Last week, I heard that Nick Booth had died and as with so many others who knew him even slightly, it stopped me in my tracks.
A couple of weeks before I’d heard that Ben Whitehouse had also passed away. I only met Ben once in person yet through Twitter I felt I knew him far better. As @benjionthetrain, he tweeted his commutes.
Ben was a kind man, often thinking of other people and his tweets being a thorn in the side of New Street management showed what Nick Booth often referred to as a ‘Git Citizen.’ Someone who was using technology to make organisations more answerable.
I’ve been reflecting these past few days as I’m sure anyone who knew Nick even a little bit has.
Nick taught me a lot. A former BBC journalist, he was a passionate advocate for using technology to bring people together and in his words, making the world slightly less s**t.
Nick was the first person to show me what Twitter was and how social media could revolutionise my job as a press officer. “We no longer,” I recall him saying that day, “have to go through the Priesthood of journalists to talk to our residents.” As someone who was a journalist and is still in the NUJ today that was iconoclastic as it was exciting.
Nick Booth, or @podnosh as he was also known online, had a profound impact on the public sector. Along with Dave Briggs he showed people how the internet could be used as a power for good. The late John Popham was another. All those people opened so many doors in the early years of social media from 2008.
As I reflected on that first day I heard Nick speak, I reflected on what he said that day. He live tweeted to ask Twitter how the a council could use it. John Popham and Paul Webster replied and my mind was slightly blown.
He showed how Birmingham Post reporter Joanna Gearey had used Twitter to check out reports of an incident at New Street Station. Joanna went on to work for The Times, The Guardian and Twitter itself.
He also showed a video shot by a Birmingham Councillor Martin Mullaney highlighting the problem of graffiti tags. So, today, I dug out the clip on YouTube and watched it back.
Clumsy and unedited, Martin held the video camera in selfie mode to talk to the camera and show the problem in a way I hadn’t seen before.
Looking back, Nick’s presentation that day was in itself a masterclass. Here are three ways social media will be used. This is going to happen, he said. He switched on a lightbulb over my head that changed the trajectory of my career. I set up what was the fourth ever local government social media account. I started blogging. I ended up going freelance.
When I went freelance Nick was supportive. He came over to Walsall with the late Steph Clarke to give some basic advice. “Don’t work with w*****s, know the value of your worth and give a s*** about what you do.”
At Steph’s funeral, the vicar removed his dog collar to recall how Steph had told how proud she was that she did a job working with Nick here she gave a s**t and made a difference. It was a remarkable funeral for a remarkable woman.
So many of those early pioneers are no longer with us. We stand on their shoulders yet where are the blue plaques for them?
As I reflected on Nick, I searched YouTube to find a clip of him speaking to remind myself of his voice. A born storyteller, his time as a journalist allowed him to understand what made a tale. His deep drive to make the world a better place and to bring others along with him.
The clip I found on YouTube was Nick in his pomp speaking of two stories. Both cut to the centre of who he was. In 10-minutes he tells the story of two Birmingham bloggers deciding to build a better version of the £2.7 million Birmingham City Council website in a day with other people’s help. The bccdiy project embarrassed the council by showing how badly they’d been had by their suppliers.
The second was the Social Media Surgery project. This span out from an idea from Birmingham blogger Pete Ashton. It sat volunteers who knew how social media worked alongside community groups who didn’t. Many Facebook pages, blogs and Twitter accounts were set up as a result.
You can see the clip here:
Watching it back, it reminded me how the internet can be a force for good if good people use it with a common purpose.
Scrolling online, I was struck by how many people had met Nick and had had their own individual moment of revelation thanks to him. It seems grotesque that he’s no longer here. If I think that I can only imagine what his family and close friends must be thinking. I hope they take comfort from what high regard he is held by. I loved what Lloyd Davis wrote. I love that his family have looked at some of the messages. I hope that the love for him is felt by them in the path ahead.
Yet, Nick was not an earnest person. He was fun to be with and was pleased to see you.
I’m sad that after Impact Hub in Birmingham closed I didn’t bump into him so often.
Scrolling through old messages, as many have I’m sure since hearing the news, this caught my eye. We were talking about the closure of Impact Hub in Birmingham. This had been a co-working space and venue for likeminded people to meet-up. It’s closure had reminded my of the film ‘The Commitments,’ I told him on a conversation in Messenger. The band breaks-up. Surely, it’s been a failure? Not at all. Its success can be judged by what those people went on to do, I’d suggested.
