YOUNG DATA: What Beatfreaks’ The 2nd Dose youth insights can teach communicators

A marketing manager who has clocked-up 21 million likes on TikTok was asked why her organisation – a museum – were using TikTok.

‘Because we want to reach under 24s, don’t you’, was her answer.

The answer in pretty much all organisations should be that yes, the under 24s are pretty important. But I suspect there reemains a block amongst communicators.

I get why. Time is limited. People who are commissioning your work may not see that age group as important. Properly reaching them means learning a new set of skills with a new set of channels and that’s an extra task in a busy day.

Part of the block is also not understanding the age group. This is where Beatfreeks’ The 2nd Dose youth trends research comes in really handy. With a younger audience, I’ve long advocated talking with them to work out what’s important and how best to reach them.

I’m a bloke in my 40s. I don’t know from lived experience what this demographic think. I’d head to insight and I’d ask them which is what the report does,

Why is this research handy? It’s UK-based. Its data collection is also late 2021 and mid-pandemic.

Here’s what public sector people need to know

First, the brass tacks.

What’s Generation Z?

Generation Z are people who were born from the late 1990s to 2010. That means they’re aged 11 to to around 24. For the purpose of the Beatfreaks report its 16 to 24.

They’re the group who succeeded Millennials who are born from 1981 to 1996. In 2021, these are aged 25 to 40.

What the report says

89 per cent of Gen Z think of themselves as creative people

In other words, people who are used to making, selecting, clicking and dreaming have a set of skills where creating is the norm.

I’ve often spoken to someone whose aim is to make video as good as their son or daughter. This quantifies it.

A crucial factor is that there are simply more outlets and opportunities to exercise creativity than ever before. First, the (sometimes) democratising internet has rendered it’s users curators of their own museums and galleries, stockers of their own newsstands, DJs on their own stations, window dressers of their own arcades. We’re all now faced with an almost endless number of options for content, our feeds becoming more and more personal, where we can pick what to consume and when we want to consume it.

Beatfreeks 2nd Dose Report

But anxiety is widespread and empathy is valued

37 per cent anxious at big events, the report says. The long shadow of COVID-19 hasn’t gone.

Mental health problems which were prevalent amongst Gen Z before lockdown haven’t gone.

Anxiety is changing how people think. The report says that this was the case pre-COVID-19 and the pandemic has accelerated that. Those with teenagers at home can relate to this.

Five children in a classroom of 30 are likely to have a mental health problem, they quote the Childrens Society as saying.

Empathy is highly valued, their research says.

They believe in equality and want to shape the future

This is a group who know they have years ahead of them and want to change the world they live in, the report says.

Black Lives Matter, climate emergency and other campaigns have left a mark. They believe in equality and they want to change in work and out of it.

But 92 per cent thought that the pandemic was a chance to make positive changes.

To respect a brand, the report says, it needs to be making an improvement in the world.

One of things which has been made clear throughout by this group, as well as many others, is that matters of equality, diversity and inclusion, are not going to go away. Pressure has mounted in the mainstream over the past two years.

Diversity cannot just sit across marketing and HR but rather needs to be embedded in all parts of corporate strategy.


Working with Gen Z on their vision of the future is the most effective way to sustain organisations and build the Institutions of the Future. In understanding, learning from and working with young people to
forge culture, to change narratives, and to challenge norms, organisations will slowly begin to change today, so that they’re still around tomorrow.

Beatfreeks The 2nd Dose report

This optimism is good to see but it needs to be tapped into by those who can tap into it.

Social media is positively embedded in Gen Z

For good and for ill social media is something that is part of the life of a 16 to 24-year-old.

The report says that 99 per cent of this demographic use at least one platform but how they use it can be different to how older people use it. That chimes with Ofcom data.

We’re told that young people are slaves to their tablets and are missing out. The data says that’s not broadly true.

Social media is seen by the majority as a positive with 60 per cent said it brightened their day – four times as many as had a negative view.

We need, and rely on, these platforms to connect, for escape, for belonging.

Whilst there is little debate about the evolution of our use of social media, we still often settle for the dated and aged view that social media = anxiety.

