Dan Slee

 

And all of a sudden Facebook Live has burst from the shadows to be the important platform it was always going to be.

Since covid-19 lockdown the numbers of people watching the platform have gone up by 50 per cent in the US. They’re likely to be similar in the UK, too.

There is three large carrots when it comes to using Facebook Live if you’re a page admin.

Firstly, there’s useful numbers who are using it and secondly, the algorithm will reward you by showing it to more people. You’ll also bask in an afterglow as it helps your other content, too.

All this breaks down to two things, planning and delivering going live. Here’s a quick post to help you decide if this channel is for you.

Facebook Live in a nutshell

Facebook Live allows you to live stream video. You can use your own account, a group or a page. People can interact with you live.

EIGHT steps to planning a good Facebook Live

As with anything, put some thought into it first and you’ll get better results.

ONE: Work it what the point is

Firstly, have a purpose to using Facebook Live. Don’t do it for the sake of it. What’s the point?

There’s a few reasons why you may want to. Fundamentally, you do it because the value of being in THAT spot NOW so you can talk to them and they can see what you’re doing.

They can include:

A Q&A on a topic.

A behind the scenes tour.

 Some special access.

TWO: Work out what the Sword of Damocles is

Create a reason to keep watching.

So, if you’re running a behind the scenes tour of somewhere promise to meet with someone people would like to meet.

They can include:

Meet the artist behind the exhibition

See the politician being grilled for a Q&A session.

Wait for the painting to be unveiled.

Watch out for the hand grenade that’s about to be detonated by the Army bomb squad. 

THREE: Get and then test your kit

On the face of it, all your need is your smartphone and a robust wifi connection to do a really basic Facebook Live. Simple. But to have a safety net its worth having a bit more.

For an ultra basic Facebook Live you need A charged smartphone and a wifi connection.

 For a basic Facebook Live you need: A charged smartphone and a wifi connection. A powerbank to make sure of your charge. A MiFi to give you a back-up wifi signal. A tripod for your phone or tablet. 

For a more advanced Facebook Live you need. A laptop and a webcam and a wifi connection. If you use this route, you can use Facebook’s Live Producer which you can access via your page through a laptop. This gives you lots of control over who can comment and other troll-busting tools. 

For a broadcaster quality Facebook Live you need: Lights, camera, action and a load of other things too. I’ll leave that to the experts. 

It’s always worth taking your kit to where you’ll look to do the broadcast and then practice. You can practice with your phone or tablet by broadcasting but first changing the settings so you are broadcasting to just yourself. I’ve blogged how to do a practice Facebook Live here. Practicising can help put the interviewee at ease. It’s also a chance to test your wifi. Don’t rely on 4G or venue wifi if its a big event. You’ll come unstuck.

FOUR: Get a back-up team

Decide who to have in front of your camera but also – and this is really important – have someone on your team who is monitoring the feed. Establish a bcak channel with your back-up, too. WhatsApp is good for this. The back-up can do two really important things. First, check to see if the stream is working okay and you haven’t put your camera on its side by accident. Second, vet the questions. There’s nothing that can floor someone than reading live during a broadcast that someone watching thinks you’re a twit.

FIVE: Have an ejector seat

If things go really horribly wrong and your guest starts swearing then have your back-up team ready to kill the broadcast. End. Finish. Cut. No more. It’s unlikely to happen but if you have a plan in place you’ll probably won’t need it.

SIX: Yes, GDPR is a factor

If you are shooting video then you are recording people and yes folks, that’s personal data and yes, staff need to give consent too.

To crack this, you can do two things. Firsty, a guest you’re likely to be interviewing needs to complete a permission form that you need to store. Secondly, if you’re in a more public spot you can post a disclaimer on the entry saying that you are filming and by entering they’re giving their consent. Also give them the chance to opt-out by speaking to a steward. This may be fine for a conference, press conference or a election count. I’d think twice before using Facebook Live in a public place. The risk of something going wrong escalates with more public involvement.

SEVEN: Get your audio right

Be really mindful that your phone’s mic on its own isn’t that great and you’ll struggle if the room is echoey or there’s more than one person. In normal times, I’d suggest a clip-on mic. But in the era of social distancing, looking into it, a boom, mic and dead cat to muffle the wind is what I’m trying out.

