When I was a kid I fell in love with a marvellous French film that began with the words: ‘I was born in the last days of the goatherds’.
The film was an idyllic look back by an old man to his childhood in the Garden of Eden that was growing up in an idyllic lost pre-First World War Provence.
I started my career in the last days of hot metal newspapers in the early 1990s and I stayed for 12-years until the responsibility of fatherhood edged me out of the newsrooms to public sector communications. Standing outside burning factories in Smethwick was no longer as exciting as they had been. Besides, I had an extra mouth to feed.
When I left newspapers in 2005 the cracks were already appearing. Today, the busy room of 12 reporters and three photographers in a regional daily district office building which shook when the presses rumbled into activity have gone.
Like a pit head deputy, the skills I learned there were hard won but no longer valued.
The start of my career mirrors Lytollis’. He remembers the newsroom when it started where the climate of dark humour felt like home. Much of the day really did pass to a soundtrack of laughter and the journalists’ mantra: ‘for fuck’s sake.’
Lytollis’ newsroom was in Carlisle, where the News & Star sold 28,000 a day and the Cumberland News 37,000 a week. Readers would come into the front office to make a complaint rather than abuse people online.
He remembers the vox pop, where armed with a photographer the author would venture onto the streets to capture the wisdom of people on the street. I found myself nodding at the recollection of the street interviewee who will pass five minutes on a topic with a reporter and then vehemently refuse to give a name making the whole exercise a waste of time.
He recalls the Elvis tribute act and interviewing Dave Allen but also covering the story of the gunman who left a trail of dead across the county and the storms that flooded Carlisle. There is dark and shade as well as colour.
I laughed more at this book than I have done at a text for a long while. Lytollis captures the weird character of local newspapers. Their readers, subjects and reporters had an undertow of oddball. He is a Bill Bryson of what made the local rag work.
But what makes this memoir excel is not just the fond recollections and anecdotes. Something happens to the tone part way through the book. The internet lands. Sales fall. The old guard at Lytollis’ employers CN are gradually thinned out.
Renowned news brand Newsquest come in to buy the company and the cycle of job losses and being asked to apply for jobs that weld four jobs together commence.
The book does not shy away from what this feels like for those left behind an analogue artist in a digital click world. The warm colours of the author finding his feet are replaced by a sinking despair.
“Newsquest might not have been notably worse than other big local newspaper publishers. All were partial to making staff redundant,” Lytollis reports.
“All were searching for a solution that may not have existed. Newsquest demanded we slow the decline in newspaper sales while insisting that we put even more stories online.”
Newsquest as a company, Lytollis observes, likes to talk about investing in frontline journalism by cutting journalists. In 2009, the Glasgow Herald had 240 reporters and at the time of writing now has six. As a former reporter, I just can’t imagine there being any fun in local journalism when it looks like that. As a former Newsquest employee I can see they have not changed.
I commend anyone who has ever bought a local paper to buy this book.
Glancing through all of them, there aren’t huge difference between the Home nations.
Here’s how people spent that five hours 40 minutes a day.
Live TV (162 minutes) accounted for most with streaming video sites like Netflix (65 minutes) and YouTube (41 minutes) supporting.
Trends are accelerating
Things are getting faster and video is hoovering up people’s time.
“The pandemic caused an acceleration of existing viewing trends as people spent more time watching on-demand services.”
– Ofcom Media Nations, 2021
Aside from the overall boom, subscription TV services are now used by 60 per cent of all UK households adding just over an hour to the telly. Terrestrial telly has proved resilient in 2020.
Half of UK households now use a smart speaker daily with two thirds using it to listen to streaming services and 39 per cent carrying out voice search.
Radio also remains resilient with live radio on a DAB device the most popular use (63 per cent) with podcasts flat at 15 per cent.
The boom in social video remains vibrant with 82 per cent of online adults – that’s almost nine out of 10 people who are web-connected – watching it at some point in the last 12-months.
Video booms amongst all age groups
Delving into the data, video is no longer the preserve of the young. While 97 per cent of under 24s watched some kind of social video in the last 12-months that’s to be expected.
More surprising is the older 24 to 34 group were only two per cent behind and ratcheting through the age groups almost three quarters of 55 to 64-year-olds watch. Just short of half of over 65s also have watched short video in the last 12-months.
But video has been consistently high performing over the past five years.
It’s something I’ve been flagging for a good five years.
Social audio
The hot topic of social audio is also showing up in the data.
The Clubhouse app which introduced the concept hasn’t cut through with only 0.3 per cent of the population using it by March 2021.
The report flags up audio for Twitter and Facebook as something to watch. That’s fine. I’ll wait to see them become a measurable thing.
What the public sector needs to know
Toto, we’re not in 1998 anymore.
The pace of change is ever changing and it’s never going to be this slow again. The trick is to evaluate the data before flying headlong into new trends but be across those trends.