He responded:
The people he had an impact on and what they did should absolutely be part of Nick’s legacy.
Speak to almost anyone who has to use a Reach plc news site and they will roll their eyes and talk about how painful an experience it is.
There is the story, perhaps ubiquitous, of a senior Reach executive getting so frustrated with the user experience on he threw his phone across the room in frustration.
Former reporters who worked for the titles are often less glowing.
However, there is an emerging trend for email first subscription news. Over the last new months I’ve been intrigued by this approach. So I thought here’s a long reader read.
So what’s the problem with local news?
In a sentence, they are on their backside because of the internet.
I headed to a Reach website as research for this. I straight away hit a pop-up asking me for permission to give access to 5,885 individual partner requests for a range of tasks including 343 for ‘measuring content performance’ and 586 for ‘special purposes’. Scrolling through the list of partners on a laptop took me more than four minutes.
That’s even before I got to the actual site.
At their best, Reach sites can still shine a light on the work of councils, fire and rescue, NHS and police forces. But newspapers of records that listed every decision have largely long gone across the UK. I can still see elements of them in Northern Ireland and Scotland but in most of England and much of Wales they’ve didappeared. Their purpose has changed. What was everything about the community is now everything about the clicks. If that’s a click that’s actually another part of the country then that’s tough. A couple of years ago I carried out an analysis of news across 30 regional titles from across the UK. What was clear that in print, they still carried a clear majority of local stories. On Facebook, this had dropped to 50 per cent.
I’ve a feeling hard won reputations of regional titles for local community news built over more than a century are being chopped up and fed into the furnace to keep the train moving along the tracks.
So, the local title’s Facebook feed rather than to inform tries to get you to click. If the story is in Hull rather than your hometown that doesn’t matter so much. When One Direction founding member Liam Payne died Reach’s Black County Live pumped out 81 Facebook posts in 36 hours with 42 per cent of comments criticising the relentless strategy.
Indeed, it took an episode of The Rest is Entertainment podcast to call them out for a strategic change to take place.
A clicks first approach means often Facebook timelines are filled with posts that get reactions in what appear to be thinly-policed comments sections.
In defence of the model
In the past, Reach has strongly defended the company’s tactics. The landscape has changed, they say. These tactics pay to keep the lights on and keep journalists employed. I get that. Campaigns such as that on Birmingham Live which covers the call for a public inquiry into the Birmingham Pub Bombings calling for a public inquiry are funded by those clicks, Reach has said.
Besides, Reach are only doing what others are doing. They’re just better at getting more clicks. Twenty of the top 25 regional websites by audience are Reach titles. Their Manchester Evening News title has an audience of 12.6 million and tops the chart. It’s not clear how much of this is sport with the city having two internationally famous football teams.
I started in hot metal and worked in the pre-internet glory days. It would be easy to dismiss me as a jaded old hack. But I love news and I want it to succeed. It breaks my heart seeing newspapers fail and standards falling.
Why local news matters
As the reporting of council matters declines voter turnout falls with it. This was a conclusion of the Cairncross report into UK journalism. This independent report was commissioned by the Teresa May Government. It also highlighted what is described as ‘public interest news and information.’
Maybe if people stop being interested in democracy don’t be surprised if they are attracted to something else.
The false dawn of hyperlocal news
You may recall the promise that hyperlocal news would replace those declining news rooms. Some great work was done by Talk About Local around 2010 which encouraged a network of local news sites largely run by volunteers. There have been some long running examples of hyperlocal journalism such as OnThe Wight which as been running since 2005. Indeed, many of Press regulator’s IMPRESS’s 200 members have hyperlocal roots. But the audience for hyperlocal news sites has been dwarfed by hyperlocal Facebook groups where news breaks organically in quite different ways.
Email first news isn’t actually new
Back in 2010, I heard in Birmingham what was one of the most illuminating talks I’ve ever heard by Marc Reeves. He had just left the editorship of the Birmingham Post and was involved with Business Desk. This still thriving site delivered news by email every morning to busy people’s desk ready to help them set-up for the day.
This was a key factor in tweeting links in the morning when I co-founded a comms platform with a former colleague.
Indeed, Reach titles have been tapping into email for years. Myself? I subscribe to Stoke on Trent Live’s excellent Stoke City coverage. When I was a kid I’d cycle to the paper shop to buy the Evening Sentinel’s Peter Hewitt match reports. Now, I get the far better informed coverage by email from their Stoke reporter Pete Smith. Thanks, email. Thanks, Reach.