Beatfreeks The 2nd Dose report

Interestingly, there are a range of reasons why young people use social media. Education, for friends and for entertainment were amongst the most popular.

Older people may use it to check football scores or keep in touch with family. Young people’s use is far more broad than that. It’s a cornerstone of their life.

What content works best? Visual story telling.

Career isn’t important but doing something they love is

A further trend is that career isn’t really something that’s a strong motivator.

More than half say they feel burnt out with salary, work life balance and good people to work with important.

Perhaps surprisingly, they aren’t bothered about working exclusively remotely. Just eight per cent want this – that’s a third of the rest of the population.

Conclusion

For public sector communicators, the Generation Z demographic who fit into the 16 to 24 age group are a demographic at home with social media whose lives are improved by it.

They want to improve the world they live in and value empathy and equality.

They are an audience of their own and what’s also clear is that they should be treated as an audience in their own right. If you want to reach them you need to understand them and create content that’s pitched to them.

It’s tempting to think that the Facebook page post will reach everyone. It won’t and this is further evidence.

GUEST POST: How we re-thought our diversity and inclusion communications

Following a discussion at a CommsCamp session on diversity and inclusion, Ian Curwen has written this blog about his own organisation’s changing approach to inclusion communications.

How often do you review the way you do something? Really review it? 

I’ve been involved with diversity and inclusion communications for five years. Over that time, we’ve done some great things, some award-winning things. Despite this, in recent months, I’ve had a growing, nagging doubt that something wasn’t right. That the approach wasn’t working as it should. 

This is why we’ve reviewed our inclusion communications approach to reach a decision that we’re going to do less, to achieve more.

Like many organisations, our diversity and inclusion journey is a relatively recent one. At least in terms of a structured, coordinated approach. It was 2016 when we decided to take a more focused route, through a series of communications campaigns and awareness events and days.

This approach has undoubtedly raised awareness of issues we’d never spoken about before and it showed a commitment to changing our organisation. We know they got employees talking and that the discussion – good or bad – was a positive thing. 

However over time, it started to feel a little tokenistic. 

The trouble with awareness days is that they come around every year. Of course, that’s not a bad thing, but each year should be different. To stick with the journey analogy, each year should mark another step from awareness to advocacy.

I’m not sure that was always the case. Yes, we were able to share some new content, from a new angle, but was it just a different way of saying the same thing?

Awareness-raising only gets you so far.

Growth and reach

We have seen results from our diversity and inclusion approach. We’ve now got more than a dozen employee networks, and more than 1000 of our 10,000 strong workforce are considered advocates and ambassadors in this field. 

So, now we’re focused on reaching the other 9,000. We want to become a truly diverse organisation, where people are respected, included and able to perform at their best.

To achieve this, we have to go beyond news stories and case studies. We have to change behaviours. 

Re-think your content priority

This means, from a communications point of view, we are prioritising content which:

  1. Helps show how we’re making improvements and changes that contribute to us achieving our diversity & inclusion strategy aims and objectives
  2. Has a clear link to our diversity and inclusion narrative and identified priorities
  3. Is relevant and relatable to our employee audience, focusing on simple messaging through accessible channels

Good communications are those which show the impact of the changes we’re making on the diversity of our workforce.

So, we’re no longer simply telling people it’s International Women’s Day. We’re talking about the things we’re doing to reduce the gender pay gap and promote female role models. We’re asking employees to consider their own behaviour and unconscious biases.

We’re talking about the challenges our employees have experienced – because of their sexuality, race, religion or nationality. 

We’re making it clear what acceptable and unacceptable behaviour looks like and we’re and we’re asking people to call the latter out – and providing them with the tools, support and empowerment to do so.

Building on what’s worked

However, please don’t think we’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We’re keeping what has worked well, and we’re building on it. 

At the same time as we sharpen our corporate communications, we’re also supporting our employee networks to produce their own communications. We’re ensuring they have the skills to produce materials which meet our corporate standards and expectations – even if some might consider them a little ‘wonky’. We know this adds authenticity. 

By doing this, these groups can communicate more easily with their target audiences – current and potential members. 

While they do this, we’re using their experiences and their initiatives to showcase the changes we’re making. We’re continuing to prioritise people-led stories as the way of putting a face to what can be an emotive and challenging change journey. 