Video remains increasingly important.
Telly and radio are in a slight decline but they remain a significant chunk of how people consume the media. For the most part, what’s happening on Netflix is irrelevant as far as the public sector is concerned. But radio, that Cinderella platform, remains a thing.
I help train communications people in how to plan, shoot, edit and post effective video. You can see more here.
And so is the Facebook edit. It’s six seconds. It almost works as a long GIF.
This flies in the face of perceived wisdom that sees Facebook encourage you to post three minute video ideally or 60-scond video as a second prize. It would be fascinating to see the insights for this. Glancing at them, there’s just three shares and 70-odd likes. That’s not the best performing video content TFL has.
The people lesson
At it’s heart, this is about PEOPLE. People connect to people. People can go to stand-up shows, five-a-side shows and to the museum. It’s about THEIR experiences. The buses and tubes that TFL run are just the enablers.
The typeface lesson
There’s been masses written about the typefaces used by people like the British Rail typography. It’s unfussy and its purpose is to convey information swiftly and clearly. We have a lot of trust invested in this typeface. It tells us where to go and when. It keeps people moving and the city vibrant. By using these typefaces TFL are tapping into that.
Channel specific
The landscape video here is on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter but not on the portrait-focussed TikTok and Instagram.
We’ve reached the point where it is more of a risk NOT using WhatsApp as a comms tool than use it.
That’s the firm conclusion I’ve reached sifting through the evidence, data and research.
I’ll take you through all that and then I’ll talk about how you can negotiate the pitfalls and risk.
The data low-down on WhatsApp
Firstly, what is WhatsApp? It’s a US-based Facebook-owned messaging service founded in 2009 to connect mobile phone numbers to the internet by sending messages, video, calls and location. You can also use it on the web so long as your mobile device is switched on and connected to the internet.
In the UK, Ofcom say that 30.7 million people use it. That’s around half the population. It’s the most popular app in the UK in 2019 and 2020, according to Audience Insights. And all ages use it. It’s as close to being the all demographic magic bullet.
The numbers are incredible. Ofcom say that between seven and eight out of 10 of ALL under 54s use it and almost half over 65s. They are astounding numbers.
Why communicators are hesitant
There’s a few reasons why comms people are not charging full tilt at using it. Firstly, they’ve got plenty on already using the channels they are.
Secondly, buried in WhatsApp’s terms and conditions is the news that you are not supposed to use WhatsApp as a business tool. You’re supposed to use WhatsApp for Business which is their gateway for business to reach the 1.2 billion global users. If you’re a private company this could mean using the WhatsApp API as companies like KLM have done. Anecdotally, this route isn’t open to the public sector in the UK.
The evidence in favour of using WhatsApp is overwhelming.
So, what can you do?
Well, you can’t have two WhatsApp accounts on the same phone. This basically means buying a cheap mobile phone to download WhatsApp for Business account. So long as this is charged up and connectged tyo the internet you can download a dashboard top your laptop.
The next problem is our old p[al GDPR. You can’t just shovel phone numbers into your new WhatsApp for Business account and crack on. You can sign people up through your Facebook page if its linked to your WhatsApp for Business or you can point people to the QR code or URL. If you put some terms of use when people sign-up you should be fine for GDPR.
On top of all this, the analytics for WhatsApp right now are poor. Your message disappears into WhatsApp and you don’t see how much engagement there is. It’s a Facebook platform so this will change, I’m sure but there’s examples of people changing behaviour in part influenced by WhatsApp.
What does a WhatsApp for Business broadcast list do?
The place you want people to sign-up to is the WhatsApp for Business broadcast list.
What does this mean?
Basically, this means you can send one-way broadcast messages to up to 256 contacts and those contacts don’t see everyone else’s phone numbers and names as they would do in a WhatsApp group. You also don’t have the conversation hijacked by someone looking to undermine your message. So, Coke messages would not be diluted by someone sharing a Pepsi promotion. Or a vaccine message wouldn’t be undone by a 5G conspiracy theorist.
But the 256-contact limit is less of a sticking point than you’d think.
The 256-limit is a red herring
Of course, it would be great if WhatsApp was a kind of mailchimp substitute where you hoovered-up phone numbers and blasted them messages. The fact it isn’t makes it virgin territory for marketeers and if you can get your messages onto the network there’s more chance of it landing.
The best use of WhatsApp I’ve seen has come from a political pressure group who asked recipients to sign-up advised who to vote for in internal elections and then – this is the killer – asked them to forward the message onto other Party members.
So, in other words, if you get 10 people signed-up and they forward them onto another 10 you can get to 100 very easily.
Of course, it depends on the message that you are sending but the truth is you don’t need big numbers to start to reach people. Think of it as a Ponzi scheme for social good. You get a message and you pass it on.