But subscriber email first news is new
Much has been made of the wave of innovation. In Manchester, The Mill has chalked-up 50,000 subscribers. The company behind it raised £350,000 including some notable names. A raft of similar models have launched. Overall, I counted 19 email first subscription models across the UK.
Journalism costs. Having no journalism in your town also costs but the bill for this is markedly different.
What do they look like? They’ll often be some news aggregation of other sites. But so far this year Manchester’s The Mill has published at least 16 original long form stories in the first three months of the year.
For example:
A piece that speculates on why companies areleaving media city?
A long piece on the struggle for control of Boohoo the online clothes firm.
A fiesty investigative piece on the role Sacha Lord is playing in Manchester.
All of these look like meaty topics for readers to sink their teeth into.
Or in Birmingham’s Dispatch whose patch is blighted by a long running council waste worker’s strike.
Claim and counter-claim on the Birmingham bin strikes.
Speculation the Government should get involved in the bin strikes.
The role a Birmingham suburb has played in the film industry.
I can absolutely see the logic in the model. If you are a news company and they your email you are not beholden to Google and Meta. Your business may not be subject to an algorithm’s whim.
I can also see the logic of steering clear of pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap clicks. If their schtick is quality and not clicks they don’t have to worry so much about headlines which tease then under-deliver.
As a user experience, it’s agreeably clickbait free and if I click on a story I can read it through without being interrupted by banner ads or pop-ups.
What email news means for public sector comms
If you work in a council, NHS, fire and rescue or police comms teams will this make a huge difference to what you do?
With 17 stories a month on The Mill’s website, for example, the tales are likely to be more about holding people to account rather than throwing content into an ever-hungry requirement to post dozens of times a day on Facebook. So, a council’s failures in a bin strike may get coverage. Its programme of town centre events probably won’t.
Besides, they may break a story that is then followed-up by more established titles such as the BBC.
So far, the model appears to be paying for itself in Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh and London. There’s no evidence yet that the model will replicate itself well in smaller communities outside of big cities.
All this loops back to your organisation’s own channels. Have strong channels. You’ll need them.
Ofcom say that the most popular way people find out local government information is through Facebook groups if you are aged between 25 to 64. It’s as much as 50 per cent for this demographic. Newspaper websites are around 20 per cent and email is half of that. So, maybe lets not get too carried away.
Would email first news pay in smaller areas?
An average reporter’s job on HoldtheFrontpage.com is £30k a year. Back of fag packet maths means that more than 3,300 subscribers are needed at the full fat £8.95 a month that’s at the upper level of monthly subscription charges. But. Just eight per cent of UK people are prepared to pay for journalism.
What the email subscription news landscape looks like
Here’s a quick trawl. This is limited to sites which have a free and paid subscription model. There’s a few substack accounts that I’ve not included for this reason. Not every subscriber pays.
A list of subscriber-funded email first news sites
Let me know what I’ve missed from the list. I’m not seeing anything in Wales, Northern Ireland or other parts of the UK.
As a communicator, you’ll know that video is often the most effective way to reach people.
Half of all time spent on Facebook is spent watching video and we retain 90 per cent of a message compared to just a tenth of it in text.
But creating video takes longer than writing out a sentence. So what can we do?
If you wanted to, you could create a basic avatar for your organisation in less than five minutes. An avatar is an AI-powered video likeness of someone who can then deliver your script. Or maybe you need to borrow a voice for a voiceover.
If you are public sector, there’s a few things to take into account first.
Firstly, have you got an AI policy?
In 2025, more than 20 per cent of the public sector are using AI, according to the Alan Turing Institute. But how many of those are using it without having an effective policy in place? The number of people who are creating work arounds isn’t clear but its likely to be significant.
If you haven’t got an AI policy here’s a few pointers for you.
An avatar for external comms: probably not
Trust in AI is a huge issue. A 2025 UK Government tracker survey said that 71 per cent trust the NHS to use AI but just a third trusted Westminster. Not only that, almost half UK people in a 2024 UK YouGov study said they’d not trust content marked as AI.
So, the idea of sending an avatar out to bat with a media statement on an issue feels eye-rollingly bad. When we want to hear from an organisation we still want to see the whites of people’s eyes.
