Category Archives: Public Relations

RECAP: How to use LinkedIn in 2025 as a page and as a person

When LinkedIn was taken over by Microsoft a wag joked at how they hoped they wouldn’t change that fun, freewheeling spirit that the platform had.

The joke was, of course, that LinkedIn was the dull older brother of the socials where he hung out with accountants and spoke about his career a lot.

However, for a long time that dull older brother has quietly became a calm haven from the river of abuse that other networks have you wade in. It’s also a place I get a big chunk of my insights and reading from.

Besides, with the world turning upside down many people are keeping one eye on LinkedIn for career development.

If you missed it, here’s a recap on my research on what makes the most effective LinkedIn content for a public sector page. The top ranking thing is a carousel of images.

You can read the full post here. Interesting that the broad findings have been confirmed by the Social Insider blog.

For LinkedIn pages, advice, help, celebrating staff and opportunities work best. 

For your own profile, something helpful or insightful always goes down well. You’ll find Linkedin much more work-focussed than other platforms. But don’t worry, TikTok is great for recipes, the BBC Sport app covers breaking scores and Facebook groups can be good for local news.  

As a platform, LinkedIn has been innovating and I thought it an idea to recap on some of the developments for 2025. Some are tactical and some are strategic. Some are for you and some for your page.

#1 Bring out your people

In 1999, the groundbreaking ClueTrain Manifesto was published and was a map for social media well before Mark Zuckerburg even went to college. It spoke about how some people from companies were cool online and if they didn’t have a tight reign they’d be among the people – not brands – they’d turn for answers.

The people we turn to from LinkedIn from LinkedIn are right there in front of us. So, Heather Timmerman Moller is the named face who wrote the update on how video ads can be made through Canva. You can find her online here. 

It’s not the corporate blog, there’s a name.

So, that’s the first lesson. Have your senior people use their own profiles if they are happy to do so to share the news. 

This makes sense. If the senior accountant is talking about the new accountancy system the organisation is using to help save time and money they are doing so to their audience of accountants. That network will be far stronger with accountants than the corporate page will have. By all means share it to the corporate page too. But that’s not where accountants will be.

What people does your organisation have?

“Say it louder for the people at the back credibility travels through trusted voices.” – Wensy A, creative thinker at LinkedIn. 

#2 Video, video, video, video

LinkedIn has been comparatively late to the party with video. It was only in 2017 that the platform allowed video to be uploaded natively. 

By 2025, LinkedIn has more than caught up and so have its users. In 2025, watching video had increased by 36 per cent year-on-year. In the attention economy where seconds count this is really significant. Your followers are also 20 times more likely to share a video than any other piece of content. 

For a LinkedIn ad, the video should be less than 30-seconds. But interestingly, the non-ad video dropped into your timeline can be maybe up to two minutes, they say. That’s also interesting. It steers away from the 15-minute ego stroke of someone senior talking at length without much purpose.

So, if you are looking after a corporate page, the senior person’s soundbite can work. If it’s you, your own video can work well. It’s something I keep meaning to do myself.

LinkedIn themselves have published some video best practices.  This is hugely useful when this happens. It’s a much firmer peg to hang a hat on. There’s something revolutionary in the notes. Using a mic for sound, subtitles and 9:16 – portrait shaped video – are all good notes.

On top of that there’s some technical specs. This image is especially useful as it shows you the ‘safe’ areas where its okay to add text and other things.

You can read the full video specs guide here.

#3 Proceed carefully with AI 

LinkedIn’s own 2024 Marketing Benchmarking report said that they’d be expecting a quarter of people would be using AI in 2025. I’d say that was behind the curve. Don’t feel obliged to use AI on LinkedIn but do be obliged to learn safely.

For me, there’s the idea creation that AI can bring and the content creation. For content creation, that’s audio, video, music and images. I’m not sure that that’s where public sector AI use should be right now. I think right now, the public are hesitant about AI and while they don’t mind seeing AI help diagnose cancer more effectively there are other things they are less keen on.

Using AI to help sub-title the video clip you may post to LinkedIn would be a genuine timesaver but once again, do check against delivery. AI can’t do regional accents or place names very well. 

On the platform itself, LinkedIn has offered some AI tools to help recruiters narrow down the right people. There’s also some AI ad tools. Should you just go ahead and use them anyway? I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. Experiment on what the tools may be but for me, don’t use them in anger until you have a policy.

Interestingly, LinkedIn themselves have made great efforts to stress that human content is the best content if its AI you are looking at.

#4 Develop a safe LinkedIn use flow chart

A safe use flow chart may be useful for you.

This isn’t from LinkedIn itself, rather my observation of its use in the public sector. This came about from delivering a session to NHS people. They got the importance of using LinkedIn but they just didn’t want to say the wrong thing. So, they went away and developed a sensible use flow chart.

On the chart was advice not to endorse a particular product unless senior people were fine with it. They also wouldn’t say anything about a joint project unless the other people in the project were okay. However, they could talk about industry trends and observations in the abstract. 

#5 Extra tools for pages

While I’ve blogged a lot about encouraging people in the organisation to use LinjkedIn you may also like to know that Premium Company Pages launched last year cost about £50 a month to use. They give bits of marginal additional functionality like a list of people who have seen your page and an AI-powered writing assistant that I’m not mad keen on.

You can already see the absolute basics with the LinkedIn creator pages which is the ABC of content creation.

#6 Live Events

You have the ability to create an event through your LinkedIn page. For me, this is the most under used tool on the whole of the site.