This is a shift but is one we have buy-in to. 

We have this because we’ve shown the value of the approach. We’ve done it through considered communications campaigns, supported by research and data. 

The evidence shows that these are the communications that spark the most discussion, that teams wish to explore in more detail. They’re the ones that lead to suggestion from our workforce, and to the creation of new support networks. They’re the ones that encourage connections and help people to perform at their best. 

Ian Curwen works in diversity and inclusion communications in the public sector.

30 days of human comms #79 The A&E matron tired of abuse from patients

We are in a difficult stage of the pandemic with tempers fraying.

NHS staff are feeling the brunt and the days of clapping for carers for many feel long gone.

“I think we generally feel that people don’t see us as humans.” Rachel Heeley, A&E Matron at Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, talks about the barrage of verbal and physical abuse staff at her hospital are experiencing on a daily basis.

The power of this is hearing directly from a nurse.

These are her words.

It shows that human comms comes from the heart and without side or spin. They can’t be polished. That these words have gone through the medium of media interview gives an extra layer of acrutiny.

Bravo, Rachel and bravo Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital.

30 days of human comms #78 The Dad whose daughter was killed

‘Drivers, look out for cyclists.‘

It’s a simple message but statistics show that not all of them do.

In 2020, 140 were killed.

In 2012, someone I knew was one of them not far from the Olympic Park.

But numbers only become stories when there is a human face on them.

In this case, two faces. That of Josephine Gilbert and her Dad Bobby.

Here, Bobby does the talking because two years earlier his daughter was killed by a man banned from driving.

A 10-minute film is long for Facebook but the power of the story carries it.

Well done, Derbyshire Constabulary.

30 days of human comms #77 South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue’s discussion between black firefighters

Normally, I take a dim view of YouTube clips more than three or four minutes… and this one is 19 minutes.

Despite it being far longer than the optimum YouTube length the video works really well.

Really, it’s more of a Facebook Live. It’s a chat between two people about an issue and 20 minutes is the right length for a live video.

In a nutshell, the first black firefighter with South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Trevor Bernard who has just retired talks with a firefighter Aayon with three years service.

It’s also a very honest chat for Black History Month.

The world doesn’t smell of paint.

Trevor is clearly proud of his service but doesn’t shirk the fact that he felt he had to work twice as hard to prove himself. There were people against black firefighters when he started, he says.

The more recent recruit also says that he grew up never seeing a black firefighter.

There’s elements in here that could be seen as tricky.

Some people from the Afro Caribbean community won’t join uniformed services on principle, one of them says.

This is why it’s good human comms… it’s honest.

From a delivery point of view, South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue score brownie points by uploading a 16-minute clip to Facebook, upload ther same length clip to YouTube and a 19-second taster for Twitter.

Bravo, South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue.

30 Days of human comms #76 Shropshire Council’s weather warning written with wit

It’s been a while since I blogged about human comms and now I’m writing three in a week.

Bravo Shropshire Council not for a human story but for speaking in human.

It’s a recognisable language that you recognise when you see it.

In this case, their Twitter account wanted to warn of inclement weather.

Rather than link to their website in a very 2009 way they built a thread and used a GIF of BBC weather forecaster Michael Fish who famously dismissed what ended up to be a massive night of weather in 1987.

The link is here…

Marvellous work, Shropshire.

FACEBOOK: Data-driven tips for your 2022 Facebook strategy

I was running through some fresh Facebook data and it seems as though the blunting of Facebook pages is even more marked than I thought.

If you’re a Facebook page admin you’ll have seen your organic reach struggle of late, I’m sure.

But data released by Facebook in the ‘Widely Viewed Content Report: What People See on Facebook’ shows just how much the reach of pages in the newsfeed has fallen.

Facebook page reach falls lower than groups and friends and family

According to the numbers, posts from friends and family in the second quarter of 2021 was 57 per cent, groups joined was 19.3 per cent and pages at 14 per cent. Unconnected posts accounts for 8 per cent and other 1.5 per cent.

Now, there is a disclaimers to attach to this. Firstly, these are US stats from earlier in the year. Secondly, the algorithm is ever changing.