An avatar for internal comms: maybe
How about an internal audience? We need to qualify this. An avatar for an internal message from the senior leadership team doesn’t feel particularly wise. However, there may be places where internal training videos could benefit from an avatar in principle. How you deliver this will decide how successful this is likely to be. Yes, you need to mark it as AI. YouGov data has shown that nine in ten people of all ages want to see AI content marked so they know what they are dealing with.
A generic avatar maybe not
There are several places where you can experiment with off-the-shelf avatars. HeyGen or veed.io are one of two tools that canm create avatars for you. If you’d like a generic received pronunciation voice then there’s certainly something for you. But would this work in Dudley in the Black County? I suspect not.
A localised avatar
However, you can reate an avatar with a local voice using HeyGen. You sit the person down in front of a webcam, you ask it to read set passages and from that a local face and voice can be created.
However, the issue with this is that it may be good but it’s not as good as the real thing. In this example, I’m saying the word ‘path’ as though I’m from the south of England which I’m not.
Creating audio
Creating audio for a voiceover is more effective than creating video and audio at the same time. Eleven Labs does a good job of with audio that can be used to narrate your next video. It is quite handy at replicating accents that are inputted to it.
The awkward GDPR issue
However, if you are looking to create an avatar likeness or to use the voice of a member of staff do remember that GDPR kicks in. You need their permission. You’ll need their permission for every delivery too.
You may be tempted to use that voice in the delivery of press releases on the website or in other public facing content. You’ll need permission for each delivery. When that volunteer with the distinctive local voice gets tapped on the shoulder and asked why they are closing that person’s local library the volunteer voice may quickly lose interest in being the face and voice of the cost-cutting organisation.
At any point said voice actor can withdraw permission for their voice and likeness to be used. This may leave you in an awkward position of losing a stack of content.
Dubbing isn’t that great
Eleven Labs and others do offer the ability to translate from one language to another using AI. Don’t do this without a translator. The risk of mistranslating some medical advice or some important information is significant.
Welsh communicators have long warned against the use of Google Translate as a time-saving tool. All-important subtlety can be lost and the text can be mangled. AI tools may be useful but I can’t stress enough that they still need human oversight.
Once upon a time, a footballer angry at being dropped stormed into his manager’s office to demand why he had been dropped.
Three minutes later, the door opened, the player came out smiling.
He was still dropped, but the manager made him feel a million dollars and gave him cause for optimism.
So, it goes in comms the skill to say ‘no’ is one we all need to have but so hard to do.
At commscamp Scotland, Bridget Aherne’s session entitled ‘How do we tell people to f**k off?’ should be included in the comms syllabus. Using the Chatham House rule, here’s a summary and some extra points that struck me.
Why saying ‘no’ is important
The middle manager demands posters, a video or an X account. You think its a bad idea. So, what do you do?
Unless you say ‘no’ from time-to- time you are little more than a glorified shorthand typist. It is your job as a communicator to help the organisation communicate. Unique amongst all jobs everyone thinks they can do it. Your skills and your advice is the reason why you are employed.
You are also setting boundaries. That’s important.
The art of saying ‘no’ is not saying no
There’s sometimes value in a flat ‘no’. But the best results, like the football manager with his angry player, sometimes are subtle. The best results often come not from a blunt refusal.
‘Yes, but…’
‘Yes, and…’
‘Yes, we can talk about posters, but what is it you are trying to achieve that I can help you with…?’
‘Can we just spend five minutes just seeing if there isn’t a better route?’
Saying ‘we’
If you listen to the language of good football managers, it’s often ‘we’. We need to pull together. We need to head in this direction. When the team loses everyone loses from the fans, team, manager and board of directors.
Using ‘we’ also starts to take the heat out of a possible confrontation. I’ve seen this done with clarity from the start.
‘We need to be clear that we are all on the same side here. I want you to be successful. We can do this by working together.’
Saying it with data
Perhaps, one of the most effective ways of steering people back onto the path of righteousness is with data. Former GCS head Alex Aiken would make the point correctly that to have the most amount of data in the room is the position comms should aim for.
Bring in the data that can help guide the decision making. I’ve long been an advocate for bringing together data in one page for your area. This came from an experience in local government when social media was evolving. We brought together population data, newspaper sales and social media use and gave it to a designer. They came back with an infographic that showed we knew what we were talking about but also took the sting out of confrontation. How? Because we could all look at the data.