It’s how Hackney Council used WhatsApp in the first weeks of lockdown to reach the observant Jewish population who didn’t use the internet. They listened to the Jewish community and understood that WhatsApp was the preferred method of keeping in touch. So they created content with WhatsApp in mind and people in the community did the rest.
Why WhatsApp is so powerful
Aside from the numbers, there’s another reason why WhatsApp is so powerful. It’s called ‘social normative theory’.
This basically means that you are more likely to be receptive to a message from your peers. Oner NHS person during a training session where we were looking at WhatsApp complained that she’d feel as though a message from the NHS on WhatsApp would be intrusive. She’s right. It would be. But that’s just it. Social normative theory means that it’s a message not from the NHS but from your brother Andy, your Mum or Dad or maybe Joanne who you work with. It flies under the radar and it’s beautiful.
Research shows that there is more misinformation on messenger platforms that across the open web. When it comes to something COVID-19 that means you can’t not be there.
Ways to use WhatsApp
There’s a range of ways to use WhatsApp. If I was working in the public sector the first thing I’d do is create a WhatsApp broadcast list for that town, city or borough’s COVID-19 news. I’d ask people in the organisation to sign-up then I’d extend it to community leaders and anyone who fancied signing up. Then I’d send them messages.
Or, it maybe that you are looking carefully at the data and you spot that the Yemeni population aren’t responding to Public Health messages and they tell you that WhatsApp is a favoured channel. At this point, it makes sense to buy a cheap £20 mobile phone to send a message to this group. You’d spend more on a display ad in the local paper or a boosted Facebook ad.
One thing to note is that if you are looking to send a video or picture plus words you need to send two separate messages.
The difference WhatsApp makes
In Singapore, the Government WhatsApp channel for COVID-19 gives out official information in four different languages. You can pick which one you’d like.
Such is the reach of the channel that around 10 per cent of the population have signed-up. Chances are those one-in-ten are forwarding the messages on to others in the population.
Researchers Liv & Tong in their research p[aper ‘Demographic data influencing the Impact of coronavirus-related misinformation on WhatsApp’ showed that severe mental health incidents were reduced by 7.9 per cent. At a time when health services are being stretched to breaking point this has real value.
This is why, dear reader, that it is more risk NOT using it than using it.
Research I carried out in May 2021 showed that just six per cent of communicators were using WhatsAopp as a communications channel. Of those that weren’t, 26 per cent said they were likely to use to use it and 26 per cent were unlikely. Almost half were undecided.
There is a small but growing user base of communicators who are experimenting with the platform. The innovators include Public Health Wales, Hackney Council, Watford Council and Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust.
Chris Lepkowski has been on both sides of the fence. He’s been a football reporter and looked after comms at a Premier League football team. Many have remarked on the breath of fresh air the England team have been at Euro 2020. How has that emerged? A change of landscape and a change of strategy. Here’s how.
The beer cans have been swept away, the bunting has been removed, the St George’s flags have been packed away. Save those for another day, another tournament, maybe even another final.
While the media wade through the mess left behind by a section of – and let’s not beat around the bush here – drugged-up, beer-fuelled monumental dickheads masquerading as football fans, you would be forgiven for thinking Euro 2020 was another tournament for inquests and pointing fingers.
On some levels it will be. And so it should.
But amid the chaos of Sunday, we shouldn’t overlook that the legacy of Euro 2020 and this group of England players. Twenty six young men, led by a manager of class and dignity.
The calm leader
Gareth Southgate is that uncle who will happily drop to his hands and knees to play with his three-year-old nephew or niece, without so much as a quibble. Invite him for dinner, and he’ll be the first one to roll up his sleeves and wade in to wash the dishes afterwards. I interviewed him a couple of times some years ago. He came across as a thoughtful, calm man…and crucially he knew that this young journalist, as I was then, needed to come away with a ‘line’ – a story my editors would deem worthy to use in the next day’s newspaper. He obliged on both occasions.
I’m not going to offer an opinion on England’s on-the-field performance – that’s for another conversation. Let’s, instead, look at what this team has brought to a nation.
The fraught past
To get where we are now, it’s important we understand the journey of an England manager against the media backdrop.
Since the 1970s it has been a relationship fraught with problems. Don Revie’s shock departure in 1977 was to stoke up the first circulation war of such, when he gave the Daily Mail’s Jeff Powell the exclusive that he was quitting the England role to take up a role with the United Arab Emirates. By doing so the world and his dog knew Revie was leaving England before his resignation letter had even been delivered to FA headquarters. In choosing the Daily Mail, Revie was also deemed to have flicked two fingers to other Fleet Street pretenders. It didn’t end well for him, with the Fourth Estate (bar the Mail, obviously) going straight for his throat.
