So much of what I do comes indirectly from one small event in Birmingham eight years ago.
The event was the first localgovcamp in 2009. More than 100 people turned-up on a Saturday to a converted Mission church which had just been converted into a tech start-up hub. There was no agenda for the day and I only went because a few people I rated from Twitter were going.
The aim of the event was to work out how the web could be used by local government to make the world a better place. Social media was new and we were all busy experimenting with it. IT and most comms teams hadn’t even woken up to it all.
Looking back, much of what is common digital comms currency was worked out at some stage by people who were at the event. People like Nick Booth and Dave Briggs were early innovators and others followed. Election results on Facebook, frontline staff on Twitter, answering questions on social media? They were first pioneered by people who went. Small steps? Tiny now but huge Neil Armstrong leaps into the unknown back then. What has been built since came because of those experiments.
An accidental by-product of what really happened that day is that a network was built on Twitter of people who have gone onto do great things. A couple of years ago, sad man I am, I sat down with the attendee list and linkedin and created a google doc. Of the 118 attendees 28 were from local government itself and almost a third went onto start their own businesses. That’s an incredible stat. Digital Matchbox, Digital Nomads, Pigsonthewing and Data Unlocked all came from localgovcamp attendees. Comms2point0 too. Why so many? For my part, because by coming together and bouncing ideas I started thinking differently. From those still inside local government the localgovdigital network emerged too.
Stuart Harrison from Lichfield Council brought his decks with ‘Chuck D for President’ and played the tunes. He’s doing cool things with data with Tim Berners-Lee’s organisation now.
But, what is localgovcamp?
It’s an unconference which means the agenda is drawn-up on the day. Tickets are free. It’s for people who work in and around local government. That can mean engineers, policy people, web developers, librarians and comms people. From the first event in 2009 it’s happened most years. This year it is in Leeds.
Here are 10 things anyone can learn from localgovcamp
You can learn an amazing amount about digital comms from non-PR people. Back in the early days it was bloggers, web developers and policy people who blazed the trail. They still do. They don’t care about tradition. They just build things and see if they work.
The unconference is still a brilliant model for learning and sharing. I’ve been to many events since the first localgovcamp. I’ve never felt inspired by a PowerPoint presentation. I have by an unconference session where a room full of people have challenged, debated and worked out some answers although not every unconference session works.
There was an era when local government raced ahead with digital.I look back really fondly on the two or three years at the start of the decade when it felt the rule book for digital comms was being written by junior people who ‘got it’ and were bouncing bigger and better ideas off each other.
Learning about what other people do is important… even if its nothing to do with your job.Comms people need to get out more. They really do. Hearing what other people do is valuable. If you feel as though you’re in a bubble you probably are. Get out more. Listen to other people. See what they are doing.
Local government is brilliant, but…. There can be more than 700 services delivered by your council. It’s strength is also it’s weakness. Try and name more than a dozen and you are struggling. It’s strength is it does so much. It’s weakness is it does so much. Very few of those services are used by everyone which means that people can think that helping older people is a waste of money. As a comms challenge that’s really tricky.
Running an unconference is pretty straightforward. Find a room. Persuade some sponsors to pay for it and some rooms and away you go. Put up an Eventbrite to issue tickets. It’s the idea that led to commscamp. Easy.
The best idea can come from the most unexpected place. The number of pips on the shoulder is no guarantee of great ideas. The best ideas I’ve heard at localgovcamps have been from people I may not have ever met doing a job I never would have thought much about.
Giving stuff away is good. I first started blogging in 2009 to try and contribute to the debate and think things through. I share links because I think they have some value. Doors that have opened-up in my career have opened because of the stuff I’ve given away.
It’s important for people from a sector to come together to be reminded ‘it’s not us, it’s them.’ There’s a value of being able to connect and let off steam a bit. That’s really important to local government – and any sector – at a time like this.
It was probably the most fascinating, fun and untaxing job I’ve got on my LinkedIn profile.
The request to serve on it came out of the blue. A phone call asking if I’d like to. I would? That’s great the story was going online later that morning.
As a former journalist who cares passionately about the public sector this appealed to me. My job? Occasional meetings in London as part of a panel of half a dozen or so and the bouncing of ideas.
There’s no question that The Guardian take coverage of the public sector seriously. Jane Dudman and her team have grown that part of the newspaper. If there is an issue you think should be tackled you really should get in touch with her.
What did I learn now my 12-months is at an end?