SEVEN: Draw-up a plan for the broadcast

Let’s think about a tour of a museum stores and a chat with the museum’s curator.

You’ve practiced at the venue and you’ve ironed out the chance of a wifi blackhole which would disrupt or end your broadcast.

Your plan is…

A – Greet the viewers at the shelves which have industrial equipment.

B – Walk round to meet the curator Joanne Brown at a table to see three items.

C – Unveil the Medieval pot found during an Archeological in the castle grounds.

Work out how long this is going to take and leave yourself a list of prompts to recap on every five or six minutes. People will be joining and leaving all the time. One good tip is to think about how radio does this.

Hello, welcome to the museum where we’ll be talking to curator Joanne Brown where we’ll see the first glimpse of the Medieval pot but first we’re seeing the industrial equipment.

Then becomes:

We’ve seen the industrial equipment and now we’re seeing the Medieval pot. 

If you’re filming holding your device then a map holder around your neck with the plan in so you can see it is handy.

EIGHT: Promote, promote, promote

If you’re looking to go live at 2pm on Thursday then tell people for days in advance. Tell them offline, on your website, on Twitter, in an email bulletin. Schedule the broadcast (scroll down for how to do that.) Create an event.

Going live

If you’re going live on your phone knock yourself out. Enjoy yourself and don’t forget to end the broadcast when its done. Look to post it back onto your timeline so those who missed it can see it too. Your numbers are likely to be far greater if you re-post the finished thing.

Look to shoot something that’s at least three minutes long and preferably around 20 minutes. If you follow your plan and build some interaction that’ll be really easy to do.

Write a description when you go live that makes the thing sound interesting. So, yes to ‘A behind the scenes tour of Oxdown museum and the first glimpse of the Medieval pot.’ No to the rather dull ‘Our Facebook Live.’

Going live with Live Producer

Facebook’s Live Producer is great.

It’s free and full of extra functionality to make your broadcast run smoothly. It also irons out some of the problems from early broadcasts that pose a bit of a headache to public sector people.

If you’re going live via Facebook’s Live Producer there’s a few things you can do ahead of time. Using it with a page gives you a few extra pieces of functionality.

Live Producer with a page

There’s a list of options that will work for public sector communicators.

You can schedule a live video.

You can restrict comments only to your followers.

You can slow down the rate of comment to one every 10-seconds.

You can ensure all comments have to be 100 characters minimum.

You can restrict commenters to accounts more than two weeks old.

You can also make sure commenters have been following for at least 15-minutes.

Live Producer with a group or your own profile

The functionality is a lot more limited. But the chances are the people who are in your group you know and are part of your community rather than randoms who shout.

You can allow viewers to rewind.

Simple.

Five examples of Facebook Live video to learn from

The British Museum give a tour of their new exhibition on The Scythians.

English Heritages’ Discovering Titian’ which shows an art historian introduce a painting.

West Midlands Police live street watch tackling burglary in Selly Oak.

Record label Reckless Yes host Mark Morriss to talk about his new album.

A storytime for young children hosted by Tamarack library in Michigan in the USA.

Picture credit: SDASM / Flickr 

The first phase of coronavirus comms is over and there are now signs as to what stage two needs to looks like.

The first phase was Government posters with a clear warning message: ‘Stay safe, stay home, protect the NHS.’

But there’s only so long those can be share and re-shared for before their message dissipates.

As time goes on, the comms needs to change.

For me, this is where  hospitals and local government really coming to the fore. It needs to be speak with a Black Country accent in the Black Country, like a Fifer in Fife, a South Walian in Bury Port and with a broad Belfast accent in Belfast.

They need to be human messages and stories from your community to your community.

They can repeat the Government’s key safety messages but they need to do so by the living of them.

They need to carry hope as well as advice.

NOT ALL COVID-19 CASE IS FATAL

Every death is a darkness that casts a long shadow across a family and its community.

But not every covid-19 case ends in death. In fact, a majority of cases won’t even get to hospital.

When I went down with mild covid-19 symptoms my condition wasn’t anywhere near bad enough to go to hospital. Every death I read jolted me and every story of recovery was a shot in the arm. I needed positive messages.