A decade later, Bobby Robson was told ‘In the Name of Allah, Go’ following a draw with Saudi Arabia just a few weeks before Italia 90. By now, the circulation wars were in full swing, with Kelvin McKenzie’s bombastic editorship of The Sun attempting to claim readers from Maxwell’s Daily Mirror. In doing so, football managers, politicians, musicians, actors, celebrities were fair game for a sting. The more dramatic the headlines, the better. And didn’t Graham Taylor know it. Robson’s successor found himself depicted as a turnip following a defeat to Sweden during Euro 92 (Swede…Turnip, get it?) as sub-editors found novel ways to add graphics to sub-editing software. Taylor, we must add, knew what the media was about. His father had been a football journalist, so he knew the game. Even that wasn’t enough to spare him considerable barracking from the media.
The players are conditioned to deliver interviews, ensuring media are flooded with content – so there can be no complaints about access.
Fleet Street on the warpath
Fast forward through the 2000s and we saw a succession of stories threatening to derail England bosses – notably Sven-Goran Eriksson’s eye for the ladies, and a sting by the ‘Fake Sheikh’, as reported by the News Of The World. We had reports of alleged affairs, we read tales of club allegiances creating factions in squads during major tournaments. We even had an England captain banned by the FA for alleged (and unproven) racism. The so-called Golden Generation might have won a trophy or two had they invested as much time to winning football matches as they did in squabbling. Team England came across as a fairly unpleasant bunch.
In 2016, Sam Allardyce talked himself out of the England job when he spoke to Daily Telegraph investigators about how to bypass FA third party ownership rules. Yet that was reckless drop of the ball on his part, rather than a frenzied media campaign.
The press occupies a different province these days. The circulation wars are long gone, with a greater priority shifting towards digital and social delivery. The US-owned media group The Athletic revolutionised the way football was reported two years ago by effectively cherry-picking writers from the nation’s broadsheet and local newspapers. Football reporting these days is less about the soundbite and tub-thumping, more about heatmaps, data and analysis. Sure, you still get ridiculous rabble-rousing headlines on the front – but read the football writers on the back and you’ll find articulate discussion about whether Southgate should go with a back three or opt for back four.
Crucially, the Leveson Inquiry into media practice changed how stories are reported and delivered. The closure of the News Of The World also removed one of the most strident players from the tabloid market. I hazard a guess you’ll struggle to remember the last kiss-and-tell story. They’re literally old news these days.
Arriving at better comms
And so we return to Southgate. How did we reach a point where the England manager and his players were so bloody nice?
Much of it can be put down to mentality. Most elite players will come through the controlled environs of the club academy system – mainly developed as a result of English football’s investment into the Elite Player Performance Plan, a youth system initiated by the Premier League in 2012. Not only are youngsters developing in the very best environment, mentored by elite coaches, but there are high behavioural expectations. They are schooled not only how to kick a ball straight, but how to carry themselves. Clubs offer media training to ensure these youngsters are honed to speak to the media, be it in the white heat of a ‘flash interview’ immediately after a major football final, or in a 40-minute sit-down chat with the local press.
As for Southgate, he consciously wanted to make England more approachable. And the FA got their recruitment spot on. In recent years, they have brought in Communications experts who have worked for media organisations and football clubs. There has been a shift towards changing the relationship between Team England and reporters. Crucially, because of their past working experiences, these practitioners appreciated the demands and wants of journalists. (I know Senior Communications Manager Andy Walker personally – he is a top class operator, who is a huge asset to his employers).
Players are conditioned to deliver interviews, ensuring media are flooded with content – so there can be no complaints about access. Even the language and tone of messaging has been changed. Players no longer ‘face the media’ as they did in the past, immediately removing the notion that England are doing the press a favour by putting up players for interview.
There is now a culture of journalists being asked ‘what do you need?’ aware that putting up a couple of players for interviews removes the pressure for media organisations to dig elsewhere for stories. It’s common sense.
During Euro 2020, players and journalists went head-to-head in a darts league – again, another push towards improving media-footballer relations. These small things don’t appear much, but they add to the trust. Compare this to Italia 90, where a group of senior England players were filmed setting fire to a tabloid newspaper, such was their repulsion at the treatment of manager Bobby Robson. None of that these days.
Also, there is a difference in dynamic between reporting club football and the national team. Premier League footballers are the property of the club – they are huge assets. Clubs are obligated to deliver players and managers to interviews with broadcast partners. These rights holders are effectively the media who pay into the sport. These include Sky, BT, beIN, Canal +, etc. Clubs have no choice but to hold their nose and appease these broadcasters. The ‘written’ media, however, are not generally rights-holders so, while they are able to access press conferences, they will sometimes go months without a sit-down interview with a players. Some clubs are worse than others on this front. Rightly or wrongly, many Premier League clubs see little value in putting up players for interviews with traditional ‘written’ journalists.
