may be part of the solution, for example. Similarly, local history and heritage in Telford have a group with 19,000 members. Those two are not one offs. The country is criss-crossed with groups around sub-areas.
You’re too busy to talk to all of them? Sure. I get that. But if you have content you want to put before one of these communities suddenly they are relevant.
A support group
The Brain Tumour Charity have three Facebook groups depending on what you need. There’s a general one, one for parents and one for carers. What the organisation are doing is providing a space for people to talk and standing back. They don’t drive the content. People do.
As a way of connecting the team
Facebook Workplace is coming down the track. This is the platform’s way of creating a company-wide way of talking to each other. For non-profits it is free but at $3 per user per month I’m not sure that the Public Sector can stretch to that. Actually, I am sure. It can’t. But re-creating the groups feature amongst a team on a project or a comms team may be useful.
As a way of consulting
Sometimes, we need to listen to what people are saying. This may be to better shape a scheme or see what people think about budget cuts. If there is already a forum for this, then use that. If there isn’t, and if it can be updated regularly a group may be a way to keep people informed.
A different mindset
Fundamentally, Facebook groups are people coming together to talk about a common interest. That’s different to the traditional comms method of broadcasting. They’re not recepticles for all your content. They are about building a relationship with the group admin and the people in the group.
A different approach
Cumbria County Council have made friends with the admin of a group with 100,000 members and invite him to post content on their behalf. Tom Gannon has blogged on the subject here. This is brilliant. This is the way to go. A decent number like that has clear scale. But there will be times when you need to reach new mums, residents on an estate or the Polish community.
Nobody expects you to know all the 2,000 groups and pages in your area. But you can start by knowing the big ones and by making a search every time you post content.
It also means a YouTuber being invited by NATO as part of a Press trip to sensitive exercises.
I stumbled across this when listening to Emily Unia reporting from the trip on ‘From Our Own Corespondent.’ I listen to iplayer a lot when I’m working.
Eastern European comedian and vlogger Mircea Bravo was asked along to shoot his take on the exercise.
What was his take?
It was camp airline steward safety run-throughs on the Army transport plane. It was joking about female soldiers wearing make-up on the battlefield. But as Emily says herself there was a logic to this.
Emily Unia “It turns out that Mircea Bravo is a well known Romanian prankster. He posts funny videos on YouTube and he has hundreds of thousands of fans. I watch the video he has made about NATO and the Romanian Army’s involvement.
“It’s subtle PR. There are soildiers wear yeti camoflage described as ‘professional players of hide and seek.’ The principle of collective defence is described as ‘All for one and one for all.’
But as the BBC reporter goes on, if the Romanian involvement in NATO needs to flourish in future generations it is by reaching those generations now wherever they are that will help deliver this.
More than a fifth of Facebook users have used the new live feature and the numbers are growing.
Back in 1952, the BBC used every camera at their disposal to cover the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Today, it would take one person with a smartphone to start a basic coverage of the occasion.
For the last two years, I’ve helped deliver video skills for comms training. Just lately, we’ve also offered skills and advice on how to use live social media broadcasts. It’s been fascinating to think how this can be used.
1. For election results.
2. For a behind the scenes tour of the art gallery.
3. For an advance view of the new exhibition.
4. For a Q&A on why you should apply for a job here.
5. For a first hand realtime walk through a scenic beauty spot.
6. For a tour of potential redevelopment sites with planning and regeneration sites.
7. For a trip to the top of the bell tower with a local historian.
8. For a public open day where you are demonstrating what you do.
9. For a public meeting with an opportunity to ask a question.
10. For a workshop on how to complete an application for a school place.
11. For consultation with residents in a geographic area where something new may happen.
12. For an explanation of what things you can do as a carer of a loved one who is struggling to get about.
13. For an explanation about what keep fit moves you can do in the comfort of your own home.
14. For a press conference.
15. For a talent competition.
16. In an emergency to keep people updated.
17. For a behind-the-scenes tour of a fire station with some fire safety advice.
19. For the view from the top of a mountain or hill.
20. For an event in a park.
21. For an event in the street.
22. For a street party.
23. For a tour of the museum stores.
24. For a an author visit to a library.
25. For a tour of the farm or urban farm.
26. For a chance to hear what the budget may entail.
26. For a Q&A on what council services a new parent may need.
27. For tips on how to encourage wildlife in your garden
28. For a walk around the town centre with a history expert.
29. For musical performances as part of a talent show.
30. For an explanation about what bin to use for recycling.
31. For a civic celebration.
32. For a tour of the Mayor’s Parlour.
33. For an update on what work has been done to protect a community from flooding.
34. For a tour of a river that’s been improved for wildlife with a wildlife expert.
35. For a chance to meet and ask questions of a senior politician, official or police officer.
Yes, you will have to think about live video on election night
Yet again, the most important night of the year for local government comms is almost upon us… election night.