We need the outliers of the 101-year-old being released like this story of a 101-year-old who recovered in Worcestershire. 

But we also need the mother-of-three who survived ITU and has been released as Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust show.

For me, this is exactly what good phase two covid-19 needs to look like. Local in character to illustrate a central message. Like this story of Anthony who survived covid-19 posted by Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust.

But we need more than that.

Aside from hospital survivors, we also need the woman who stayed at home, did the right thing, had a cough and a temperature but is well again.

In local journalism terms, it’ll never trouble the frontpage. But its the shed fire that caused a sir in the community and by telling that community of moments of recovery it does a job.

There have been warnings we’re facing a mental health crisis not least amongst people who equate catching covid-19 with death.

Those stories of survival are not just effective content in public sector channels, they’ll work in local news media and community Facebook groups, too.

A LOCAL HUMAN VOICE DELIVERING A LOCAL HUMAN MESSAGE

People connect to people and we know this.

People connect far better to people like themselves than to someone who has an important job.

The Edelman Trust Barometer shows that 59 per cent of people trust people like themselves compared to 30 per cent trusting a chief executive.

A warning poster would be less effective.

Sure, its rough and ready and I’d argue that its sub-titles are helpful and this is exactly the content that works in Sunderland as its high engagement rates show.

GO TO YOUR COMMUNITY FACEBOOK GROUPS

I’ve been banging this drum for so long but never more loudly.

This crisis will be won or lost on Facebook.

Almost 70 per cent of the population use Facebook and 50 per cent get their news from it.

You need to knock on the door of your Facebook group admins and ask them to share your local messages. If that’s local content even better.

The Stourbridge nurse working at the hospital that serves Stourbridge ought to be celebrated.

Or the advice on how to use the nature reserve like this post shared by a group admin from an original post by a countryside ranger.

YOUR HEROES HAVE A HUMAN FACE

Hundreds of thousands of people are risking their lives every day to do their job.

They’re real people who are people’s friends, family and neighbours.

So, celebrate them in your content.

This bin operative in Angus Council’s post shows a message of support from a resident but also a face that’s part of the community. Celebrate the heroes you have.

Or this post by West Midlands Ambulance Service to instagram of a 21-year-old celebrating his birthday by working and unable to see his friends and family.

The public sector has such an important role to play in helping the country through a time of huge crisis.

It’s tempting to try and create a new normal and a new established way of doing things. Just posting Department of Health messages, for example. It needs to be much more than that.

Human content means that when you post it the people in the content and their friends and family are more likely to share it. That means they are on the right side of the social media algorithm which interprets the likes and shares as a signal that this is popular content and must be shared.

Bold, imaginative, flexible and above all human.

One of the glorious things about the internet is that it side-steps blockers and makes them irrelevant.

So, as the covid-19 crisis struck and people were forced to work from home organisations quickly turned to Facebook groups to keep the wider workforce connected.

But how should they work?

As someone who has researched Facebook groups for three years and founded one with 4,500 members and 45,000 interactions a month here’s a few ideas.

Facebook groups aren’t collaborative working spaces

Small teams have been using Slack, Trello and other channels for a while and for me, that’s the right answer. They’re closed, searchable and collaborative.

However, the Facebook group is a useful place to keep connected with the wider workforce. They work best when there is a community of interest with some shared interests.

Why a Facebook group

Simply put, almost 70 per cent of the UK population have a Facebook account that they’ve used in the last 12-months, Ofcom and Comscore stats show. It’s a platform that’s already being used by people.

It’s also a platform that doesn’t have to go through IT procurement portals, competitive tendering and peer-reviewed evaluation. It’s free. It’s not costing anything.

It’s also something that you don’t need a work email address for. So, for local government people you can potentially reach the crossing operatives, care home staff, countryside rangers, groundsmen and women and waste collection workers.

This isn’t a golden bullet that will reach everyone but it is a big brass projectile.

Besides, staff will be making their own group if the organisaton doesn’t.

What to do before you set one up

First, you can create a group via your corporate page. It makes more sense for you to do this rather than create a group as an individual. It’s recognisably from the organisation.