At national level, this isn’t the case. The FA have identified there is a sense of public duty for players to speak to a bigger audience. When a player is interviewed by BBC, or talkSPORT, or the Daily Mirror, he is speaking to the country. Quite often those same reporters will have been told by club staff that, say, Jack Grealish or Bukayo Saka are unavailable for interviews. Yet, here they are with England, finding all players are fair game to be interviewed. Again, those privileges are reflected by a softer, warmer level of reporting.
More so, Team England has become the perfect antidote to an increasingly divided country. Gareth Southgate went to great lengths to explain the pre-game genuflect was a gesture against racism – not some Marxist claptrap dreamt up by deluded hard-of-thinking antagonists. By doing this Southgate effectively handed over ownership to the people. Your pick: choose decency, or choose intolerance. But you own it.
This is a group of individuals that has taken on the Government and offered greater opposition than those charged with that particular role. They have pursued empathy and inclusivity, promoting racial equality. This is a team to serve a demographic that has felt increasingly marginalised in the post-Brexit shit-storm of social decay, racial division and national tabloidisation. England’s class of 2021 has given us hope that this country isn’t as bad as we thought it was.
There is a place for decency and tolerance, after all.
Just don’t mention the penalties…
Chris Lepkowski is a sports journalism lecturer at Birmingham City University.
Here’s my five most clicked on posts and five most clicked links from my weekly email.
Clipped: I watched the 100 best TikTok videos to find the optimum length of a post
Here’s a weird one. I couldn’t find a clip talking about optimum video length for TikTok so I did the research myself in early 2020. It’s still generating traffic.
TikTok used to be a maximum of 15 seconds but has increased to 60 seconds.
The results?
The average length of the top 100 was just over 15.6 seconds – rounded up to 16 seconds.
While creators are able to make longer video the optimum length would appear to be shorter.
Guest post. Learning how to better communicate with diverse communities during COVID-19
Polly Czoik from Hackney Council’s astonishingly helpful post on reachuing diverse communities.
Each phase of the pandemic has unwrapped new challenges. Now we have a vaccine, why aren’t people coming forward to take it? Polly Cziok talks about the groundbreaking work the London Borough of Hackney have been involved with to map their diverse communities, listen to them, create bespoke content for them and then refine it. People want to be informed not manipulated. It’s an approach that is starting to work.
Madeline Sugden’s post chimed with people. It maps why social contact can often be inaccessible to a chunk of people.
Now a year on, the issue of inaccessible information in text graphics continues. Over the last few days, we’ve again seen organisations choosing to respond to issues with a statement in a graphic with no other way of reading it.
We can’t let this be the norm and let it go unchallenged. Social media needs to be a place which is accessible to everyone. We all need to do our bit. Being busy or not thinking about it is not an excuse.
Here’s a sign of the times. The Atlantic’s post on overwork was one of the most popular links of the year.
There’s also been burnout creep recently—people might talk about “midlife-crisis burnout” or being “burned out on Pilates.” But at its core, burnout is a work problem. Though wellness influencers might suggest various life hacks to help push through pandemic torpor, actual burnout experts say that tips and tricks are not the best way to treat the condition.
Facebook advertising in 2021: 6 most valuable tips for beginners
This practical guide proved to be useful.
It’s not 2016 anymore – the era of a relatively easy organic reach is long gone. There have been lots of updates on the Facebook algorithm during the last couple of years. Most important of them being the way posts appear in the feed.
The story of Dr John Snow plotting cholera deaths and working out it was coming from an infected pump is a thing of wonder.
The result was the famous Cholera Map, which proved that infections were concentrated around a specific water pump — which was itself connected to a local cholera-ridden cesspit.
John Snow’s findings transformed how public authorities responded to the disease. They also contributed to the revolution in sanitation infrastructure in London — and other cities around the world — in decades to come.
Cumbria County Council’s home COOVID-19 test video
Abi, the daughter of a comms person, starred in this video which came at a time when we were trying to work out how testing worked.
Secondary pupils will do regular COVID-19 tests when they go back to school and many are anxious about it. To help, Abi offered to demonstrate what doing a test involves. She was pretty nervous herself but now she knows it’ll be OK. Please share with your children if they are worried and you think it will help.
Caution: This is not one of my regular blog posts about communications. If football or the early internet is not your thing skip this. Normal service will be resumed.
Where I learned to spot internet rumours
Everything I learned about the internet came from late 90s internet messageboards.
These places were early social media. You signed up with a pseudonym and then you took part in earnest debates on niche subjects.
With me, it was Stoke City and the Oatcake Messageboard set-up by the editors of the well-established The Oatcake fanzine.
That was the place where I first fell for internet rumours when ‘Lee Trundle seen in Hanley estate agents’ threads circulated. And I realised that you had to take things with a pinch of salt.
It was a community and as such had friends and enemies. You can still find it online. It has 4.9 million posts and represents a tremendous piece of Stoke and internet history.