If you are looking to explore these the best tip would be to go and register for some to see how they work and see how the can be improved. The best live events are ones which are created with LinkedIn in mind. So, in other words a 30-40 minute chat on a particular subject with the ability to ask a question. The LinkedIn events page is useful to help you with this.

Since March, you can run a live event through Zoom itself.

Failing that, if you are planning a conference or similar event then adding the date and time to LinkedIn along with a sign-up form is the answer.

#7 How often to post 

If you are not used to LinkedIn and maybe you are exploring it in detail for the first time spend some time on the platform first. Scroll, read and see what you can learn. As you get to know the language of the platform you’ll see how it all works.

Think about commenting on a post first. That’s straightforward. You can add to a discussion or just say ‘thank you.’ 

I’m never that keen on suggesting the number of times to post per week. If its good enough then post it. You’ll get a sense of if its good enough because you’ll get feedback from comments and likes. Don’t worry if it doesn’t work first time. It’s called a stream for a reason. The stream passes and new things come down towards you. Tomorrow is another day.

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: Piccadilly, 1986 by Stella Gardiner.

OPEN SHUT: How open and transparent should public sector comms be when using AI?

In training, one of the 10 UK Government principles for using AI gets most attention.

Like the stone in the shoe on a long walk, the principle of being open and transparent gets the most thoughtful chin-stroking.

Now, in principle – that word again – everyone nods in agreement at the idea. Of course, we should be open. But exactly how? 

The UK Government’s AI Play Book sets out clearly how to work with this principle: 

Where possible, you should engage with the wider civil society including groups, communities, and non-governmental, academic and public representative organisations that have an interest in your project. Collaborating with people both inside and outside government will help you ensure we use AI to deliver tangible benefits to individuals and society as a whole. Make sure you have a clear plan for engaging and communicating with these stakeholders at the start of your work.

But all of a sudden when faced with how to apply this people often start to feel uncertain. There’s nothing wrong with this. One of the gifts of a good public sector communicator is to spot the potholes in the road they are travelling down. With AI we are in new territory.

What do the public think of AI? 

There’s concern about whet people will say if they find out you are using AI.

Maybe you’ve not fessed up to IT on how you are using it.

Polling data shows the public are uncertain of AI in many areas of life. While nine out of 10 people are positive about using AI for health diagnosis less than a fifth are happy with political advertising, according to the Ada Lovelace Foundation.

Not only that, but the public sector doesn’t have masses of friends right now. Local government budgetshave had billions of pounds stripped from them by Government. It’s a situation other parts of the public sector can recognise too be it NHS, fire and rescue, or central government.

So, what do we do?

Well, if you’re using AI you could go for the Ostrich approach and hope nobody spots you.

But if word gets out – and it will – you’ll be playing catch-up to all sorts of lurid rumours of how what you secretly want are robot nurses in our hospitals or that AI will make everyone in the Town Hall redundant. To be fair, people have got legitimate concerns about AI and their jobs.

Far better to be, as the principle states, open and transparent.

What does open and transparent AI look like?

So, if the debate is not if you should be transparent but how much what should how much look like?

Scottish Government have been the first in the UK to have a registry for projects and how AI is used. Interestingly, a trawl of the sight shows the government comms team, insight team and marketing teams have acknowledged using the Brand Watch social listening tool. 

Five minutes of searching Google News has not located a single story covering this fact.

So, it appears that being open and transparent would normalise the use of AI. This is how it should be. 

Can you dodge out of it? 

Now, you can say to yourself that you don’t have to worry about UK Government guidelines because you are not in the civil service. If that’s true, you won’t get a tap on the shoulder from a civil servant. But is that seriously good enough? 

Other parts of the public sector have been slower in getting their act together.

The tide of AI is rising far faster than the ability of policymakers to draw up sector-specific policy. 

If you’re bright I’d urge you to put your own thoughts to it. 

Granular or big picture?

If the Scottish Government example is big picture what about other tools? 

Well, if you are posting an AI-treated image to Facebook or Instagram then you need to mark it up as such. That’s been the case for some months. It’s the same on other platforms for images and video. 

I’ve not seen a requirement to mark as AI-generated text made with the help of a tool like ChatGPT or Copilot. In fact, LinkedIn encourages you to use AI tools to write the post. 

In local news. Reach plc since 2023 have been using AI to generate reporting with this ‘Seven things to do in Newport’ one of the first acknowledged examples of using AI to generate content. It’s not marked as being written by AI. Since then, they have trimmed down writing times using AI tools.

Let’s not forget the curious case of the Bournemouth Observer a site with fake journalists created by AI which closed down after being exposed by the Hold the Frontpage website. We don’t mind AI, the moral of the story appears to be, but we don’t like being mislead.

How granular should you be?

You should be marking AI-assisted images and video as AI when you post to social media.

Should you also say if each individual post, web page or press release was created with AI? Or should you have a space on your team webpage that explains how AI is used? Or maybe, follow the Scottish model and have a sector-wide registry? 

These are questions that haven’t been resolved in the public sector.

Elsewhere, parts of the third sector is taking a lead on this by requiring ALL content to acknowledge the role AI has played in its creation.

For example: 

Staff are free to use AI tools if they wish for their own work, but are asked to make it clear to others when they do so, including in any work we publish. Hannah Smith, Director of Operations, Green Web Foundation

Friends of the Earth in their policy document on setting out their seven principles of how they  will use AI included transparency. In keeping with the spirit of this they set out as an appendix to the document how they used AI. Google Notebook was used, they say, along with spell-checking from Google Docs. They add:

We used generative AI to generate text sparingly and didn’t use it to generate images at all. A small number of paragraphs in this article started out as AI-generated based on our prompts as a form of placeholder text while we built up arguments in other sections. These placeholders were then deleted, rewritten, edited and otherwise remixed. The vast majority of the article was written and edited without any generative AI. 