That broadly speaking everyone is facing a difficult landscape in the public sector.
That The Guardian have very funky offices and serve good coffee.
That from an editorial point of view, one good, well written piece will attract more traffic than lots of not that great pieces.
That an online news platform needs to keep an eye on the analytics but not be slavishly driven by them. The right numbers work for the Public Leaders network rather than buzzfeed list numbers for the sake of it.
That Simon Blake, chief executive of Brook, is as engaging in real life as he is when interviewed on the radio. But I’ll never understand how he cycles around the streets of London.
That editorial ideas in a web-focused newsroom are as much around content as they are about ‘stories’ and word counts.
That stories around how to cope with the stress of public sector life are probably more engaging than a story about who has succeeded who and who loves working where.
So, it all boils down still, despite the internet and everything, the old maxim Iearned early as a junior reporter that news is people and still is. Which is oddly reassuring.
For the last few years too stuffed with mince pies I’ve blogged some predictions on local government comms. It’s all about jet packs and Robot butlers.
Here’s a look at last year and what I got right and wrong.
What did I get right?
Comms teams overall have got smaller although a minority have grown. A survey comms2point0 ran for LGComms showed 57 per cent working in teams that have shrunk since 2008. Anecdotally, there have been fewer heads of comms as the duties are shared for cost saving. Better evaluation remains to be needed. Local government comms has become become the poor relation of public sector PR. It looks on with envy at others’ budgets. Digital comms has continued to go mainstream but there is lipservice to it. Many teams have been outsripped by the pace of change.
Anecdotally, poor internal comms remains.
What did I get wrong?
Digital comms has not stepped-up a gear from simply tweeting press releases to tackling the really thorny problems. That’s a source of real worry. Elsewhere, social media remains a frontline task but the pace of change here has slowed. There was no major emergency where social media shone.
Too early to say?
Comms teams still need content creators although this hasn’t happened. There will be more shared comms teams. People will look at how this can work across a geographical area and also between authorities.
So here are 11 more for 2015
Some councils will no longer have a meaningful comms function. Cut to the bone, they will do little more than answer the phone and answer media queries.
Social media will stall. After early innovation, the time and space to experiment as part of the day job has gone. The door has closed. Twitter and Facebook will be it.
New platforms continue to go untouched. As new platforms grow and develop like SnapChat, Instagram and WhatsApp there will be no capacity to experiment with them leading to a section of the population disenfranchised.
Evaluation will become a case of do or die. With budgets being cut, the comms team needs to justify what it does before it is cut. Unless they can look finance in the eye and demonstrate why they should live they will go.
People who bang the table and say ‘no’ will stand a chance. Those who don’t won’t. There has never been a more important time to say ‘no’to meaningless fire-and-forget blunderbus comms. But this argument needs to be one had strategically as budgets tighten. Comms teams can deliver real change at a time of problems. But they need to fight their corner.
There will be fewer press releases written for fewer newspapers. An easy one. At some point someone will notice and ask what the point of comms teams are. The window where people can get their story straight is about to end.
It will get more fractured. Content tailored for those keen on one country park or a care home needs to be created and be more sharable. This is where comms teams can help and enable service areas.
Video gets more important. But the skills need to be learned.
Social media accounts need to be reviewed and closed. That arts centre that played their face for a Twitter account and then updated it three months ago? It needs to be taken down. There is too much bad digital in local government.
Customer services, social media and comms need to become best friends. At present, this is happening sporadically. This needs to be hapening everywhere… and six months ago.
Facebook pages will become pointless unless supported by a budget for ads. This is the reality which many are struggling to catch-up with.
It’s an obscenity that even as libraries close and care is cut that there is a £67.85 million back-door subsidy paid by local government to newspapers.
A what? And how much?
This is the true cost of councils being forced by law to pay over-the-odds for public notices tucked away in the back of printed newspapers being read by fewer and fewer people.
It is a throwback, a misguided sweetener to the newspaper industry and comes from the days when the local paper was the only show in town.
What are public notices? They’re announcements of where double yellow lines are to be painted, who has applied for a taxi licence and an application from a pub licensee for a late night opening licence. It is the bread and butter of a community.
Should they be communicated and publicised? Absolutely.
Can it be done without swingeing annual charges? Yes.
Being forced over a barrel to pay to communicate through local newspapers is the last throwback to a world before the internet.
It is wrong.
It flies in the face of government policy.
It is print-by-default in a digital-by-default world.
