Public sector comms people in the next few days will have to make a decision over Twitter… to pay or not to pay?
The question is being forced on people by a move to scrap verified blue ticks and replace them with a paid for version.
The blue ticks have long been a Twitter-verified hard won badge of trust that singles public sector organisations out as being trusted.
Twitter’s model
Under the new model, organisations can apply for Twitter Verified Organisations at $1,000 dollars (£810) a pop. It also charges $50 dollars (£40.50) a month for further affiliate accounts. So, an organisation with 10 Twitter accounts will be paying $500 (£405) a month.
The advantage, Twitter says, is longer tweets, longer video and your content in the Twitter For You page which Twitter has quietly introduced as a landing page which you’re served when you you navigate to the page. This serves what Twitter’s algorithm wants you to see rather than your friends and followers as happened in the earlier days of Twitter.
Individuals can take out Twitter Blue at £84 a year. You get longer tweets and tweets shown to more people.
Meta’s model
Over at Meta in the UK a verified programme has also been launched. It gives a verified badge for Instagram and Facebook and access to support at $15 a month for an account. You also get proactive account protection.
To pay or not to pay? Yes and no
And here’s the rub. Yes and no.
Twitter feels increasingly like a broken platform whose every decision is framed around irritating existing users. Elon Musk has clearly overpaid in a moment of hubris and is frantically trying to wring cash out of the platform. Blue ticks gave an element of trust to the platform. It’s tempting to think you’re paying for what you had with these moves but the reality is that you won’t be. When anyone can pay for it, including potential bad actors, the trust is devalued.
The wider issue is Twitter as a platform. As the recent BBC Panorama investigation showed, it is no longer a platform that can guarantee people’s safety. The question should be not should you pay for it but should you even be on it?
As a strategy, a gradual easing away from Twitter is the sensible way forward. Twitter was always useful for reaching journalists and for a crisis. WhatsApp may be a better way of messaging a hack. So too is a newsroom on the website. For an emergency? It will be interesting to see what channels are used in the next terror incident. In the Manchester Arena attack, Greater Manchester Police established a trusted voice within minutes and then filled in the blanks. Would people be looking at something like Facebook if something like that happened? I’m tempted to think so. The pandemic certainly showed us that other ways of reaching people exist.
Which leads to paying for Meta. Frankly, Facebook’s own customer service offering is so bad and so opaque that paying something a month for the ability to reach them represents value for money.
We’ve sometimes thought of social media as a free channel for some time. The truth is it’s never been free. It takes time and resources to produce organic content that works. It costs to boost a post to make sure it reaches people. These moves to pay for verification just brings the cash-hungry nature of social platforms into the open.
Elections are changing and you’d be well served wherever you are in the UK to do some simple things to bring yourself up to speed.
At first glance, much is the same with polling day. The same church hall with the same pencil stubs to write an X on the ballot paper just as people have always done. It’s as traditional as a cup of tea, no?
But the big change in 2023 is Voter ID. Before you stop reading this won’t affect you if you’re local government in England, Wales and Scotland it will. In Northern Ireland it already does.
Talking to Kelly Quigley Hicks from the Association of Electoral Administrators for a piece of work for LGiU there’s a few pointers all communicators need to know. She had some excellent ideas.
All this means there’s a really strong chance people will turn up without the right ID and tempers are likely to flair. Yes, if people don’t have a passport they can apply for a Voter Authority Certificate by April 25. But they’ll need to apply for one. You’ll need to tell them how.
While Scottish and Welsh councils aren’t adopting voter ID for council elections they’ll be mandated to for any general election after October 2023. There is a temptation to sit back and look through binoculars at potential chaos unfolding in England. It’ll be your turn for a General Election.
So…
Before election day, offer to partner up with a council that’s introducing Voter ID at polling stations
If you’re not staging a Voter ID election make friends with one that is. If you’re a communicator who lives nearby see if you can go along to the count to see how the changes take place. That’s harder if you’re Sctland or Wales but a Zoom call is an easy thing to do after the event to see what’s worked.
There’s several useful resources to explain voter ID. Having a one pager drawn up with elections that every comms person, polling station staff member and candidate has feels pretty mission critical.
Communicate, communicate, communicate
If you’re a council where Voter ID is being brought in tell people. Over and over. Keep a record of how often you told people and how. I can promise you you’ll get challenged. So don’t just think that this is someone else’s job.
If you’re not running one then take a look at what others are doing. Chat to one that is to see what they’re learning.
On the day, embed comms in the elections team
Kelly suggests having a comms person embedded in elections on election day. That way you can respond far quicker to developing issues as they come through. Having been a council comms person sat in the police gold control during an emergency I can see the value in that.
There’s likely to be a lot of misinformation and disinformation flying around and being able to target that in real time will be really helpful.