The question should not be if you should be transparent in using AI but how.

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.

LONG READ: Mustard, too much choice and definitive data on how UK local media is being consumed in 2024

When I was a younger man than I am now I loved mustard.

Our local Sainsbury’s had a choice of four and I would buy them to experiment. After all, what mustard would taste good on a ham sandwich was quite different to a barbeque sausage.

So, when our Sainsbury’s moved to a new site four times as big the mustard choice also expanded. There was now 16 different types of mustard. There wasn’t just one type of Dijon mustard. There was four. And English, spicy beer mustard and three types of American burger mustard.

Choice now paralysed me and the first time I went I left without buying any.

What I’d come across in this is something academics call ‘choice overload bias’. This means that when there is too much choice your satisfaction can actually decrease. We are tormented by the fact we may be buying the wrong thing.

Communicators who are looking to reach a local audience are faced with choice overload bias on a regular basis. What channel to use when there are so many?

When I started my career in local government the channels were a hard to use website, the local paper, local radio and quarterly residents magazines.

Social media obliterated all that and there are so many more places to get information.

Cutting through the noise is hard which is why Ofcom’s Review of Local Media Findings interim report is so useful.

I’ve gone through their 36,000 lines of data for you so you can better navigate the metaphorical supermarket shelves.

Key findings

Local newspapers are in an existential crisis. This time they really mean it. Print weekly paper readership across the UK has dropped 19 per cent in 12-months. Regional dailies have dropped 15 per cent in the same period.

Not only that, but there has been a loss of 271 titles between 2005 and 2022.

We already have news deserts. There are boroughs in London without a newspaper circulating and the same can be found in other parts of the country.

We don’t want to pay for local journalism. Not only do we not want to pay we don’t want to pay for ads. Digital or otherwise. Ad revenue is pouring out of the hole in the newspaper’s bucket.

There are experiments with local news. A spate of email-first news services that cover cities have taken off but all attempts at building a new form of journalism over the past 20 years has struggled. There are hyperlocal independent sites across the UK.

Struggling journalism is bad for democracy. The Government’s Cairncross review into local journalism and other academic research all point to this. There is a link between voter turnout and newspaper circulation.

Yet, the demand local news as an entity is surprisngly strong. Be that local politics, events, weather, sport or traffic, weather and travel we want to know about it. All of us. Not just the over 50s.

Local news and current affairs is surprisingly of interest. Almost half – 49 per cent – of 16 to 24-year-olds are interested in local news in their area. I know. I’m shocked as you are. This rises to 73 per cent of over 55-year-olds. This may be the roads that are being built, the cuts to the leisure centre or the event in the park.

But local campaigns not so much. One in five 16 to 24s is interested in a campaign on somethinmg like crime rising to a quarter of 55 to 64-year-olds.

And yes please to weather. Maybe its because we’re British but the category of local weather updates was the most popular with people. Six out of ten of younger demographics were interested rising to 80 per cent of over 65s.

But how we’re accessing this local news has splintered more than I could have imagined. If its not local newspapers then what?

This is where this handy illustration comes in.

I think of it as a dartboard with your street at the centre radiating out to your neighbourhood, city, town, village then your county then your nation.

In your street, it’s WhatsApp and Nextdoor you plug into then as you go wider its social media, newspaper’s social media and then as you approach the region and country its TV and radio too.

I like how they’ve made this visual.

In your street or neighbourhood, WhatsApp and the neighbourhood site Nextdoor are important. As you move towards the town or village and up through the country to the region or country then other platforms become important.

We often forget about TV and radio. There are 39 BBC stations and 250 commercial radio stations and in Wales the Welsh language S4C station plays an important regional role. But broadcasting only comes into play on stories that will reach broad audiences on the edge of the dartboard.

Local news is being consumed by social media with local groups like Facebook community groups now the biggest single place. The secret to good data, I find, is that it can challenge your own experience. I’ve been an advocate for Facebook groups for a long time but even I’m surprised to see that nationally it is now in pole position for local news.

The BBC. I often say in training that making friends with your BBC local democracy reporter (LDR) is essential. They are a trusted channel and that single LDR can shape content for multiple outlets.

Delve deeper and you’ll find newspaper’s digital footprint is important. The data shows 17 per cent for websites and apps of news outlets. Confusingly, it adds 9 per cent to other nmews websites such as Reach plc’s Birmingham Live. Reach fill prettty much all the top 10 for web pages with the highest audience.

People have left print for the web but sill trust local journalism.

Younger people consume through social media. The stat given is 16 to 34s are consuming news twioce as much on the socials compared to adults aged 55 and above.

Podcasts locally? Nah. Podcasts have enjoyed a boom in the 2024 General Election coverage but with five per cent using them for local news this isn’t a factor locally just yet.

What the data says

Firstly, the Ofcom Local Media Review is a useful tool.

While it breaks down into age demographics it also breaks down if you drill deep enough into regional differences. So, if you’re Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, West Midlands, South West, London or wherever a bit of time spent to refine the data would be time well spent.

A word of warning.

There is a top level summary of 56-pages and the data sets of 36,000 lines you can plough through.

When you break it down

I’ve selected one of the many data tables to include in its entirity. As you’ll see, there are some surprises.