It must stop.
This is why and here is how we can do it.
The Government department in charge of local government has asked for ‘councils, newspapers and others’ to take a new look at how public notices are distributed. Any solution is dead in the water unless councils are stopped being made to pay for expensive print notices – or even pay for digital ones.
Really? Councils have to communicate like this?
Yes. Bonkers, isn’t it? There is a raft of legislation that mean that councils must take out newspaper ads before they take certain decisions. The aim is to publicise and encourage people to come forward with comment and opinion. Getting people involved is absolutely a good thing. The more people are informed and take part in the decision making process the better.
Her Majesty’s Government’s Ambassador to Lebanon Tom Fletcher has written eloquently about this being the digital century. I’d agree with that. In the digital century people find out about what is happening through networks and the web. Not through small ads. Ask yourself this question: when was the last time you bought a local newspaper? When was the last public notice you read? And can you remember what it was about?
What is the state of local government?
In short, perilous. Every penny counts and in Town Halls up and down the land small sums of money and budget decisions are being argued about. The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts 1.1 million job losses by 2019 across the public sector. Birmingham City Council Leader Albert Bore has talked of the ‘end of local government as we know it.’ Government funding cuts to local government are touching 40 per cent and spending power is falling by 25 per cent according to a critical National Audit Office report which observes that the Department for Communities and Local Government doesn’t understand the impact of cuts.
In other words, cuts are being made and every penny counts. Which is why being forced to spend on newspaper ads is wrong.
But how much do the public notices cost?
Think tank Local Government Information Unit – LGiU – calculated that in 2012 public notices in newspapers were costing £67.85 million. Public Notices: The Case for Radical Reform: Part One’ shows that this is on average £181,000 per authority. In some cases, the report says, public notices incurred a rate three times as expensive as normal display ads and reaching over £20 per column centimetre in some publications.
“This is a lot of money, especially when councils are trying desperately to !nd savings. It is also an outdated system that has been left behind by technological advances. The current system provides no feedback to councils and ignores the fact that the audience is moving away from printed newspapers, to a varied digital media landscape.
“LGiU believes change is necessary in the following areas: councils should be free to decide where is best to place public notices, more work needs to be done to de-jargon and standardise the content of public notices, councils who do publish notices online should o”er users an email subscription service, allowing users to opt-in to receive public notices, hyperlocal, neighbourhood websites, as well as traditional local media news sites, should be encouraged to carry feeds of council notices the government should look into the possibility of supporting the development of a central online portal for publishing public notices.
Public Notices: The Case for Radical Reform: Part One. LGiU.
But who reads newspapers these days?
Some people do. Ofcom in their annual Communications Market Report says that adults in the UK spend 15 minutes a day reading newspapers or looking at newspaper sites. For some people, they keep them informed. But these figures are dropping.
In comparison, adults spend 36 minutes on websites or apps and 26 minutes on social media. The breakdown is here.
In Walsall, where I worked in local government communications, the local paper the Express & Star in 2013 sold around 10,000 copies of the Walsall edition in a borough of more than 269,323 people. The newspaper industry says that between two and five people read each paid-for copy. For the sake of argument, if that was three people per copy that means 11 per cent of Walsall get to see the public notice. That’s if everyone reads the paper from cover-to-cover. That’s not a reason for paid-for public notices in print.
The figures are replicated across the country according to database JICREG with 67,759 copies of the Birmingham Mail on a Friday in a city of 2,440,986. In Greater Manchester, this is 126,293 on their busiest day for the Manchester Evening News in a population of 2,685,400. In Glasgow, the Evening Times reaches 33,397 in a population 2,850,000. The online readership of these three newspapers will be far higher but figures are difficult to obtain. None of these newspapers show public notices when you enter the search term in their websites.
I’ve heard the anachronistic argument that somehow only newspapers can be trusted to publish public notice content. Somehow the act of handing over 200 words and paying through the nose for it to appear in the back of newspapers that few people in a borough read afford some undefined magic propertiies. This is, of course, balderdash.
The days when newspapers are the only means of communicating have ended. They are one of a number of channels. The requirement to take out public notice ads with them should end. Sometimes, they’ll be the best way of communicating. But that decision should be de-centralised down to the local authority.
Four ways public notices breach Government advice
It wouldn’t be so bad if the current millstone doesn’t go against Government advice. But it does.