Second, draw-up a set of house rules.

They’re basic levels of behaviour that you expect from people. So, no shouting and swearing, posting personal data or anything you wouldn’t expect off-line. Your code of conduct should still cover what people post.

Allow people the ability to create their own content. There is the option of moderate everything but I’d say that isn’t a path to go down except temporarily in exceptional circumstances.

I’d make your staff group a ‘closed’ group. This means the content isn’t viewable to everyone on Facebook and you have to be a member to see it. But anyone can search Facebook to find it.

Then invite people to join.

Be an active admin

Richard Millington in his book ‘Buzzing Communities’ has a list of really good advice for community managers that I’ve road tested.

One thing that really sticks with me is that a successful online group is to have someone who thinks about it every day. Someone who thinks endlessly about how to encourage people to talk and discuss things. Give a reaction to posts. Ask questions and encourage debate. There’s nothing worse than tumbleweed gathering on something someone has posted.

The best Facebook groups have a set of house rules that are gently but firmly enforced.

At a time when feelings may be running high this is encouraged.

Keep an eye on who is signing-up

In a large organisation its often impossible to know everyone. The ideal is to have current employees and when employees leave they leave the group, too.

What should be posted

Be really relaxed about this.

While its a work space encourage and allow people to post about non-work things. It’s a social space so memes about Captain Tom raising money or the weather should be fine.

You’re not trying to replicate the worst mistakes of your intranet.

But broadly speaking, think of whatever you’re going to post here may be made public so just adjust what you are going to post.

Think about death in service

We live in uncertain times and any organisation of size is going to have people who die as a result of covid-19. If you haven’t already have a think about how you are going to handle death in service. Make the Facebook group an extension of this. Put it in your house rules. Staff may appreciate a space to hear the news and share their reaction.

Connect with people

If you do have issues to tackle don’t be shy in creating content especially for it. So, a Facebook Live with the chief executive or someone from HR talking about mental health tips may be things to think of.

Encourage people to share your page content

If you have a big chunk of your employees on Facebook and in the group a polite ask to share the post from your corporate page is a bright idea.

Your staff can amplify what you are posting so ask them to be part of an army of sharers.

Picture credit: Documerica / Flickr

 

 

 

 

 

 

If there’s a more divisive subject than working from home I’ve yet to find it.

‘Duvet days,’ were what an old chief executive sneeringly called them.

‘The future of work,’ is what I’ve also read.

Neither is right.

I was wondering why I thought that until reading a LinkedIn post by Eris Casali who makes the point that forced working from home is not the same as remote working.

Forced working from home is having to make the most of something. Remote working is finding the rhythm, tempo and a corner away from an office where you can perch to get the most out of your time.

Eris Casali works for Automattic, the company behind the web platform company WordPress, and she’s noticed that there’s been a dip in morale amongst the 1,200 workforce who are well used to working remotely.

She writes:

The reasons are many: anxiety, distractions, kids to take care of, other people in the house, no separate work space, no good ergonomics, stress, etc… So please keep it in mind. If you were forced to work from home, you’re dealing with two issues at the same time: one is the challenges of changing your work processes, one is dealing with the current forced situation. You’re not really experiencing the benefits of *remote work*.

What worked for me

I really started to work from home when I became freelance six years ago. The most valuable lesson was working out a time to switch-of by and sticking to it. Once I realised that my morale and my productivity recovered.

But if that doesn’t work for you, that’s fine.

Like prescriptive books for new parents, blog posts that show you how to work for home should be binned.

Do what works for you. Life is hard enough already without measuring yourself against a lifestyle blogger.

This is not the new normal

As we’re starting to get to grips with the temporary new normal and starting to reach for what the next new normal may be it may be tempting for people to think people can carry on largely with what they’re doing now.

That would be a mistake.

Elements of this may work for some people and some may not for others.

But even more than that, people need to realise that the dip in morale and productivity they’re almost certainly experiencing isn’t exclusive to them.

If the experts – and companies like Automattic are – then it’s no reason you are, too.

So, cut yourself some slack.

Picture credit: Flickr / Documerica

It’s been three weeks since the lockdown began and people were overnight toddlers and cats walking in on meetings became the new normal.