Q: What sources do you get your local news from? By percentage (source: Ofcom)

Channel16-2425-3435-4445-5455-6465+
Social media (FB, Insta, X)63 6359564436
TV294350546469
Word of mouth454641495459
Radio273232343229
Print newspapers171517202432
Newspaper websites & apps141923212623
Messaging or neighbourhood apps (WhatsApp & Nextdoor141923212623
Email newsletters152216182018
Local news websites222223192018
Search engines343739312924

Conclusion

I thought the local news landscape was fractured but I had no idea it was as fractured as this. Of all of iot, I love the dartboard graphic that shows how local news can feel very different depending on your perspective.

So, if its your street or neighbourhood its one thing – WhatsApp or Nextdoor – but as you move out its social media then TV and radio.

Given that there is this change none of us can take things for granted.

I help deliver training to help communicators communicate better ranging from ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER which is the broad skills workshop to ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

LONG READ: Yes, Threads is worth a look but no, it won’t be a like-for-like Twitter replacement 

There’s been talk of a Twitter replacement for so long now it feels like an over-spun line from a tired parent. 

Just keep waiting, it’ll soon be here. Not long now.

From just round the next corner, it feels as though it’s finally here.

First, Twitter put a cap on the amount of content people could see and announced plans to put the useful Tweetdeck tool behind a paywall.

Second, Meta announced their long awaited Twitter rival they’re calling Threads.

Surely, Threads is the answer, right?

If you’re hoping for this as an outcome, it won’t. But it won’t be good news for Twitter.

Here’s why.

What Threads will be 

News is sketchy but the low down has been that will look a lot like Twitter, or should I say, old Twitter, and it’ll be linked to Instagram. 

It’ll also be free, Meta say, and there will be no limit on posts that can be read. Because it hooks into an existing channel there’s no need to start on the bottom rung with zero followers. That’s going to be a powerful incentive to organisations that have spent time building an existing following.  

In addition, the benefit of this is that people can escape the undiluted craziness of the Elon Musk era with a platform that’s not safe to use, is rolling back on safety measures and in short has become something of a weird pub fight. 

Stephen Fry was broadly correct in 2016 when he called Twitter ‘a secret bathing pool in a magical glade that had become stagnant.’ 

Threads isn’t the silver bullet

Is Threads worth looking at? Absolutely. 

The tempting thing is to hope that Threads will be an easy like-for-like swap. All of your Twitter followers will magically reappear on Instagram. Bingo. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

It didn’t happen with Mastodon, TruthSocial or BlueSky. Even with the advantage of being connected to Instagram I don’t think it’ll happen here to the same extent. It replicates an existing network rather than builds a whole new one. 

For the UK, this means that the prime Threads via Instagram audience is potentially under 30.

Ofcom data shows 91 per cent of 13 to 24-year-olds use Instagram and 82 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds. Almost two thirds of 35 to 44-year-olds use the platform, too.

Every single age demographic has Instagram used more than Twitter in all age groups except over 65s.

On the face of it, it’s a smart move to relocate those text-based messages to the ‘Gram. But hold on a second. Go and look at your Instagram insights. That’s your actual audience.

In practice, if you look at your corporate Instagram insights you may see a different group of people staring back at you. What that won’t be is a reflection of the whole of the audience that you’re looking to serve. 

An aside on the changing nature of Twitter

Here’s one unscientific example of the changing nature of Twitter from my own experience. In 2009, England played Australia in the 1st Test of the Ashes. Their last two batsmen Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar had to survive 88 balls to scrape a draw at Cardiff. I followed the bulk of that on Twitter from the passenger seat of the family car with my wife driving and five-year-old son in the back.

Following on Twitter meant I could see every ball, the joy of the English reaction and the despair from Down Under.  

On Sunday, I also followed an Ashes Test. This time I did it on the BBC Sport app without thinking the decision through. Why? Because that was the place I headed too without thinking knowing it would give me the best experience. It was only on reflection that it wasn’t Twitter.

Everyone who has loved Twitter on any level will have a different experience.  

What the demise of Twitter and the launch of Threads means for emergencies

There’s no doubt Twitter has been a powerful tool to use in an emergency. 

When an incident happened, people headed to Twitter and saw the relevant organisation providing real time updates. 

The riots of 2011 shaped so much of the last 15-years for public sector Twitter. The Government of the day, you may recall, wanted to haul Facebook, Twitter and RIM the makers of the BlackBerry in for a grilling. They also wanted to ban Twitter and Facebook in an emergency. Saner voices prevailed when it emerged putting your own content there as a trusted voice was the route.

In truth, posting to Twitter in an emergency was the last important reason for having a public sector Twitter account. With the limit on tweets and the stripping of blue ticks from organisations that last reason has been eroded. 

Will Threads be a route to communicate in an emergency? Maybe. But I don’t think it’s a like-for-like and it shouldn’t be the only route.

How to communicate in an emergency post-Twitter

The route to communicate in an emergency is already with us. There is already a complex ecosystem of platforms, tools and channels. In the UK, as a population we tend to use five or six platforms. And there’s email.

For me the communicating in an emergency is creating sharable date-stamped content on a range of different platforms. Why date-stamped? Because the algorithms may not show the update for several days by which time the incident has moved on. Showing that the update is 10am on June 3 2023 builds in obsolescence.

The answer may be to post the same message to the corporate Facebook page, a WhatsApp community channel, Threads, email and he website. Yes, this is more work. 

What communicating in 2023 is resolutely not is trying to drive traffic to a website. Platforms penalise links. To reach people, you need to put the text of the update onto each platform rather than link back to the website. By all means update your website too. Just don’t think that people will navigate to it from Facebook, Twitter or Threads for that matter.    

Can you invest time in building an email list for people in an area prone to flooding? Of course you can but it’ll take time. Email is an important channel.  