“In just over 2 decades the internet has become a huge part of our everyday lives. Today 82 per cent of adults in the UK are online. Completing transactions online has become second nature, with more and more of us going online for shopping, banking, information and entertainment. Why? Because online services tend to be quicker, more convenient and cheaper to use.
“But until now government services have stood out by their failure to keep up with the digital age. While many sectors now deliver their services online as a matter of course, our use of digital public services lags far behind that of the private sector.
“Government has got to do better. This Digital Efficiency Report suggests that transactions online can already be 20 times cheaper than by phone, 30 times cheaper than postal and as much as 50 times cheaper than face-to-face .
“By going digital by default, the government could save between £1.7 and £1.8 billion each year. But this isn’t just about saving money – the public increasingly expects to access services quickly and conveniently, at times and in ways that suit them. We will not leave anyone behind but we will use digital technology to drive better services and lower costs.”
Frances Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office
This is all excellent stuff. It articulates exactly why local government should be digital by default and not be held back by the anachronism of print public notices.
And bloggers too…?
Bloggers are able to attend public meetings and video, blog and post realtime updates. This is a good thing and opens up the whole often very dull decision making process to public scrutiny. This is an excellent step from DCLG. They hailed it as: ‘a boost for local democracy and the independent free press, councils in England were brought into the 21st century.’
That freedom should be opened up for bloggers too. How can they carry data from public notices alongside the mainstream Press?
So what would all this look like?
Information can be communicated effectively using the web. It could be added to a council page. An RSS feed or a widget could allow others – newspapers, broadcasters or bloggers – provided free-of-charge to carry the feed on their own pages.
Of course, if there was a pressing business case for print advertising this could happen too. But that’s the thing. Rather than being a print-by-default position it should be one of several channels.
This already happens in two places. Firstly, the TellmeScotland website aggregates and distributes public notice alerts through text and email.
Secondly, in ice and snow a more geurilla approach sees gritting updates aggregated and distributed in the West Midlands. On Twiitter, the hashtag #wmgrit is used by authorities in the region. A coveritLive widget here can be re-used on websites.
So what next?
There are bright people in local government who can produce the answer. Some of them are in the localgovdigital group although relying on a handful of volunteers in the sector is not the answer.
Maybe this is for larger bodies to support with time and resources. Communications teams should take the lead and work with web to come up with solutions. Maybe, that’s SOCITM, LGComms, the LGA and others coming together with local government officers.
Whatever the future. in 2015, the current situation which sees an enforced subsidy through paid-for ads to wealthy newspaper groups should not form part of the answer.
A few things have crossed my timeline of late that reminds me that comms and social for all their outward signs are struggling to fit.
Sure, there are still dinosaurs. But they’re dying out and have lost the battle so let’s not bother with them.
Ignorance is being replaced with the realisation that social media can’t be ignored by comms and PR people. Great.
But have we truly won the war? I’m not at all convinced we have.
There is a mindset that sees digital as a one way tick box exercise that exists only to generate likes or calls to action. In other words, it’s an extension of what traditional comms has always tried to be.
I absolutely get the need for comms teams to demonstrate worth. You sit down with the organisation, you listen to how you need to recruit 10 more carers to save £100k. Then you communicate to the right people at the right time in the right place. You record the new carers. Then you report back what you did.
I get that in spades.
I also get enthusiastically the idea that comms is not the size of the audience but what that audience has done as a result of what you’ve done.
I can also get the need to base comms on evidence and business cases to cut out the pointless vanity comms. You know the sort. The sort that needs this doing because we’ve always done it because the Director likes it.
I get that too.
I also get much of Rachel Moss’s post on not slavishly sticking to digital and doing traditional things too. If a poster works, use a poster. There is no earthly point, I’m guessing, for a LinkedIn group aimed at under fives.
I don’t think that comms people have fully realised what social is. It is not driven by likes, sign-ups and results. It is driven by conversation, sharing and stories. The return on investment comes as a spin-off and is all the more powerful for that.
Think of it in postal terms. It’s the difference between junk mail asking you to buy, buy, buy and the handwritten postcard addressed to you on your door mat.
I think of the police officer I spoke to early in my career who was one of the first to embrace Twitter. A senior officer he had a face that looked as though it had been in a few scraps in its time. I would not argue with that face if he asked me to move my car.
He used Twitter, the policeman told me, in exactly the same way as he would use conversation as if he walked down a parade of shops on his beat. He’d say good morning. He’d pass the time of day. He’d share a joke. He’d then ask someone once the ice was broken to remember to shut their windows when they went out in warm weather. Simple. And human.