People have been forced to get to get to grips with new ways of working.

COVID-19 has done many things. Making the IT Police irrelevant is just one.

So, a few weeks in I’ve asked the Public Sector Comms Headspace Facebook group for tips learned from their lived experience of the new normal. There’s a roll of honour at the end.

Huge thank you to them.

Scroll and learn.

Top tips for the new normal

If you’ve got young children who need a lot of attention

One tip for this is to split the day into ‘Mum time’ and ‘Dad time’ if you possibly can. That way there’s a clear bank of time and blurring the edges is kept to a minimum. Communicate this to the rest of your team.

Or lock yourself away if that works for you.

If you’ve a small child and you’re separated

If your child spends time with you and then travels to a partner work one week on and one week off. Be clear about this with your colleagues. Honesty is the key.

If you need to manage your workload

An out-of-office kept on permanently that says that the team is doing covid-19 activity only and nothing else is a gold plated bat that bats off the crappy crap. Do it. We’re in a pandemic, FFS.

If your video calls have become a time suck with no structure

Suggest an agenda to manage people’s time.

If you’re being sent piles of crap and being asked to make something from it

Be really clear with service areas that you want the info oven ready. A template that asks for who, what, when, where, why and how is a good starting point. Over to them. Go.

If you feel as though you’re sprinting but going backwards

You’re not alone. Everyone is. Lower your expectations and be realistic.

If you need to escape and recharge #1

Open a window. Turn your phone off for a space. Give yourself a break.

If you need to escape and recharge #2

Take a break. Not a break on the toilet with your smartphone so you can read emails in a different part of the house but an actual break. A different activity. A physical activity. A quick burst of Joe Wicks PE with Joe. A palette cleanser that takes you away from where you’ve been. Exercise first thing.

If you need to lighten the mood in your video conference

The snap camera app can be downloaded to PC and give you a different look. Good for team meetings where you need to lighten-up a bit. Not quite so for a 10 Downing Street media briefing.

If you’re on a boring video conference

Mute yourself and hula hoop. It helps you concentrate on what’s being said and allows you to exercise.

If you are struggling to keep up with a list of video conference actions

Add 15-minutes to each call to allow you to make a list of the actions.

If you yearn for social time

Plan some social time to allow you to recharge.

If you are likely to be interrupted

Have an amnesty at the start of the meeting to say who and what will interrupt. It’s human. It’s a reminder that you are spinning many plates. It reduces the fear that a demand for biscuits by a little person will somehow be bad.

If you’re in local government and one side refuses to share vital public health messages

Stay safe, stay home. There’s variations on this. If one side or other won’t share a call from constitutional services to make welfare calls that sees them encouraged to share public health messages has worked. There’s a time for scrutiny. We live in a democracy. But can we help keep each other alive?

If you need to concentrate

Noise cancelling headphones or better still bluetooth ones that allow you to make a cup of tea while on a call.

A huge thank you to tip contributers Liz Grieve, Jodie Humphries, Nick Lakeman, Kirsten Gobha, Joanne Cook, Suzie Evans, Carolyne Mitchell, Marten J Rollins, Cara Marchant, Peter Holt, Luke Marshall-Waterfield, Charlotte Hollis, Katie Rodgers, Stephen Penman, Abigail Gilbert, Katy Brown, Jocelyn Astle, Rhy Burgess, Louise Roger Goodey, Suzanne Downey, Chris Gomm, Lucy Hartley, Victoria Taylor and Laurie Crabtree. 

Picture credit: Documerica / Flickr 

 

In the time of coronavirus, a calm head while communicating has rarely been more important.

The temptation to SOS – send out stuff – has rarely been greater which is why some comsscore data this week is so useful.

Why useful? Because it feels as though we’ve moved into phase two of communications.

Phase one was the key message repeated.

Phase two is going to have to be a bit more subtle. It’s human beings and their lived experience repeating the message.

It’s less, here’s a poster and more here’s why I’m doing what the poster tells me.

What the new UK media landscape behaviour tells us

In the UK:

• social media traffic is up by 39 per cent as it remains the top consumer occupation.
• News site traffic are up by 54 per cent with the category in second place.