Journalists and Twitter

Journos have loved Twitter for years. Its influence far outwerighs its audience largely because journalists were there for the breaking news. Not only that but the decision makers could make an announcement in 140 characters without having the fuss of organising a press conference. Or answer questions.

There may be alternative ways to message reporters day-to-day and Threads could be a useful place to point journos to in an emergency.

Twitter won’t disappear overnight 

Before Facebook there was MySpace. In 2008, it was the largest show in town and pulling in huge numbers. A series of wrong turns led it into decline. It still exists as a platform but its been a good decade since it was big enough for Ofcom to count it as a channel in the UK.  

Twitter will do the same. It’ll decline. It’ll find new direction. It may even have new leadership. History tells us that once decline sets in that’s it. It’s all a question of time.

You absolutely need to make a social media review

What about the other days of the year when you are looking to reach people with a shopping list of tailored messages? 

The answer has to be look to run a social media review on yourself to freshen up your position. I’ve blogged about this before. Much social media architecture was developed in 2010. Time has moved on. Those people have left.

Have a fresh look. 

The simple Janet and John of a social media review is to look at your audience, your current channels, UK data around who is using what in 2023 and you’ll start to see the patterns emerge.  

Bottom line… educate the client

The line I come back to again and again is to educate the client. This is the chief executive, the middle manager, the person you work with to communicate. If you’re having trouble keeping pace spare a thought for them.

LIKE SHARE: What industry wide social media engagement metrics look like in 2023

A week or so ago Lucy Salvage wrote a great piece on how she approached benchmarking on social media platforms. 

You can read it for yourself here her account of how she looks at her own channels with a magpie eye not getting too distracted at what others are doing.

This makes loads of sense as only your organisation has your shaped demographics.

In this post, I’m going to take a look at RivalIQ’s report on industry metrics. These are literally millions of posts crunched into the data. I don’t for a second think that you should steer away too far from Lucy’s approach. It’s one I really like. However, a different perspective can sometimes shed some extra light in on your patch of the digital allotment.

So, with that in mind here’s some pointers to keep in mind while you are looking at your own channels. They’re private sector.

Facebook 

Engagement rates across Facebook for 2023 are at 0.6. 

This means that if you have 10,000 likes on your page the average engagement would be 60 per post. 

The average post per week is 5.04. However, for media this is 73.5 per week. That’s a real outlier. My own yardstick is that if the content is strong enough then post it. I don’t think looking for posts just to fulfill a quota is a wise thing to do. 

Instagram 

Engagement rates on Instagram for 2023 are at 0.47 per cent – that’s 30 per cent down compared to last year. 

This means that if you have 10,000 likes on your account the average engagement would be 46.9 per post. 

Higher education performed the best for engagement with a 2.6 per cent rate. That’s worth knowing if youare after 18 to 21-year-olds. The average posts per week is 4.6.

Reels got twice as much engagement than ordinary video.  

Twitter 

Engagement rates for Twitter are at 0.035 per cent.

This means that if you have 3.5 interactions for an account with 10,000 followers you are hitting average engagement.  

The industry average for tweets is just 3.9. This figure is often greatly exceeded by the public sector which isn’t in the survey. However, media which is the nearest cousin posts 10 times a day on average. 

TikTok

Engagement rates for TikTok are 5.6 per cent – that’s comfortably the largest social channel. 

This means that if you have 559 interactions for 10,000 followers you’re hitting the average. 

Higher education is comfortably the leader here with an astonishing 16.9 per cent engagement rate.

The average TikToks per week is just over 1.5. That’s maybe a reassuring figure. Media at 4.2 clips every seven days is the highest.  

Conclusion

In short, these figures are handy for a broad brush reference. Don’t get too hung up on them. You can read the full RivalIQ report here.

GUEST POST: Social media engagement, how to measure it and not care about anyone else

You’ve posted your content, but how well is it working? What can you measure and how does that compare? Lucy Salvage takes a look at what numbers to look at.

When we talk about measuring data, KPIs, benchmarks and the like, one thing that can be useful is knowing what other people are doing and how well they are doing it.

Sure, in a lot of cases, particularly in business, competitor analysis is key to formulating an effective marketing strategy. But what about Local Government? In particular social media? I would argue that when it comes to social media engagement, you should only be concerned with numero uno. 

“Try telling the Big Boss that!” I hear you cry into your gin – and so the next time your Big Boss wants to know how you are doing on social alongside neighbouring councils, here is your argument for why that’s a bit of a silly question.  

It’s a one-horse race

The main reason why it’s more or less impossible to benchmark social engagement against other authorities is simple. We’re not in competition with them. We’re not trying to sell an identical product to the same target market. Thanks to local democracy and the Boundary Commission, you have your territory and they have theirs. Think The Hunger Games but without military rule or a fight to the death, everybody has their own district (or borough). For this reason alone, there is little if any value in regularly spending time analysing what other LAs are doing on social, unless that is they are doing something really spectacular and you want some of that action. 

Too many variables

Benchmarking social engagement against other local authorities is tricky because of the many different variables that make up each authority. If we break it down in the simplest of terms, most of it comes down to the diversity of our audiences – not one will be an identical match for another. Here are a few variables that make it hard to compare one authority’s social media engagement with another:

  • Geography – some are more rural/urban than others and with that comes varying needs and challenges. For example, a densely rural district may have poor broadband coverage resulting in a higher number of residents unable to access the internet compared to a densely populated urban borough with greater coverage. 
  • Age – areas with a higher percentage of an ageing population will have differing service needs to those areas with a more active younger audience. Age will also determine which social platform is the most effective home for your messaging and if you even use social media at all. Ofcom’s Adults Media Use and Attitudes Report (2022) shows that the percentage of people using social media varies considerably by age, as we would expect. 
  • Gender – each social media platform will have a differing split of male versus female followers. In my experience, audiences tend to mirror the national trend of having a higher proportion of female followers on each platform. This will impact how you position content, and therefore the results you get from it. 
  • Regional ethnic diversity – this will impact content as varying needs and traditions within the community are catered for. For example, content produced by the London Borough of Newham, named as the most diverse local authority in England and Wales, will produce different content to that of the least diverse authority, Allerdale District. 