But there is enough to take this as a good representative feature on what the UK picture also looks like.

What this teaches us is that your page content organically isn’t doing much.

Make content that encourages meaningful interactions

Take more time on creating better content. For that we can go back to something Mark Zuckerburg in 2018.

“You’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard – it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”

Mark Zuckerburg, 2018.

What does meaningful interactiosn mean?

It means a back and forth discussion and replying to questions for a start.

This National Trust post is designed to encourage discussion. The more discussion the more reach when they have something important to say.

Make content to share with Facebook groups

Get to know the Facebook group admins that are likely to share your post.

Sharing details of a new museum exhibition into the local history group is one thing.

Sharing a request for memories or items from the 1960s when the Glass Cone in Stourbridge employed 100 people is even better.

This post from We Love Walsall Leather Museum shows some good interaction between the page and users.

Steer away from links that aren’t to Facebook

The data also confirmed that posts with links don’t do very well.

Posts with links accounted for 12.9 per cent of all content seen leaving the remaining 87.1 per cent posts with no links.

It’s long been no secret that posts with links get scored down by Facebook. Why? Because they don’t want you to leave the site. Why would they want to send you elsewhere? However, the link penalty doesn’t apply if you are sending people tio another corner of Facebook.

So in other words, links to your website are bad but links to other corners of Facebook, like a page post or event are fine.

Rethink

For some, this may be enough to make them re-think their strategic approach. There has been a clamour driven by business behaviours to quit Facebook. The problem for a public sector communicator is that Facebook is where the audience is. With more than 40 million users, this is the platform that has the potential to reach the most people.

It’s not 2016 anymore.

Have a rethink.

I deliver ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER programme. This is a five-part online training which looks as part of it at ways to create content that gets on the right side of the algorithm. More here.

ABUSE: Reasonable steps to combat the online abuse of public sector people

Reasonable people are shocked at the killing of MP David Amess.

But this shines a wider light on the issue of online hate around the wider process of democracy.


One MP’s constituency manager interviewed on BBC Radio 4 spoke of logging 100 death threats a week.

But I’m also sure in local government, elected members are also threatened. 

The LGA have a really useful download on handling intimidation that you can find here that can help people in the public eye. 

Data says that comms people are in the firing line

In the most recentb set from June 2021, of the 400 respondents who work in pubklic sector comms, 30.4 per cent have seen verbal abuse aimed at their organisation, 13.2 per cent have had it aimed at them or a member of staff, 6.3 per cent have revieded threats of violence and 8.3 per cent have seen racist abuse.

That’s all on a weekly basis.

Anecdotally, going back several years people in comms have been stalked online and have taken time off with their mental health. 

To act is to be reasonable

Now, this isn’t on a par with being stabbed in person but this is part of the side wash of the wider problem that should be taken seriously. 

I’ve blogged before on the legal requirement to log threats as health and safety issues. Why? Two reasons. Because the law classifies a threat as violence in the workplace and it’s the law to log them and for the employer to take steps. 

When I cover this in training on how to handle comment, criticism and abuse there’s often surprise. 

Right now, in too many places it’s just seen as a part of the job to just shrug off. 

That’s just not good enough. 


Reasonable managers will be happy to act on this. 

COVID COMMS: What do communicators do when cases are rising but people are getting bored?

Today, 157 people died of COVID-19 and a public sector comms person talked of how we are living in a ‘post-COVID’ world.

If we are truly living in an after the pandemic world then someone also needs to tell the 45,066 people in the UK who tested positive today.

And that’s the problem.

How do we communicate with people on a topic where people appear to have got bored?

Consumption of COVID-19 messaging is dropping

Ofcom data would suggest that our consumption of pandemic-related news has dropped.

In their latest data release, 73 per cent of UK people are looking for coronavirus news every day. That compares with 97 per cent in the first four weeks of the first lockdown.

The places where get our pandemic information have broadly remained the same but the numbers have fallen.

The BBC was the dominant channel for news in the first weeks of lockdown 1.0 with 79 per cent getting information from it and that’s dropped to 63 per cent.

Maybe the only place where the numbers have remained the same have been friends family and neighbours. In the early weeks,. this was around 30 per cent and that’s stayed about the same.