The late March 2020 traffic data published on the comscore blog can be found here.

So, news media and social media are where people are at.

But there’s a but.

The data means that public sector people need to up their game.

Pumping stuff out in an SOS style isn’t the way forward regardless of what an executive director who has joined Facebook but never posted says.

Your content is competing in a far more crowded market place and simply shovelling out the same data on repeat is not the answer.

This is where you earn your corn as a communicator who understands the landscape and advises the organisation.

Three things to up your content game

We’ve had the core messages… stay safe, stay home.

There’s merit in repeating those but I can’t help but think that diminishing returns will start to kick in if they haven’t already.

Stay safe? Stay home? Sure.

1 – Human beings sharing their take on the message

For me, the challenge is to repurpose the message but delivered through human beings in a distinctly human way.

We’ve all seen it on our travels if we’ve been online and we can recognise it instantly.

It’s the bin crew or the paramedic or the child making their point.

2 – Content which isn’t a call to action

You may not want to hear it but a wall-to-wall diet of calls to action has never proved to be an effective way of building an audience on a channel. Yes, there are things people need to know but stop a second. What does your own media consumption look like? Are you consuming rolling news 24/7? Or are you dipping in and then looking for old football matches on YouTube?

3 – Go to where the eyeballs are

I’m not going to stop banging on about this. If your public sector people don’t want to be friends with you. Get over it. So go and find where people are. It’s exactly why my Dad used to help with a stand at the Staffordshire County Show when I was a kid. He went because that’s where people were.

Examples of content which is on top of the game

The Paramedic on instagram

Equipped and prepared NHS operative @naghmehty on Instagram ticks this box.  The member of staff using their own channel. Encourage your staff to share their lived experience of the message. Share that content. Run a competition for them. Do whatever. Make your frontline heroes the hero of your content.

The video news story

This story about the care worker Sam petrified at the risks she’s taking but determined to do her job is human way of presenting the challenges. She visits an 86-year-old who needs daily care.

While your own channels are important don’t forget the important role that news media have.

Children’s content

The Scott family wrote and illustrated a book that showed a discussion between parent and child. The child wants to know why she can’t go to school and the parent tells her why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s lovely. The child’s school posted the video onto Twitter. It’s great. It’s human content that comes from a child and amplified in a tweet by a school Twitter account.

The content that is useful but not scary

Facebook Live is a tool whose time has come.

This library – The Emily Taber Public Library – in the US has started to use it for story time for children. You can exactly what you’d get if you took your child to the library. A story and then a craft session where you are shown how to make something that’s related to the story.

It’s lovely.

It’s all the more beautiful for the wobbly camera phone and the wave of greeting from behind the camera phone by the person who is filming.

That’s it.

I’d love to hear what you think.

We are facing a pandemic and the public sector are in the frontline but surprise surprise one organisation hasn’t got the memo.

To date, the BBC covid-19 death toll running total records 3,600 people have died in the UK and 38,000 have tested positive.

Nurses, doctors, paramedics and NHS support staff are taking daily risks as are social care people, bin collectors, police, fire, teachers and many others. In the private sector shop workers and those in the food and transport supply chain are working around the clock.

To be clear, the public sector is what is going to save us from this mess.

However, the one organisation that appears to have missed this.

Step forward the Taxpayers Alliance.

If you haven’t come across them before, The Taxpayers Alliance are a secretive pressure group who decline to name their backers and have links to US groups who believe in low taxes.

They specialise in spoon-feeding depleted newsrooms press releases with highly selective data.

Rather than watching the news, it appears the Tax Payers Alliance have carried on business as usual sending out freedom of information requests to local government on arcane corners of public sector spending.

This week, while public sector people are risking their lives the Tax Payers Alliance have been asking how much has been spent on alcohol.

Let that sink in.

This tweet from Polly Cziok summarises the disbelief.

Let’s be quite clear, this is offensive

Should public sector people stop what they’re doing to calculate answers on trivial subjects in a time of crisis?

This is a question broader than one pressure group.

The question of whether or not to divert resources is offensive.

It’s as vile as asking firefighters at Grenfell Tower to stop what they are doing and audit what they’ve spent on pens.