The real return on investment for that officer comes in an emergency where there is a pre-built network of people willing to share their message.
Police officers get that you need to be human on the social web to be listened to. I’m not sure if comms people look at .
I think of the brands who tried to ‘leverage’ their audience with 9/11 tweets. I think of Pete Ashton one of the first people in Birmingham to use this thing called Twitter and work out what the social web was all about. I think of the chat I had with him on how he had consciously divorced himself from the growing social as numbers professionalisation of social media.
I think of the Best by WM survey that shows that digital comms in the West Midlands social has stalled at Twitter and Facebook and the new channels are not being explored.
It all points to this as a conclusion: social media and digital communications is one set of tools in the mix.
Use them if you think they’ll work but don’t be a channel fascist.
Share, inform, entertain and engage.
Be timely.
Measure if you like. But don’t let the tape measure drive you.
Explore with it. Experiment. Learn. There is so much wide open space to be experimented with.
Always, always, always be human with it.
If a police officer with a broken nose can get this, why can’t more comms people?
So now ‘Rotherham’ is doomed to enter the lexican of towns long shadowed by failure.
It is a town where 1,400 girls were abused between 1997 and 2013 and where a report pointed the finger of blame for failing to do enough to stop the attacks at Rotherham Borough Council and South Yorkshire Police.
Times journalist Andrew Norfolk who helped expose the story welcomed the council’s recent openness but warned the council’s successors not to be ‘tempted to chase leaks rather than act on their failings.’
This warning isn’t small town politics. It should be taken seriously.
It should echo through the corridors of town halls, police stations and hospitals across the land and the first people to stop and listen should be public sector communicators.
There will always be more bad news to emerge from somewhere in the public sector. It could be a council, a police force or a hospital. That’s life.
Let’s not forget every day lives are saved and changed by the public sector but when things go wrong the public sector is often damned more loudly than the perpetrators of the crime.
So what should public sector PR people do? Two things. First, the strategy.
In the past the default comms strategy was about painting the best picture possible. At worst this was ‘spin’ and at best it was telling the positive stories residents would often not be told of. There were stories of success to tell and investment. There still are in some cases. But after eight years of working in a local government comms team I’m convinced there needs to be a realism and honesty in public sector communications. There needs to be the ‘sorry, we won’t be able to do that anymore and here are the reasons.’
There also needs to be the ‘actually, there’s a problem here and we want to take a look at it. Will you bear with us and help us fix it?’
The feeling is that Rotherham Borough Council by ordering the report and by the resignation of the Leader is now starting to acknowledge the problem.
The strategy for public sector communications should be to listen, to be human and to accept when things go wrong. Do this and you won’t be chasing leaks and you’ll be acting upon failings.
One story from my own life illustrates the culture shift of what is needed. I’m from Stafford. Stafford is where the Mid-Staffs Hospital scandal was centred where hundreds of people suffered because of poor care. When the news broke my Facebook timeline was filled by personal stories shared by people I grew up with that floored me. The mother who had died in pain. The grandfather who was wrongly sent home and never recovered.
A few weeks later I heard two NHS comms people from another area talk dismissively about ‘whinging patients.’ ‘It would have been better,’ I challenged them ‘if some of the whinging patients at Stafford had been listened to. Some of them may still be alive.’
Of course, they accepted that. But back in their office surrounded by the culture of fear and blame I have to ask myself, would they? I’m convinced that it is the role of comms – especially in the public sector- to challenge and be the grit in the oyster. Being an informal whistleblower should be part of the job description in theory. It in practice, though, I know of at least a couple of people whose careers were blighted by objecting too strongly.
One was asked to leave when concerns were raised about an appointment. Another fell foul of their chief executive and had to leave. This all points to the age old concern of public sector communicators to be near the ‘top table.’ In other words close to those making the decisions. A comms professional close to the top table may get sight of the problem earlier and can advise. They also find their words carry more weight.
Of course, it’s fine to challenge if the PR officer is in a position to know what is going on at all times. There are 700 services provided by local government alone. There is no way a comms team can be across all of these areas. Often, when I worked in local government comms office door would fly open after 5pm with an 11th hour request for some help on an issue that was about to hit the papers. My worry is that at this point it is too late.
To learn the lesson of Rotherham public sector communicators should be mindful that glossing away the problem won’t solve the problem. Honesty and openness may be a start.