One related forum was for League One fans. One regular poster was someone called Valiantitus who may or may not be real. He used to give detailed accounts of Port Vale games where goals were always greeted with BOOM! BOOM! BROOKER AWAG! LIQUID FOOTBALL GOAL EXPLOSION!
As a comic creation, this was Alan Partridge meets Fantasy Football.
There is little of his writing left on the web.
This is the Valiantitus match report when England reached the 2002 World Cup.
It’s why in homage I greet goals the same way.
Valiantitus’s England match report England v Greece
it was BECKHAM pure magic dream free kick dipping goal explosion crowd explosion england pubs explosion birches head explosion all over the country AWAG EXPLOSION as England make the world cup somewhere next year
“it is was and a game of greatness of important happenings with so much to go from and places to go i it was england vs greece and it was but not as many people thought it would turn out it did the way that it went but Old trafford sixty thosand people together as one though some say it could of been more but it they came out always a strange tunnel in the corner but boom god save the queen faithful and triumfant victorious long and faithful god save the queen they sung even beckham and then it kicked off and once again we watched it in the living room no problems no touch of frost this time to hold things back but it was saturday not wednesday night like last time and a day time kick off as nothing is on tv saturday afternoons maybe war films with soldiers but it was england match of the day me carl and step dad all around the table and monopoly but all eyes on england and eyes on motson who could not be seen but focused and kick off and it was ready
it was england but it was like them but it was not right not like germany and carl said maybe it was a one off then but it was england struggling like at newcastle it was hard and greek were fast and strong and going totally awag with outfield football ability and made england look like chesterfield but it was they were on top which is never right and never good to watch england playing like chesterfield all over the place and greece throwing everything chance after chance england no answer and no attacks scholes and gerrard going awag in a bad way inthe middle of the park which is never a good sign we started with the Monopoly again from last night but the game was still left to be played and i am the tophat carl is the car and my step dad the boat and i own the gas works but it was harry selars for greek bang boom cross shot well struck greece goal explosion go directly to jail land on park lane at the same time which carl then bought but it was england madness and the bull fighters had taken the lead and then nothing better from england it was half time not looking good as i went for a ghost poo not using any paper to wipe which was lucky
then the second half happened they came out attacking a goal surrounded by england fans but it was the same as before only a different direction but it was all england behind both goals the greeks i do not now maybe well hidden we had chicken and chips to eat in between but no gravey then both Englandand monopoly kicked off again move past go two hundred fake pounds please as barmby went off who was poor on the left wing first half but on came cole who is rubbish at times but good but can be poor but did well and got the defence of the greeks in a muddle and cole behind power shot well saved but still mixed from england and all playing badly but appart from beckham who is he was iseverywhere doing everyones job but only him and martin in goals are doing us proud then it happened on comes sheringham on he comes as sub off goes someone maybe fowler i cant remeber as i was buying hotels on regent street at the time but then corner ball down the left beckham crosses sheringham power bounce header boom bang goal england score and it was is 1-1 sheringham only on the pitch 2 seconds maybe less but first touch england are level immense old trafford ground explosion and i buy a house on old kent road
it is it now england are back and are looking to destroy the bull fighters but then with the crowd building up in to an awag volume exposion it was greeks again the minute later keown or ferdanand falls over slip slide gentle placement goal in to the corner 1-2 and carl throws the momopoly comunity chest across the room in temper cards go everywhere so much is shattered what now england let slip no way back but just like vale always hope and germany still being held by finland at home stay like this and england do go out but it will not happen more subs made macamanaman on for ash cole going all attack now and a couple of good chances but now only 5 minutes left of normal ref time greek goalkeeping man having total blinder nothing goes in just like goodlad when on form but it keeps going and england need it bad injury time added four minutes as carl wins monopoly building hotelson the gas works does not count but it is england moving forward 2 minutes left attacks more foiled again last minute of injury time arrives sheringham wins free kick 30 yards out but who to take beckham or gerrard but it is beckham had so many free kicks that after noon all not good but this one he can do it needs something special like brammer or mills about him from a dead ball situation steps up englands last hope smack bang boom curl bending goal dipping power goal explosion top corner AWAG not BROOKER but BECKHAM 2-2 as Old Trafford rose as one last minute and it is ultimate awag at its best and it is germany draw held no goals at home to finland or poland can not remember all a blur but it was BECKHAM pure magic dream free kick dipping goal explosion crowd explosion england pubs explosion birches head explosion all over the country AWAG EXPLOSION as England make the world cup somewhere next year and we had some tea to celebrate and will play monopoly again later
England Player ratings
Player ratings
Nigel Martin 8 (Englands best player who played in goal today for england and made some good saves to stop nasty bad things happening and becoming real)
Gary Neville 6 (it was neville he is not great but can be good in a good way but today he did get forward but not at his best which is rare anyway but he was there is no one better which is a shame at right back)
Ashley Cole 6 (not special but it he i mean is a good one for future events is ok but could of done better but let people get in behind which is never good)
Martin Keown 6 (old now but still has a brain in his head inside his skull which is in his head but he is old now)
Rio Ferdanand 6 (lots of talent a bit like michael walsh at vale but ferdanad is to cocky)
Steven Gerrard 5 (poor and not good i said before alcohol plays havocwith my tail maybe it was him drinking in mid week that affected his preformance i just do not now but he was poor)
David BECKHAM 10 (all were poor today outfield but BECKHAM wasthere doing things like a combination of Bridge Wilkinson Brammer and Naylor everywhere doing so much made a goal scored a goal)
Paul Scholes 5 (not he was not good he was bad had a volley well saved in the box but not good a passanger and kept not finding players in england shirts with his short passes)
Robbie Fowler 5 (did not go and do what it was it what the people said and score goals does things but is a poacher not enough hard work and things but a bit of an anigmer if truth be told)
Emile Heskey 6 (does things and is strong can be good but is not good at other times needs to do better more often like germany)
Nick Barnby 5 (not good but he can be but yet another who did not do well and did not link up i do not now)
subs Teddy Sheringham 8 (sent the crowd in to pre awag moment of joy with a goal but was cut short but did well other wise)
Steve Macamanaman 6 (not much to make an impact but did not make as many mistake as in the last game for England at Newcastle)”
I’ve lost count of the number of people asking about TikTok.