Each of these variables means that whilst we might be offering similar services to our publics, the way they are communicated and presented will be very different, rendering it a pretty pointless task to try and make social media engagement comparisons between authorities. I realise, even if your Big Boss does not, that you have far better things to be doing with your time. 

How you should be benchmarking your social media engagement 

If you’re accessing your social analytics natively (i.e. for free via Twitter, Meta, or LinkedIn) then it’s likely you’re going to be limited in terms of what data you can collect.

If you pay for analytics via your management system, then you’ll have a lot more at your disposal. The key to utilising this data by whichever means is to be sure of your purpose. What will help you improve your content? What do you want to know? For monthly KPI reporting, I’d choose no more than four metrics to focus on. My top four:

  • Number of followers
  • Engagement (all)
  • Engagement rate 
  • Reach

Whilst the number of followers might appear to be somewhat of a vanity metric, it is still nice to see your following increase each month and confirm that actually, you’re doing something right. It’s also the quickest indicator of things going wrong if suddenly a large number of people abandon ship. 

There are some metrics that I personally find provide little value. These are: 

  • Brand awareness – just because someone doesn’t @mention you doesn’t mean they aren’t engaging with your content in other ways, and if you’ve ever tried to accurately @mention a company in a post you’ll know it takes FOREVER. Nobody has time for that)
  • Best time of day to post – this changes all the dang time day by day, week on week. It’s impossible to keep on top of and a waste of time to even try to. Just use your noodle. You know when your audience is most likely to be online.
  • Impressions – they’re just big numbers that lull you into a false sense of security – always best to choose reach over impressions IMHO.  

Sentiment analysis doesn’t get British humour

I include all engagements in my monthly reporting as I don’t trust sentiment analysis. Whilst management systems such as Sprout Social and Hootsuite offer sentiment analysis as part of their higher-tier paid packages, the technology isn’t as reliable as it could be. The last time I checked, artificial intelligence (AI) is yet to get to grips with British humour, particularly sarcasm.

I got fed up with having to manually check sentiment reports which were so far off the mark, that I stopped including them in my monthly reporting long ago. Until AI is better at recognising the context of a comment, then for me anyway, this data is meaningless. 

Don’t forget to add the context

What isn’t meaningless is YOU. You hold the power. You know your audiences and how they are likely to react to stuff. You are the one ‘in it’ so you are best placed to read the room when it comes to sentiment. Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of that when drowning in data. Don’t be afraid to include free text analysis of your observations in your reporting. You can give this context to supplement the inclusion of all engagements in your numerical reporting. 

Engagement is important

Engagement rate is one of the most valuable metrics as it gives you an overall indication of how you are doing and it’s the best way to benchmark against yourself. Only by regularly collecting data on a monthly basis (or more often if you are mad) will you come to know what an expected good engagement rate for you is. Remember, no one else matters. You are only in competition with yourself.

Setting benchmarks by platform

Here’s how I set social media benchmarks (by platform) for 2023. This was following the collection of a year’s worth of data in 2022:

  • I used the data over the twelve-month period to calculate averages for each metric (such as reach, engagement, and engagement rate.)
  • I then used these averages to create my benchmarks for 2023. For example, for LinkedIn I have a benchmark engagement rate of 12 per cent, and for Twitter it’s 4 per cent. This is reflective of the popularity of each of these platforms with my organisation’s audience. 

Your bad is someone else’s good 

To further reinforce the point that comparing your social media performance to that of others is a mug’s game, a bad engagement rate for you may be exceptionally good for someone else. Another reason why it is crucial you find your own ground when determining what is good and bad social media engagement. 

According to our feathered friends at Hootsuite, a good engagement rate is between 1 – 5 per cent. So, if you are punching well above that anyway, happy days! Your challenge now is to maintain that. For those struggling to achieve 1 – 3 per cent, then I would advise that you need to revisit your strategy to try and get to the bottom of why your content isn’t landing. This is the point where looking at what your neighbours are doing may come in helpful. 

Hootsuite lists six engagement rate formulas (oh look, another variable!). The one I use is ‘engagement rate by posts’. This will tell you the rate at which followers are engaging with your content, however, it won’t take into account anything that goes viral given that reach is not considered. Here is the magic formula you need for the engagement rate by posts calculation:

No. of engagements / no. of followers * 100

This blog from Hootsuite lists some other engagement rate types, such as by reach, by impressions, and by paid-for, which may work better for you (because only you matter remember!). 

You can be flexible with KPIs

Another thing to remember is that you can always tweak your KPIs as you move through the year. It isn’t cheating. It’s not fiddling the books. It’s progress and the best way for you to compete with yourself is by setting realistic and achievable targets that are bespoke to your organisation. 

Only then will you be able to accurately report your brilliantness to the Big Boss. It might be dog-eat-dog out there, but you’re always number one when it comes to reporting on social media engagement. 

Lucy Salvage MCIPR is Digital Content Creator, Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and previously worked as Media and Communications Officer at Wealden District Council.

GROUP WORDS: Here’s a post to keep you up to speed on tweaks to Facebook groups

A quick shout if you’re looking to connect with Facebook groups as there’s going to be some tweaks.