Or a passer-by at a road accident demand the fire crew stop cutting the injured family out of the car and instead come and tell them how much they spent of teabags in the last 12-months.

Or asking social care to stop looking after frail people and fill in a form about sandwiches.

It is knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

Enough is enough

Happily, it seems as though the public sector has had enough.

Step forward Glasgow City Council’s media team for responding to a media enquiry thus:

Credit: @carolyntweeting on Twitter.

For accessibility, it reads:

“This spending is not about pens, but every bill and statement, every letter, every envelope and every drop of printer ink uses to support the delivery of universal services to more than 600,000 people over five years.

“To try and present it as biros for staff is as childish as it is grimly predictable – particularly at a time when those staff are doing everything in their power to maintain critical services in the face of a global pandemic.

“To be clear, the Taxpayers Alliance is a private company and political pressure group that refuses to disclose its financial backers – which people, unaccountably insist on presenting as a campaign representing ordinary people.”

The Glasgow Times story online is here.

And frankly, the Glasgow City Council approach is long overdue.

Even the ICO’s office know there’s a pandemic going on

The good news is that the arbiter of data protection and freedom of information knows the world has been turned upside down.

In a useful set of guidance, the ICO’s office says they won’t be going after organisations that have diverted resources to combating the pandemic.

So, there is an argument for prioritising saving lives over FOI requests.

It’s about time journalists became journalists

Full disclosure, for 12 years I was a daily new reporter who specialised in local government. I’ve worked in and with public sector comms for 16 years. I know the pressures depleted newsrooms are under and know that’s got worse.

When a reporter, the tag ‘sloppy and lazy copy’ was one of the worst insults a news editor could shout down the phone.

As a general point, cutting and pasting Taxpayers Alliance press releases – or any press releases – unchallenged is not great journalism in peace time.

If only there was a brave and fearless reporter who would ask the Taxpayers Alliance who funds them and when we’re through all this put in an FOI request to see how much time and effort has been spent answering them.

And its about time public sector bodies stepped up on this

It’s fine for civil servants and media to grow tired at being asked to stop covid-19 work to process frivolous FOI requests.

At some point, they’re going to look for some leadership from organisations such as the Local Government Association, Improvement Service in Scotland, Government Communications Service, the National Union of Journalists and the Chartered Institute for Public Relations.

This isn’t a debate about transparency.

There is a role for FOI from all quarters.

This is a debate about saving lives.

There are many questions to be asked as part of a functioning democracy about how prepared the UK is. But asking about alcohol and paper clips when people are dying for me really isn’t one of the top questions.

I’m a member of society. I’m the director of my own company. I pay tax. If it helps fund a public sector that can respond in a crisis I don’t mind.

Every week, hundreds of thousands of British people open their doors and applaud for a minute the carers and frontline people who are risking their lives to save the lives of others.

Maybe we can hold a minute’s slow hand clap for the Tax Payers Alliance five minutes after the clap for carers.

Any takers?

No, I didn’t think so.

In normal times you probably have two or three people who have permission to use the corporate social media channel.

But these are not normal times.

If those two or three are not burnt out they very soon will be.

You need to enlist the help of anyone who can spell to give some relief to the people on the frontline.

Think of them as locum social media admins.

For the past 10 years I’ve been training people who aren’t comms to operate social media channels. Sometimes they’re a department or a library. Other times its the corporate account.

Here’s what I’ve learned and what you can pass on.

Regular admins: You need to stop being precious

In normal times if you’re a page admin worth your salt you take pride in the page, the tone and the engagement.

You need to cut that right out.

There is no way that anyone can be an admin for three months 24/7.

Your health and your sanity comes first and if that means a slight change of tone and emphasis when other people post then tough.

Besides, the need for business continuity by having a wider pool of skills over rides your ego and your sense of self worth.,

If anyone does shout remember they’re not shouting at you

In a time of crisis, people have lost all control of their movement, their livelihood and their health. They’re feeling vulnerable. The only control they do have is to shout at the person telling them their bin isn’t being collected. They’re not shouting at you the individual.