If middle managers are suggesting TikTok something is clearly happening.
First things first. Cards on the table. I’m slightly sceptical of emerging platforms.
Until they become used by a decent number of people I keep an eye on them. This way, I’ve avoided the hype around Google Buzz, Google Wave and Google Plus.
Just because people suggest it doesn’t always make it a good idea.
But several things make TikTok a real proposition in the public sector.
Here’s your break-down…
The numbers say take TikTok seriously
There are npw 12 million TikTok users in the UK.
Not only that, but they’ve surged to a particular demographic. Ofcom data says almost half UK 16 to 24s use the platform. So, if you need to reach this particular demographic then TikTok is a strong way to do it.
But it’s not just under 24s
While the platform is big with this group it would be wrong to dismiss it as a ghetto for Generation Z.
TikTok are trying really hard to make the platform reach older groups of people too. Watch a Euro 2020 game and you’ll see what I mean. You’ll see TikTok ads around the perimeter as one of the event sponsors.
They’ve also taken out shirt sponsorship of Wrexham FC who are owned by high profile Hollywood duo Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.
Again, these football matches are places where older demographics see the brand name.
Take also the ease to download a TikTok video. If you’ve been scrolling through Facebook or Twitter over the last 12-months the cute dog video you may have seen may well have had the tell-tale TikTok branding.
While other platforms like YouTube guard their content and make it hard to rip them TikTok serves it up on a plate to make it sharable. They really want you to share it in WhatsApp or Facebook.
Me? In the 12-months I’ve been dabbling I’ve ended up following a number of people who don’t do your typical stuff aimed at younger people.
Get over yourself
Firstly, there’s things to be appalled about. There’s a lot of females dancing. Some of them I’m not entirely sure how old they are and I’m entirely sure their parents would have a view of their clothing choice.
I’ve also heard communicators in their 40s be appalled at the rapid edits and K-Pop backing music that can be found on the platform. Wise up, Grandma. Get over yourself. Those videos aren’t aimed at you. The fast edits work on the platform best.
I’ve also heard communicators be appalled at the site of dancing nurses at the start of the pandemic. They may have as point. But I’d argue that setting a tone and direction is important rather than refusing to work with it. There is much more to TikTok than dancing staff if you try.
Then there’s the Information Commissioner’s Office’s questions over the data privacy of children and impending legal action over the topic. Those are things to be aware of.
TikTok is bending over for advertisers
Another factor to take into account is TikTok are making a big push with advertising agencies and businesses. A string of companies are advertising with the platform in the UK and there’s resources to make the process easier.
The big flaw for the public sector however is that advertising can only be localised to the ‘UK’ rather than to say, Dudley in the West Midlands. Or more specifically brass band enthusiasts who are engaged support Stoke City and who live in Dudley. In that department, Facebook platforms still have the edge.
But in the US TikTok are trialling TikTok city-by-city ads.
Broadly, it shows a direction of travel.
The TikTok for Business platform is a good place to have a look at. You’ll find a lot of resources and some data to help you understand the platform.
How to create content?
And this is the $64,000 dollar question.
A load of people have looked at TikTok and scratched their heads. They see the argument and they struggle with exactly how to do it.
There are some filters to think of before going down this path.
More than 70 per cent of people come to TikTok for entertainment. So, if your content is not entertaining it won’t work. If that rules out swathes of what you do that’s fine. It’s worth knowing now.
How to videos work as do place marketing, tourist information, tips and tricks about a place and some good relevant knowledge.