No question I’m really proud of being involved for a second year with IEWM’s Best by West Midlands initiative.
From Herefordshire in the south to Stoke-on-Trent in the north the region and across the Brum and Black Country conurbation continues to blaze a trail for how local government best uses social media channels.
Last year the Best by West Midlands whitepaper and survey gave a snapshot of where authorities were.
But a couple of things really stood out and I’ll blog them in the coming weeks. Not least the statistic that comms teams are comfortable with the established platforms like Twitter and Facebook but new channels like Snapchat and WhatsApp? Not at all. Of the 18 channels used – three up from last year the results paint a picture.
Most Used Channels
Twitter 100 per cent
Facebook 96 per cent
YouTube 81 per cent
Flickr 65 per cent
….
Whats App 4 per cent
Snapchat 0 per cent
Source: Best by West Midlands IEWM July 2014
The findings formed part of a session at commscamp last week and it turns out this blindspot for new channels is not something unique to the West Midlands.
You need a digital comms expert in your team.
It’s something I’ve been banging on about for some time now. The world is changing. You need to keep pace. Unless you have someone horizon scanning you’ll be missing the bigger picture. Sales pitch: that’s a service comms2point0 provides but really as a comms person you need to have a voracious inquisitiveness about how the web is changing your job.
But what is Snapchat?
The low down is that this is a picture messaging service beloved of young people. It’s picture led and is meant to disappear from the web in 24-hours. The sender can opt to save a pic and the the recipient can take a screenshot. There’s a useful parents guide that Snapchat themselves have produced.
Some brands have started to use it like McDonalds who are telling people about changes to the menu and offers, the Philadelphia Reds baseball team giving behind-the-scenes access and the World Wildlife Fund who used a Snapchat-inspired campaign and this short YouTube clip showing endangered species at risk and asking if the images would be their #lastselfie.
It’s SMS without the spiralling charges. You send and receive something that looks like SMS but without the individual charges. As of April 2014, there is 500 million users and the company which was bought for $19 billion by Facebook says it has only just started.
It’s fair to say that marketing and comms people are baffled by what impact this will have on them with predictions of zero impact although others have been creative to engage with it. Like the Israeli chocolate company who created a game for users to play and the Bollywood cinema who created a competition to promote a new film.
But is this something that comms let alone public sector comms has got their teeth into? Not at all.
Your two big challenges
Firstly, you need to know where do they fit in the landscape and secondly, we need to think how we go about getting the skills.
The re-assuring thing in debating this at commscamp is that this feels no different to Twitter in 2007. Those that work in comms and PR at first thought it would go away and then we gradually worked out how to use it. That’s a journey we’ve already been on so shouldn’t be too worried.
It’s fine for us grown-ups to work out what these platforms are so you don’t appear like the magistrate who famously asked: ‘Who are The Beatles?’
The old rules stand true. Go onto a platform as yourself for a bit to understand the language and what works. Then think about using it yourself.
I’ve argued before that there needs to be space to experiment away from the bustle of the day job and campaign evaluation. This is one of those times.
There’s a new network of key bodies across England that work to improve the health and wellbeing of their local residents and reduce health inequalities.
Known as ‘health and wellbeing boards’, they bring together the local council, clinical commissioning group, Healthwatch and other key local players in a genuine partnership and they do a really important job.
By their own admission they are not always great at using social media and, while there are some good examples, we think some light-touch guidance would encourage people to explore the opportunities of increased or improved digital engagement.
We’re very pleased to say that we have been chosen by the Local Government Association to help them draw up some proposals for this guidance and we’d like to ask what you think of it so we can polish and shape it.
We think better social media can lead to better engagement, better transparency, better communication, better curation and better listening.
Our broad thoughts in six points:
Rather than have a one-size fits all set of guidelines we think they should be phased from the entry-level one star right up to the top-of-the-class five star.
We think there should be some thought given to the name of whichever social profile is used. It may be that the name ‘health and wellbeing board’ is off-putting to some people.
We think there is enough guidance out there for professionals and we’d like to signpost people towards that. Doctors, for example, have the BMA social media guidelines. Elected members have some of their own too. We don’t want to replace these but we do make some suggestions for how social media can be used by the health and wellbeing board as a whole.
It’s not just Twitter. There is a range of different platforms. So when slides are shown, for example, they can be posted to a platform like slideshare so people can follow at home.
Yes, livestreaming meetings on the internet is a good idea and we’d not only encourage that but we’d ask that space be given for the public to ask questions via a social channel too.