Don’t worry, they’re not bad ones. They’re just tidying up around the edges and changing the terms.

Facebook is the largest UK social media platform and since groups are really hot right now this is something communicators need to know. it’s something I’ve blogged about before.

The names are changing

Secret, closed and public are going and are replaced with new terms. Secret groups are groups that have been set up, closed and can’t be found in a routine Facebook search. You join by invitation. Closed groups can be found but unless you’re a member you can’t see the content. Public groups are exactly that.

Now the change will be…

No doubt using the word ‘private’ emphasises the drive towards privacy that Facebook are trying to promote. The full announcement is here.

But even private groups can be policed

One interesting line from the announcement is a reminder that certain rights holders will be able to have access to closed groups. That would appear to say that Sony BMG music can look to see if knock-off Madonna DVDs are being knocked-out in a for sale group.

It also means that you shouldn’t be featuring Beatles tracks in your content thinking that John and George are dead and Paul and Ringo are busy. The algorithm will get you. Intellectual Property is quite closely policed.

One for trading standards and police?

This does pose the question about trading standards and law enforcement. Will they be able to have access? It would be interesting to see how they can keep a weather eye on the myriad of buy and sell groups that have sprung up.

I help run workshops to help you use Facebook better with groups, pages and advertising. You can find out more here or drop me a line dan@danslee.co.uk.

 

WOOOAH: What 5G will mean for all comms people

‘The future is here,” scifi writer William Gibson once said, “it’s just not evenly distributed.”

It’s a line I thought of while travelling through London this week while looking at an advert for 5G on the back of the Evening Standard.

What is 5G?

In a nutshell, it is the new mobile network that predicts hugely ramped-up connection speeds not just for mobile devices but for all internet connections. It is a UK government target to have the country entirely 5G by 2033. We’re behind on broadband so we’ll catch-up through 5G is the plan.

How fast will 5G be?

To download a full HD film, the timelines are:

  • More than a day at 3G.
  • Seven hours 4G.
  • Four to 40 seconds at 5G.

Of course, what you find  is often slower than what the poster offers. But even so.

This week, I spent a few hours reading-up on 5G and what it may bring. It’s a mistake to think this is just a quick way to watch movies on your phone. It meant reading through a list of new technologies.

The advent of 5G is predicted to lead to massive changes for how organisations operate. There’s a whole new babble of new technologies that 5G can open up. Reading through them is mildly mind blowing.

What’s the upside for comms?

Marketers will love what the platform can do as it will supercharge many of the things they struggle to do. Internal comms will need to understand it so they can explain what’s coming. Comms people will see how they need to adjust their communications.

This isn’t just a quicker way to download blockbusters. This could change a lot of things.

Video gets bigger. Even bigger

As download speeds increase, video becomes an even more important part of the way people consume content. Especially on mobile devices. The kid on the bus heading home can download a feature film in seconds will do so. They’ll also be able to create and post video even faster, too.

A two speed comms strategy short term

If you live in London and key British cities where there’s a patchwork 5G roll-out then you’ll be fine. Outside of those hotspots people will be disadvantaged until they roll out across the whole of the country by 2033. You’ll also need 5G-enabled phones to make the most of it. Short-term while it is tempting to make lots of lovely video content for new 5G areas and their high speeds there may need to be super-aware of audiences.

But that’s just looking at existing comms.

Virtual reality and augmented reality can happen

I’ve blogged before about virtual reality and how comms can make more of it. With the platform to more easily serve it the ability to stream VR content gets easier and it gets more of a proposition. So does augmented reality.

This will lead to innovation… and internal comms

As 5G evolves, what organisations can do with technology will change. Intelligent automation is a phrase you’ll hear more of. What’s this? This is a blend of automation and artificial intelligence. It is software that replaces tasks but it can apply some thinking to those repetitive tasks. Self driving cars is one use. So is voice recognition. But so is a system to serve marketing based on the user’s previous choices.

All of this is going to need communications to explain it to customers, service users and residents as well as the staff who will be deploying it. It will also make for less members of staff. So, it will be useful for comms people to understand exactly what intelligent automation is.

And an end to big rooms with servers in

5G can allow for cloud computing. Cloud computing can do away with traditional networks. So, the organisation can run without rooms full of servers. It’ll take some time for the public sector to feel comfortable with this approach and some parts won’t ever be cool with it. There is a risk the cloud-stored data will be hacked or stolen. But where the technology exists, the carrot of saving money may be enough to shift some organisations. I’m reading that 5G also leads to mobile edge technology. There’s a limit to what you have to know in detail. To a comms person like me it means less servers in the server room.

Prepare for those cloud computing data breach media queries, comms people.

Marketers will love it

Reading through what’s out there I kept reading about ‘closed loop analytics.’  In plain English, this is the ability to see what your customers did before they made that transaction. There’s a handy Hubspot guide here.

Good news, bad news…. comms people will need to read and get up to speed more

In every day use, comms people are plenty busy as they are. Bad news is that they’ll need to keep abreast of the changes. Good news, is that comms people will be key to explaining and exploiting the 5G changes. DCMS are sponsoring a network to encourage innovation and industry which you can join here.

Comms people will need to think through the business case to upgrade their equipment.

And there’s a danger

Working in and around the public sector for the past 14 years I can see there’s a real mile-wide risk. Predictions for what 5G can bring are bold and imaginative. But is there the funding to transform? Not just in communications but across the organisation? I’m not convinced. I’ve seen too many comms people with dated phones to cope with 4G let alone 5G.

Let’s see, shall we?