I have to break it to you know that making dull content on a dull subject always fails.
The cunning line from TikTok is ‘Don’t make ads, make TikToks.’
It’s a clever one. They want you to create content that fits into the platform.
As I understand it, they’re lucky to have a full-time videographer on the payroll with an eye for a shot and a willingness to experiment.
This video from Liverpool, for example, has had 25,000 views and records the progress the city has made from April 2020 to the first dance night test night 12-months later.
Now, if you watch that it doesn’t look like a council product, does it?
That said, I’m not convinced that corporate channels are always the way to go. Good luck to innovators like Liverpool but a one-person comms team will never come near to them.
The NHS has a channel to their credit but this feels like more of a repurposing of existing content than a warm embrace of it. There are others too.
The working with creators idea
TikTok have been pointing large brands down the route of working with established TikTok creators. In other words the people who craft effective video on the platform can make your TikTok with you. You can potentially find them on creator marketplace.
What they mean by this route is to create something that works on the platform and has the spirit of the platform rather than cutting and pasting existing content.
This approach led to this cracking video for M&S Food whereby a singleton creator celebrated the food by making a slightly pastiche video that saw her tucking in alone to a M&S meal deal.
It has all the breathy ‘This isn’t food, this is M&S food’ schtick but the twist is it’s for one.
Take a look:
It’s a cracking video.
It’s clearly on brand but playing with it.
Of course, these formal routes probably aren’t open to most parts of the public sector. But it does raise the really important concept of encouraging others to create content for you either by approaching them or by setting a challenge that people can pile in on.
The joining in with a challenge or creating one idea
Making a video with a hashtag is a good way of getting it in front of people who are scrolling through loads of content with the hashtag.
For example, there’s the #accentchallenge hashtag.
This video by user @ceeceejax is a video in response to one poster by someone from Northern Ireland to say a list of words on your local accent, like ‘baby’, ‘water’ and ‘film’.
The end result shows a celebration of local dialect.
If you were looking to reach a Black Country audience on TikTok, this is one way to start doing that with the right hashtags added.
‘Baby’ ‘water’ ‘film’ and ‘got yer jab, bab?’ would go down a storm in the Black Country.
The venue account idea
For this, the venue is the thing.
Full props to the Black County Living Museum on this who have set a high bar with their fun and educational videos that both embrace the sprit of TikTok but also their mission to educate.
They also don’t shy a way from the fact this is work and takes time, planning, shooting and editing. But they get brilliant results with 1.2 million followers which they’ve seen translate into visits to the website.
Interestingly, their Facebook is different and more about celebrating nostalgia. Their TikTok isn’t because it’s a different audience. That’s such a big lesson.
The employee channel idea
The NHS is particularly good at this.
Here, Dr Karan Raj has an account where he gives basic medical tips that he think people will find useful. Why you should not take ibuprofen on an empty stomach, for example.
In this one, its what people need to know about the latest COVID-19 wave.
Other nurses, doctors and paramedics are also on TikTok making content.
That said, most of these NHS channels don’t feel as though they are official. Good, because that’s their strength.
But what makes TikTok different?
I’ve spoken at length about the numbers and the approaches. You may be wondering what that is.
TikTok is a portrait video platform that throws video at you. It starts on the For You screen where TikTok shows you things it thinks you’ll like based on previous viewing.
Click through to ‘Following’ and you’ll see people who you follow.
You can search with ‘discover’ and tap through on the hashtags added to videos you watch.
More than 90 per cent of TikTok users just watch rather than create but if you did want to make things there’s a stack of tools and functionality within the editing functionality.
The single truth that works just as well today as it did on my first day in a newsroom is this…
‘News is people.’
Back then, I was told to put people in photographs that would appear in the paper so Mums, Dads and aunts and uncles would buy extra copies of the paper and maybe a photographic print.
Today, I want people in the social content because they’ll share it online and so will Mums, dads and aunts and uncles.
If you are looking to make sense of TikTok then the European Championships of 2020 are a perfect time to do it.
Aside from being one of the event sponsors the platform is also a hub of creativity.
One of the ways you can be creative is to use a particular licensed track. Adding a hashtag to it means your video can be thrown into a huge pool of videos all with the same hashtag.
If you liked one then you can binge watch as many as you like.
Buoyed by England beating Germany the morning after I downloaded a dozen different videos with the same track and hashtag to show you.
There’s a TikTok from England player Jack Grealish using match action footage, a gardening project, family watching the game and celebrating, an old folk’s home, jubilant friends, a fan park, a female supporter, a baby and an American girlfriend recording her boyfriend as he watched the game.
Dig in.
A few words about the concept of singing ‘Football is Coming Home’.
When Stoke fans sing ‘We’re by far the greatest team the world has ever seen’ they’re dreaming.
When England fans sing the Baddiel & Skinner song they’re generally doing the same.