We think engagement between meetings is key too. Not just during.
We think there should be some broad principles too:
The Five Be’s of an effective social Health and Wellbeing Board
Be engaging: it should interact wherever possible with users and reflect the debate.
Be timely: it should post information at a time that is most convenient to the audience.
Be jargon-free: it should use language that works on the platform of choice. It should not use jargon and language that people outside the health and wellbeing board would struggle to understand. It should be informal wherever possible.
Be connected: it should look to share content from partners and from across the public or third sector where is relevant. It could work with the partners who make-up the board to collectively focus on an issue to amplify a message and a debate.
Be informative: it should look to inform and to educate.
The five levels of social media
We’d love people to be on the fifth level but we have to be realistic. These proposed five levels give a low barrier to entry on level one and encourage councils to progress.
Level
Requirement
Level One
– Post meeting date and time on one social platform– Jargon free
Level Two
– Post meeting date and time on one social platform- Jargon free
– Cover meeting discussion on one social platform and curate content.
– Publish slides of presentations given at the meeting and post to a health and wellbeing board page or microsite.
Level Three
– Post meeting date and time on one social platform- Jargon free
– Cover meeting discussion on one social platform and curate content.
– Publish slides of presentations given at the meeting and post to a health and wellbeing board page or microsite.
– Livestream or allow residents to livestream and curate content.
– Enable questions to be asked of the meeting from social media
Level Four
– Post meeting date and time on one social platform- Jargon free
– Cover meeting discussion on one social platform and curate content.
– Publish slides of presentations given at the meeting and post to a health and wellbeing board page or microsite.
– Livestream or allow residents to livestream and curate content.
– Enable questions to be asked of the meeting from social media
– Digital engagement through social media between meetings that is fed back into the entire decision making process
Level Five
– Post meeting date and time on one social platform- Jargon free
– Cover meeting discussion on one social platform and curate content.
– Publish slides of presentations given at the meeting and post to a health and wellbeing board page or microsite.
– Livestream or allow residents to livestream and curate content.
– Enable questions to be asked of the meeting from social media
– Digital engagement through social media between meetings that is fed back into the entire decision making process
– Searchable agendas that used metadata
– An interactive website that the public can comment on.
– Members enabled to use one or more platform during and between meetings
So what do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? We’d like you to have your say on this.
There’s been a real drive for evidence based campaigns in the public sector just recently.
Government communicators have been asked not to do anything unless it’s based on data.
The argument goes that this cuts out the vanity campaign or the SOS – the Sending Out Stuff – that sees press releases and other things shovelled out the door because some action is better than nothing.
Don’t get me wrong, I can see real merit in having a get out of jail free card when faced with a senior request ‘for stuff.’
But I’m starting to think about if we need to create some space for experimentation. Things like Trojan mice. These are things that see you try something out low budget just to see if it works and you can learn from.
One example of this skunkwork lab is the excellent Torfaen Council Elvis gritter YouTube that’s been around for a while. If you haven’t seen it, it’s the low budget Elvis impersonator from the Valleys singing about how the council can’t be everywhere and not to panic buy bread. It’s brilliant. It was done on a shoestring to make people smile, to tell them some important things and done entirely without research.
It works because it’s human and is entirely without strategy.
I was helping train a local government comms team last week when this clip came up and we showed it just to see the reaction. There was disbelief. Then laughter. Then real affection. It works. It just works. I rememberdiscussing it 12-months ag with someone who works for an authority who ruthlessly apply the research-led ROSIE logic.
“It’s really, really good and I love it,” she said. “But of couse we could never do it where I work.”
So how do you create the space needed to make the Trojan mice flourish?
Google famously give staff a day a week to work on their own projects. Some of those projects have become key to their future strategy.
Tectonic plates in the world of communications are shifting. The centre cannot hold. Different channels are emerging and with them the demand for new skills. If you want the evidence, more than 70 per cent in our survey four months ago said the job was getting harder.
So, the task facing the the comms leader is how to create some safe space to experiment.
And if you are a comms person in the trenches, how are you going to carve out some Google time for yourself to look after your future?
There’s this funny period in the run-up to an election which sees local government comms team change behaviour.
Gone are the press releases from politicians and in comes quotes from officers. Why? To ensure that the council cannot be accused of political bias in the run up to polling day.