Get it wrong and the whole world sees.
Get it right you can breathe a deep sigh of relief and the politicians will be impressed.
It’s also a night where you can push the boat out a little and try new things. Facebook made its debut in 2009 as an upstart. Now results on social media is expected. Lately, there’s been experiments with whatsapp and other channels.
If you want to experiment with a channel this is the night to do it.
What you need to know about live video
Live streaming has taken a massive leap forward in recent months. A fifth of Facebook users have used Facebook Live. An audience of 102,000 watched the multi-faith vigil in Manchester in the wake of the city’s bomb attack. More than 200,000 watched while bomb disposal experts worked to explode a 500 lb Second World War bomb. Another 9,000 watched the Birmingham City Council Leader talk about budget proposals. All of those are local government issues.
Anyone can broadcast live. All you need is the Periscope app for Twitter or a Facebook account, a smartphone or a PC with a webcam. This could be a journalist, a political campaigner or a council media officer.
If you’re NOT thinking of live video… others are
One time, a broadcast journalist turned up at the count I was working at as a comms officer. He demanded to take pictures for his website too. Blindsided, the Returning Officer refused and a heated row took place. The journalist was within their rights to ask. The Returning Officer was entitled to point the individual to the spot where he could take the pictures.
The incident taught me that forward planning on election night can be invaluable.
You may not be planning on using a live video. Bet your bottom dollar a journalist will be. Only they’ll turn up on the night and want to start filming.
Here’s what they’ll want to know:
Where will they be allowed to film?
Is there a WiFi signal?
What are the acoustics like?
So, forward plan. Do this ahead of time not on the night. You’ll talking to journalists for accreditation. Talk to the elections team. Check out the venue. Have the answers to the questions. Invite journalists to arrange a test broadcast ahead of time to check a few things out.
If you are thinking of live video…. Plan ahead
We’ve started to offer Live Video skills training with Steven Davies and Sophie Edwards and its got me thinking about how local government can use it.
Don’t make election night the first time you use a live broadcast. Try it out at something vanilla. A library author visit. A guided walk around a beauty spot.
Pick which channel you’ll use. Where are your audience? If you have a massive Twitter following and only a handful on Facebook think about the channel. How can you best reach people?
Get the tech right. You’ll need at least one fully charged smartphone that’s logged into your channel of choice. You’ll need to rely on robust WiFi and I’d be tempted to take your own. A phone hotspot or a MiFi can do the job. Don’t trust the venue WiFi. The world and their dog will be trying to get on it. Take a power bank too just to be on the safe side.
Talk to elections. Where can you physically stand to broadcast yourself? At the back of an echoey hall? Or at the front next to people shouting? Negotiate a place where the sound quality works.
Test it out. Take your phone and your WiFi hotspot and try it out a few days beforehand. Does it work? Is there a data blackspot which kills phone signals? You can broadcast live to yourself. Set the audience you want to reach before you go live.
Sound will make or break it. Poor sound and people will be confused and irritated. Sound is even more important than pictures. See if there’s a place you can sand that can be the best it can be. Next to a speaker? Can you use an audio jack from the venue sound system?
Have someone covering your back. As this politician found out to their cost, an organised group of trolls who each complained there was no sound scuppered a Periscope broadcast. Have someone trusted watching to give you the thumbs up. Or let you know if your thumb is over the lense.
Be clear on what you’ll do and won’t do. If you go for it, brilliant. But set out ahead of time what you’ll do and won’t do. Yes, you’ll live broadcast the result and acceptance speeches. No, you won’t be doing one-to-one interviews with candidates who can use the platform to take down / praise the Government. Set this out ahead of time. In writing. Plan for this.
One long broadcast or individual ones? At a General Election its straight forward. There’s often just the one result. But local elections are more complicated. Me? I’d be interested in the ward where I live. Other wards? Less so. Multiple clips would work for me. What do your residents think?
Tell people you are going live. One tip from Facebook and Twitter is to tell people and big-up the broadcast. Tricky in an election when there’s a third recount. But see if you can give a broad estimated window. Check our Facebook from 2am onwards is fine.
Think safety and security. The BBC have guidelines for live broadcasts which takes account the safety of its staff and security. Here, may you face the risk of an uninvited person going on an unscheduled tirade at your camera? It’s possible. Would having a colleague with you as you film help? Be prepared to stop the broadcast if you are cornered.
Live lives after you’ve been live. Once you’ve finished, promote the heck out of it in the morning to catch those people not awake. The audience after the event is often bigger than watching it live.
Live is going to be an important part of how election results are communicated. The technology is there. The audience too. It’s worth learning the lessons early.