If you’re not running one then chat to one that is to see what they’re learning.
Critics say TikTok is Chinese owned and there is a requirement in Chinese law that the Chinese Government are able to access data. The company say that they don’t let them. Critics point out that they could.
I’ve not seen the detail of the concerns and its one for wider public sector people to reflect on. What’s the risk of a foreign entity accessing data on a Minister’s phone? Potentially, quite serious.
However, as far as I can see, the ruling only covers UK Government. Those outside the corridors of power are not covered. Of course, other organisations may take a lead or may weigh up the risks of using it against walling off a substantial growing user base. Ofcom say a majority of under 34s use the platform. It’s in the top three most favourite social apps of of under 54s. It’s a serious player and sceptics would say there’s a reason why California-based Meta have more than 100 people employed in Public Affairs lobbying Washington DC.
In short, if your a Cabinet Minister and there’s a risk of data being accessed then that’s one thing. If you’re Dudley Council or Dudley NHS I’d probably there’s probably less of a global risk.
It poses the question if there is a risk, shouldn’t it be banned for everyone?
But would stopping everyone in the UK from accessing dog, cat, recipe and other videos be politically tricky? And legally litigious?
(Disclaimer: I deliver training on a range of courses including TikTok & Reels).
This tool will give you astonishingly rich data not just by country but by local authority area, ward and also sub-areas of each ward.
You can use the tool to find age demographics, which of 22 languages is their first language, if they were born in the UK, their national identity, housing, work, education and a pile of other fields, too.
Here’s two key things to look at…
Age demographics
For a social media review, age demographics can be especially useful in building up a picture of how old people are. Use this in conjunction with Ofcom social media data which links age with preferred social media channels. This will give you pointers into which channels people are using. From there, you can tell if you are focusing in the right places.
Nationality and language
Having an idea of nationality and language can help you see if you are talking in the right language to reach people. For example, there’s a big Yemeni community in Dudley who came over in the 1960s. There’s 0.29 per cent who have Arabic as a first language. In Brent, this figure is 3.2 per cent. If you know people’s preferred languages you can better understand if your comms is reaching the right place.
Of course, a conversation with the councils equalities team to understand the best way to reach people would be a next step. But the ONS tool gives you a starting place.
The tool covers England & Wales. It’ll be interesting to see how Scotland and Northern Ireland present their data.
I was listening to the radio the other day as Spurs manager Antonio Conte was trying to explain why his side had lost.
The Italian’s response was to almost audibly shrug and blame the fans.
In football terms, a rule has been broken. The manager is often not long for the chop.
This episode got me thinking to the manager Tony Pulis who took over my team Stoke City over two spells that saw him take is to promotion, an FA Cup Semi Final and a stint in Europe.
It got me thinking to how Super Tone would handle post-match interviews.
There were three phases he’d cover.
Praise the fans. “They were the 12th man today. They never stopped getting behind us. They’re turning this place into a fortress. They know it’s Stoke-on-Trent against the rest of the world.”
Praise the players. “We were terrific. They really worked ‘aard today. X in defence really was immense. He never let Y kick the ball. The attitude of the players was first class.”
Praise and gently pressure the board. “The Coates family have done a magnificent job in charge of Stoke and they deserve full credit. They’re football people who are from Stoke-on-Trent and know what this city needs. When it comes to the transfer window I’m sure they’ll be supportive to help me get that little bit of quality in the final third.”
That’s basically it.
What was he doing? He was identifying three audiences. The fans, the players and the board. He very rarely deviated from this formula. He may shuffle the pack and deal the cards in a different order and he’d talk about the game, too. But he’d always cover those three bases.
"We made it the area against the rest. It's not just Stoke City Football Club, it's Stoke-on-Trent." 🏠
"The way the crowd got behind the team was just extraordinary." 🗣
Tony Pulis explains why away trips to the Britannia became a nightmare for top clubs in England
Each audience knew what their job was. For the fans it was to get behind the team. That they had been recognised. For players, it was a reminder of shared values. For those in charge it was an ego stroke accompanied with a reminder of what was needed. After all, you don’t just demand money, you charm money.
When Stoke were good the three constituent parts – supporters, team, manager and board – all pointed in the same direction. We all knew our job and we tended to deliver.
Remembering Tony’s post match interview, it got me thinking to how rare it was that people managing big organisations do this. How often does the chief executive thank customers, staff and those in charge?
If those in charge don’t, how are we supposed to know what our role is and get recognition when we deliver it?
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.
Those historians who predicted that we’d soon forget the pandemic were right. We largely have.
I sat with a cup of coffee today reflecting that in a few weeks time it’ll be the third anniversary of the first COVID-19 lockdown. That day in March 2020 when the country stopped to see and hear the Prime Minister address us.