As for councils and local NHS, their COVID-19 messages are getting through to between five and six per cent of people in October 2021.

Across official channels, that’s now at 27 per cent.

Anecdotally, public sector communicators say they are spending less time on the topic than they have been.

Of course, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

We’re tolerating high rates in the UK – for now

Hannah Devlin wrote an engaging piece in The Guardian that looked at the UK’s high rates of infection compared with the rest of the world.

The article quotes Linda Bauld, professor of public health at University of Edinburgh:

“We’ve become used to something that has not gone away. I think there’s been a desensitisation to the mortality.”

The moment where the change kicks in may be when it appears that hospitals may be running out of beds, Devlin ponders.

We are built to react to change, she writes, not deal with a background noise of the same, she says.

So, what do we do? We plan

I’m struck by something that a Commscamp Still At Home attendee said in a session.

Jim Whittington, a communicator who has decades of experience dealing with large scale fires in incident that can last for months, said that one of the key roles is planning. Short and long term can take several hours a day. It’s the only way to stop you from getting out of a reactive mode, he said.

Part of that planning needs to factor in the fact that communicators are often broken, with mental health issues and physical health deteriorating.

Not only that, but Brexit-related shortages are also very much in view.

With winter approaching, it feels like teams and local resilience forums need to get into that planning mode.

VIDEO EDIT: Five video trends for 2022 and what to do about them

As a communicator, I want to talk to people in effective ways and for the last few years this has been increasingly video.

It’s been a while since I blogged specifically about video so with my online video skills training now back up and airborne again I thought it an idea to do some horizon scanning.

The first thing to tell you is the popularity of video as content.

Video is the most popular type of content

Video is the content most people reach for in 2021, according to Animoto.

More than 80 per cent prefer video bearing images (68 per cent), text (31 per cent) and stories (30 per cent).

So, if video is what works, think about what video will work.

AR and video

Tech journalist Kris Kolo tweeted this short clip which made me smile. Watch it and you’ll see why.

Smart glasses download Augmented Reality software to put a smile on the faces of those you go past on your morning commute. How refreshing.

Augmented reality is a preserve of the under 24s with a global survey pointing to 24 per cent of web users from this demographic using AR in the previous month.

Augmented Reality is also something that Facebook are looking at expanding and that’s an indicator of where things will go.

This is a lived video experience rather than a recorded one and is an on-the-horizon trend rather than one that’s essential.

Working with TikTok creators

The daunting learning cliff that TikTok poses is that it has a language all of its own.

‘Don’t make an ad, make a TikTok’ is the platforms advice. Or in other words, make something bespoke for the platform. Don’t shoehorn in something from somewhere else.

Photomyne is an app that allows people to use their phone to scan old photographs and convert them to a digital file.

Instead of making their own videos they worked with TikTok creators through the platform’s own clearing house to make 12 organic posts with creators. The best performing ones they then turned into Spark Ads.

This led to a 27 per cent conversion rate for app installs – which is what they were after.

While this exact route isn’t open to everyone the idea of working with creators absolutely is.

This is one creator’s story of converting her brother Mohammed’s only picture into a digital file.

Instagram will be a video platform

Instagram’s change of direction needs repeating.

They want to see themselves as a video platform and not just a picture platform.

You can use this as more evidence on the onward march of video and how all social media is including video in what they do.

Adam Mosseri put the cat amongst the pigeons in this video which talking through the change of direction.

On Facebook, video still performs powerfully

Earlier in the year, I blogged on how Mark Zuckerburg spoke of how half of all time spent on Facebook is spent watching video.

That trend continues with Facebook revealing the majority of top performing posts including either a picture or video. If you don’t have one or the other the clear signal is that you are going to struggle.

If LinkedIn are getting involved with live video it must be a thing

Live has been a feature of the video landscape for a number of years.

Facebook has been at it for some time and have been joined by others including Instagram, YouTube and also… LinkedIn.

The format can work really well. Behind the scenes tours, Q&As and interviews are all content that perform well.

But the fact that LinkedIn now has gone down the path of live again shows a direction of travel.

At the moment, this is for approved members but you can see the tool being rolled out.

I help deliver ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED online training. You can find out more and book a place here.

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