A triage system for working out when and where to respond

I’m pointing you towards this flow chart from Michael Grimes. I’ve used it to train people for 10 years. It’s codified common sense. It poses the question: ‘People are talking about you online, do you engage?’ If they’re sarcastic monitor. If they’re inaccurate then think about engaging. Even having a piece of paper makes people feel better. You can find it here.

Have a series of signposts

Have a stack of useful links and FAQs that the team can base their answers on. You’ll be able to deal with 80 per cent of relevant questions this way. Escalate if there’s a need to but remember that people’s time is precious. Have a list of people that you can escalate to. Have that info in a sharable format.

Give them a back-up

One thing I’ve found is that people feel stressed if they don’t have an emergency button that’s behind glass. So, if something really awful happened how can people respond? That may just be your number. Chances are they won’t use it. But it’ll make them feel more confident.

Flag up your social media house rules

I’ve long been an advocate for having house rules when it comes to social media. In other words, a list of acceptable behaviour. This is how you’ll use it as an organisation. This is how you expect people to behave. So, maybe you say you’ll be around from 9am to 5pm and won’t tolerate abuse. Make your own rules.

Yes, you can tackle misinformation

I’ve seen admins being increasingly bold in their take downs of snark and misinformation. I hold a candle for that but for someone who is being a locum admin keep it simple.

If someone is advancing something that’s just plain wrong, be FACTUAL and be POLITE. That’s all you need to be and no-one will touch you.

Use different channels for logging in

You can hire an expensive social media solution for maanging your social media if you like. You don’t have to. Ask people to log in on the works laptop and log out when they’ve finished. That way they won’t be talking about their tea in the corporate account.

Good luck.

 

When Samuel Pepys was an eyewitness to history he kept a diary.

Me? I binged podcasts and YouTube.

For the past 14 days I’ve had mild coronavirus symptoms. My wife went down with them two days after me.

How mild were my symptoms? A cough. Sometimes a shortness of breath. Lungs that felt like wasps nests. Symptoms that shape shift. A weird feeling of dizziness sometimes. Tiredness.

Many people have had it far worse than me.

I blog this for two reasons, to remind people that most people will have mild symptoms and secondly to give some gentle user testing insight to public sector comms people.

The news cycle is dominated by the need for clicks. I avoided it.

Instead of BBC Radio 5 live in the kitchen it was BBC Radio 4 Extra. I wanted Frankie Howerd not the fear.

The social media cycle is dominated by the need for shock. I largely avoided it.

I searched for official channels and no politicians.

The thirst for information greatly out paces the flow of information. I went to trusted sources. NHS, public health my council.

Nothing chimed with me like a story of a recovery. I wanted the flowers and grapes of good news.

I could have read about people thanking frontline workers all day.

I struggled to find the info. There is loads of info about not getting covid-19 and loads if you think you’ve got covid 19 but almost nothing when you think you have covid-19.

I got purposely distracted a lot. Hey, there is a whole sub-genre of YouTube based around metal detecting Eastern Front digs. Who knew? Finding hand grenades in the forests east of Berlin are really common. So are SS cap badges. Apparently, they buried them to avoid getting shot on sight when captured.

Elis and John’s BBC Five Live podcasts helped me through my darkest times. They kept my mind distracted.

I shopped on the internet for the things I really needed.

I  got my will done online but it takes five days to be verified and returned. You may want to bear that in mind and plan ahead.

In times of crisis I draw strength from the things my Mum said that were passed down to her.

I’m grateful for what I have.

There is always someone worse off.

So, count your blessings, count them one by one and then you’ll see what the Lord has done.

All of my experience is far worse in the telling than the living.

Symptoms don’t follow a path. Two good days could be followed by a bad day so rest.

History says that we will push most of what is happening to the back of our mind. History is written by the victors and in a pandemic just who are the victors?

Some stats published by comscore this week show a marked thirst for information online since coronavirus struck.

In the UK and across Europe, people have been turning to the web to gather information.

General news media sites are outsripping social media sites for traffic.

Visits to news sites are up by around 50 per cent, according to the research Coronavirus pandemic and online behavioural shifts published by the research company.

The upward trend is also replicated with social media sites.

In the, audience is up by 20 per cent in comparison with the start of the year.

All this is useful data as public sector communicators wonder what steps to next take to combat the spread of coronavirus.