Overnight, we were told, all our lives changed. We couldn’t do what we used to do. We couldn’t go to places. Do you remember? It feels such a long time ago.
Do you remember seeing an old film with crowds and worrying?
Or the metre wide markings outside supermarkets?
Or the industry of facemasks that sprung up from nowhere and faded?
What was the pandemic to public sector people? Long days with Teams calls with no end in sight. Struggling to home school while running a job. Burn out. Missing relatives.
As I drank my cup of coffee I recalled how the branch of Starbucks I was sat in was closed. As I’d gone down with suspected coronavirus my house was under quarantine in March 2020 and I couldn’t go to the shops. We lived off what we had.
Looking back, I remembered how I’d listened to a BBC Sounds podcast on the Spanish Flu and was surprised at the time at what it said about how we reacted. As soon as they could, it said, those who lived through it put the outbreak to the back of their minds and it was largely forgotten about. It was so traumatic, the programme had said, that people didn’t want to remember it.
There are no memorials to the 17 million who died of Spanish flu. I heard a TV producer talk about how of the ideas being turned into films and dramas none are COVID-related.
In the UK, 200,000 have died of COVID-19 and almost seven million globally. Almost 18 million people in the UK have tested positive.
‘All things must pass,’ I used to think on bad days. It broadly has.
But the family and friends of those who died haven’t moved on. Nor have those with long COVID.
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.
Cormac Smith was known to many through his career in local and central government. He’d also been communications advisor for Ukraine government. So when Russia invaded the country he looked for a way to make his experience count… in TV studios.
In early December 2021 I was visiting friends and former colleagues in Kyiv. Between 2016 – 2018 I had served as special advisor to the country’s Foreign Minister. Over lunch one day, a number of those present including Ukrainian diplomats suggested I should be speaking about their country on the media back in the UK, because in their words, I understood them.
Storm clouds were already gathering, they knew what was coming, so I said I would see what I could do. Long story short, I returned to the UK, hit the phones and began pitching myself as an expert on the region.
Over the next 13 months to date I have carried out in the in the region of 150 TV and Radio interviews across nine countries. As a seasoned media trainer and public speaker, the following is a summary of the lessons learned or in some cases, simply confirmed.
1. Media relations can be tough
Despite a strong resume, buckets of determination and over 30 years’ experience of selling in stories and placing interviews it took me over a month after my return from Kyiv to get my first gig. But I had made a promise to my friends; what was I going to do, except keep buggering on as Churchill once said. Finally, around mid-January, with Putin’s further invasion still over a month away I got my first interview
2. Honest tough feedback is critical
I am fortunate to have a number of professional friends and colleagues, both in the UK and in Ukraine who can be relied on to give honest feedback. Getting this feedback and acting on it to make improvements, especially in the early days was very helpful.
3. Do your research
Find out as far as possible what the interviewer wants to talk about, then prepare meticulously. Nothing will lose credibility quicker than not knowing your subject. Having said that know when to say; I don’t know.
4. Key messages are critical
Having done your research decide what you want to get across. Expect the unexpected, always answer or at least address the question but learn how to bridge back to your key messages, and bridge back as often as necessary. This takes skill and practice if you are to keep interviewer and audience happy and not antagonise them.
5. It’s not just what you say, its how you say it
As little as 10% of what we communicate is verbal. Body language and tone of voice are critical if we are to grab attention, be trusted and gain traction. Assess posture, eye contact, hand movements and facial expressions. And analyse tone of voice and pace as well as strength of delivery. All of these things combine to make you either likeable and credible, or get them wrong – and you lose your audience.
6. Find the full stop
Despite coaching others for years to be concise and economical with words this was the biggest lesson I needed to learn early on. Prime time opportunities with the likes of Nick Ferrari on LBC will generally see you get between three and four minutes. Their clock is running and if you talk too much you will be cut off and fail to get your key messages across. It was when two trusted friends and colleagues, one a Brit and one a Ukrainian diplomat, told me on the same day that I had to learn to find the full stop, that the lesson finally sunk in.
7. Develop relationships with producers and interviewers
As an interviewee part of your job is to add value to producers and interviewers lives by being easy and pleasant to deal with and guaranteeing quality content every time. The other part of your job is to get your message across consistently, credibly and memorably. Be prepared to be strong and hold your ground from time to time, but don’t get confrontational.
Summary
I have been placing stories and setting up interviews for 30 years. I did my first interview on national television almost 24 years ago. I have also been coaching others to go on TV or radio, formally or informally, for 20 years. Nothing I had done compared to the intensity or importance of what I have done for the last year. Never assume you know it all or can turn up and wing it. Preparation is key and hubris comes before many a fall. On the other hand, humility and a little bit of fear will serve you well and keep you honest.
Cormac Smith is a freelance communications consultant who specialises in a range odf areas including public speaking and media training.