Picture credit: istock

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VIDEO CHANGE: What are the optimum video lengths for social media in 2019?

Facebook has gone and done it again and shifted the algorithm.

For video, the optimum video has shifted from just 15-seconds to a bumper three minutes.

The new number is contained in advice to Facebook page admins spotted by eagle-eyed Bradford City Council digital comms whizz Albert Freeman.

Thinking behind three minutes

For a while it’s clear Facebook has had designs on being YouTube.

The optimum time for a YouTube clip has consistently been around the three minute mark for years. Of course, some will be longer and some shorter but around the three minute mark has been optimum.

The thing is, people head to YouTube in the same way people head to the library. They want information or to be entertained. So, to spend three on YouTube to learn how to change a tyre or watch a cartoon is fine.

But I’d bet the real driver for Facebook’s shift to three minutes is driven by money.

The longer you spend on Facebook the more attractive you are to advertisers. That includes ads cropping up part-way through videos that Facebook are keen on and with a short 15-second clip you can’t really do that.

An unscientific check of my own Facebook timeline shows these results:

56 per cent are over three minutes.

9 per cent are between two and three minutes.

22 per cent are between one and two minutes.

6 per cent are between 30 seconds and one minute.

3 per cent are 30 seconds or less.

But grabbing attention remains paramount

The temptation to use the three-minute mark as an excuse to park sloppily-edited content would be a mistake in my view.

Let the camera run for three minutes on a subject?

That would be a huge mistake.

The one thing that I think hasn’t changed is people’s attention span.

How are they consuming media? They’re scrolling through their timeline looking for something interesting.

So, the first three seconds are STILL paramount

A week or two back I met a journalist from a news site that is part of the new breed of journalism. Video, he said, is a key driver.

But for him the first THREE seconds were critical. If it didn’t have anything to grab attention in those seconds he tends to skip over your email.

If your content is interesting and tells a story then you’ve a chance. A film sent back from an embedded journalist on life as a medic in Afghanistan was re-edited to open with the burst of machine gun fire that came in towards the end.

Why?

To grab attention.

Length is one factor but quality is another

It’s tempting just to look at video length and keep the record button pressed for the required amount.

That would, of course, be really silly. The optimum lengths are useful to know what is being encouraged by big tech companies so you can plan your video accordingly.

But you also need interesting and engaging content.

You need an eye-catching start and story telling is a strong asset while you are planning your content or editing.

You also need to think titles and sub-titles as 80 per cent of video gets watched without sound.

Notes and queries on the research

YOUTUBE: The maximum length of 15 minutes can be increased to 12 hours through a straight forward verification step.  Optimum length is much shorter

INSTAGRAM: Maximum length was increased from 15 seconds to 60 seconds with research via Newswhip suggesting a much shorter length. 

TWITTER: Maximum length of 240 seconds   is comfortably within Hubspot’s suggested 45 seconds.

SNAPCHAT: Maximum length is a mere 10 seconds but Hootsuite suggest five seconds is the sweet spot.

PERISCOPE: A maximum length and the sky is the limit but there is no research on what the optimum length of a live broadcast is. 

FACEBOOK LIVE: Can run for 240 minutes but 19 minutes is best say Buzzsumo.

LINKEDIN is the new kid on the block with native uploaded video. Five minutes is the most you can upload and there is research that the best length is 30 seconds.

I’ve helped train more than 2,000 people from 300 organisations over the past four years. For more on workshops near you click here. Or give me a shout by email dan@danslee.co.uk.

 

DODGING HIPPOS: How to say ‘no’ to the highest paid person in the room without actually saying ‘no’

Its been a busy few months. One of the good things about it is travelling to places and hearing new ideas. Often when I’m training I come back with a few pearls of wisdom.

I heard about HIPPOs when I was in Devon.

Not the large irratable African animals that can block and then flatten your car. Oh, no. The HIPPO is the Highest Pail Person’s Opinion. The HIPPO in the room can flatten your idea simply because they are the ones with the large salary and the job title.

There was a smile of recognition in the room at the description. I smiled too.

Problems HIPPOs pose

Bright leaders know they don’t have all the answers and surround themselves with people who are expert in their field. Bright leaders listen. Less bright – lets call them heroic leaders – think they have to have the answers and stand on top of the tank and point heroically.

It’s where the ‘the executive director would like a poster’ line comes from.

The problem with this is they are rarely right.

Convincing HIPPOs they are wrong

Of course, once the HIPPO has spoken you are in trouble.  It’s then you against the senior person and it can be very tricky for you to turn the column of tanks around. But you need to. If you don’t give your professional advice there is little between you and a shorthand typist.

But the problem can be is that it can appear as though it is you folding your arms and saying ‘no’ because you are just being difficult.

The way round it is by adopting a process to find the best idea.

Data driven communications

One slide I very often point to is from the Edelman Trust Barometer. This research was started the best part of 20 years ago after the Battle in Seattle when anti-globalisation protesters clashed with police. ‘Why do people hate us?,’ the cry went up and the research helped map trust.

The useful thing about this is that tells you that the person like your self with 53 per cent is more trusted than the director who has 38 per cent. So, if the issue is around children playing on railway lines,  then children and maybe parents are the best people to deliver that message.

Need another example? The acclaimed NHS #thisgirlcan campaign used the word ‘girl’ rather than woman or female because the data said that the word ‘girl’ would cut through to most people. So data won and helped the campaign fly.

Data driven communications is a really good idea.

It’s not you that’s saying ‘no’. It’s letting the data points to the right answer and that just takes the sting and the personality out of it.

And that can be brilliant for getting past HIPPOs.

Picture credit: Daniel Jureno / Flickr

 

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