It’s been around for decades and local government comms teams have got a pretty good grasp of what this entails. It means under The Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity (Local Government Act 1986) that newsletters, press releases, conferences, badges and web pages are affected.
The code says:
The period between the notice of an election and the election itself should preclude proactive publicity in all its forms of candidates and other politicians involved directly in the election.
Publicity should not deal with controversial issues or report views, proposals or recommendations in such a way that identifies them with individual members or groups of members.
However, it is acceptable for the authority to respond in appropriate circumstances to events and legitimate service enquiries provided that their answers are factual and not party political.
Members holding key political or civic positions should be able to comment in an emergency or where there is a genuine need for a member level response to an important event outside the authority’s control.
Proactive events arranged in this period should not involve members likely to be standing for election.
What this means is that the council’s resources must not be or even appear to an observer to be used for party political ends in this period of heightened political sensitivity.
Six golden rules during Purdah
No publicity will be given to matters which are politically controversial.
The general presumption will be that no references will be made to individual politicians in press releases (except where there is a valid emergency as set out below)
Great caution will be exercised before undertaking any significant media exercise unless it can be demonstrated that this was included in the forward diary before the election was called.
No photographs of candidates in the election will be issued
Before any request for council photographs and other materials is considered, enquiries will be made as to the use to which they are to be put and an appropriate restriction on use imposed if supplied.
The position of Mayor as the figurehead of the authority is different and material will be issued, providing it is not of a political nature.
But what teams struggle with is social media. How does this affect the Twitter stream? Here’s a cut-out-and-keep guidance for people who operate council social media channels (disclaimer: check it with your legal team first).
Twitter
Please explain that as a council channel of communication you are governed by Purdah in a period before an election. It may be helpful to tweet a link to an explanation of Purdah for guidance.
Do not retweet political parties, politicians or political opinion.
Do not tweet on matters which are politically controversial.
Do not tweet images of political parties, politicians or subjects which are politically controversial.
Do not stage a significant Twitter-based campaign unless it can be demonstrated that this was included in the forward diary before the election was called.
Tweets by and about the Mayor may be retweeted as long as they are not of a political nature.
In exceptional circumstances please first seek permission from the communications unit to tweet or retweet a comment by a politician during Purdah.
Facebook
Please explain that as a council channel of communication you are governed by Purdah in a period before an election.
Do not post or share updates from political parties, politicians or political opinion.
Do not post or share images from political parties, politicians or political opinion.
Monitor your page and delete any content which is politically controversial with an explanation that this has been done so because of the rules that govern Purdah linking to this advice.
Tweets by and about the Mayor may be retweeted as long as they are not of a political nature.
Do not stage a significant Facebook-based campaign unless it can be demonstrated that this was included in the forward diary before the election was called.
In exceptional circumstances please first seek permission from the communications unit to tweet or retweet a comment by a politician during Purdah.
YouTube
Please explain that as a council channel of communication you are governed by Purdah in a period before an election.
Do not post or share updates from political parties, politicians or political opinion.
Do not post or share images from political parties, politicians or political opinion.
Monitor your page and delete any content which is politically controversial with an explanation that this has been done so because of the rules that govern Purdah linking to this advice.
Videos by or about the Mayor may be added as long as they are not of a political nature.
Do not stage a significant YouTube-based campaign unless it can be demonstrated that this was included in the forward diary before the election was called.
In exceptional circumstances please first seek permission from the communications unit to add a YouTube clip by a politician during Purdah.
Third party social media profiles
Council staff who update third party social media profiles as part of their job are governed by Purdah. These profiles include business partnership profiles which the council supports.
There are two options:
Opt out: For the duration of Purdah hand over ALL admin to a non-council member of the partnership and allow them to add Purdah-restricted content that council staff are unable to post. Resume adding content and managing after the election.
Opt in: Council employees can continue to add content or share admin duties but ALL content is governed by Purdah restrictions.
Flickr
Please explain that as a council channel of communication you are governed by Purdah in a period before an election.
Do not post or share pictures from political parties, politicians or political opinion.
Monitor your page and delete any content which is politically controversial with an explanation that this has been done so because of the rules that govern Purdah linking to this advice.
Images by or about the Mayor may be added as long as they are not of a political nature.
Do not stage a significant Flickr-based campaign unless it can be demonstrated that this was included in the forward diary before the election was called.
In exceptional circumstances please first seek permission from the communications unit to add a YouTube clip by a politician during Purdah.
Please disable the ability to download images of politicians during Purdah