‘Yes, let’s look at the data to see what that says. The Edelman Trust Barometer says that people like me are the most trusted group of people. Who is the audience we are trying gto reach so we know who to reflect back at them in the content…’
Tapping into their motivation
If you get to know your senior people you can start to know what makes them tick. So, the executive director who is risk averse can be won around by pointing out the risky consequences of doing nothing or taking that particular course of action.
‘We can do this, but I need to set out the risks involved…’
Asking what happens if we do nothing
With the situation at an impasse, the temptation may be for them to sit on their hands a while and put off making a decision. Asking what the consequences may be of doing nothing may start you both to map out the impact of inaction.
If you do nothing about AI, you may get sidelined, your skills will fall behind the expected level and you’ll find it difficult to find new work. So, doing nothing is a far riskier scenario than doing something. This can be the rocket fuel to move things forward.
‘What happens if we do nothing…?’
But the [insert name of senior person] wants it
We’ve all had it. The tactics rather than the plan or the conversation.
‘Can we just check what the [insert name of senior person] wants to achieve from this…?
‘I would not want to give that senior person the wrong advice…’
But they hold the budget
They hold the budget so think they can click their fingers to demand posters. This is a particularly patronising approach to be on the receiving end of.
‘I would not want to give the wrong advice to you as budget holder who would be accountable for the effectiveness of this spend…’
This can also need to this…
Create a barricade
Once, when a colleague was being pressed to do something they thought was unethical they asked for help. Before the crunch meeting I needed to be sure of my ground. I read through the organisation’s constitution to look for places where the constitution backed me up. I further backed this up by tracking down policies the organisation had agreed. I didn’t have to say ‘no’. I had created a barricade that would have stopped a Sherman tank in its tracks. It w2asn’t me saying ‘no’ it was the constitution.
This then allows you to introduce an alternative scenario which leads you all away from danger.
‘I’d love to but the constitution says this…’
Professionalise it
From time to time the pressure may be to take a course of action that is unethical. Quoting the CIPR Code of Conduct in extreme circumstances is sometimes a useful reminder that you are professional too.
‘I’m afraid, I couldn’t be associated with this, this breaches my professional code of conduct.’
Set out the advice in writing
You’ve had the conversation and you’ve maybe set out your thoughts. Re-summarise them in writing for the benefit of clarity and posterity. This avoids history being re-written in the future.
‘In my professional opinion…’
‘In my respectful submission…’
‘If this situation was to escalate, I need to be clear in the advice that I’m offering…’
Make sure the head of comms has your back
All this sounds great in theory and as you go through your career this can get easier. But those at the start of their career need the back-up of senior people. If you are a manager or a head of comms you need to deploy that gold braid to support your staff.
Give them the confidence that you’ve got their back.
Remember, you are giving advice
Of course, we are only giving advice. There may be hills to die on and this one may not be your hill.
I can recall having a very vivid thought when I was offering advice. I am on the touchline, and I’m shouting to our centre-forward that there’s an easy goal if they just side-foot it into the empty net. Most people would take that advice but occasionally, they would score an own goal instead. That’s on them. You’ve given the advice you can. What happens next is not on you it’s on them.
Big thanks to people who attended the commscamp Scotland session.
Taking a look at X now, the @centerparcsuk account has been suspended due to suspicious behaviour.
What appears to have compounded the problem is that Center Parcs still had their old X account listed on their website.
All this does lead to a few questions for public sector comms people looking to navigate away from the platform.
I’ve blogged before that journalists and politicians are still doing well out of X. However, corporate accounts in the public sector are performing poorly. There could be a number of reasons for this. They don’t post the breaking news or rage-baiting that some journalists post in the space. Their residents aren’t generally using the platform to discuss local matters. Facebook groups and Nextdoor do that far more effectively.
But this does pose the question of what to do if you are winding down your X approach.
The Irish goodbye of leaving with the site intact and without fanfare does seem attractive.
A quick steer for you, Facebook have just made it easier for pages to join Facebook groups directly.
What appears on the face of it a routine admin task will further open the door to you using Facebook in a brighter and intelligent way in 2025.
In short, almost two thirds of the UK population uses Facebook and two thirds of them are a member of at least one Facebook group. These groups can be based around hobbies, interests or hyperlocal geographical communities.
How much of people’s timelines are Facebook groups?
Recent Facebook data shows that 15.5 per cent of timelines are from Facebook groups. That’s a higher number than that from pages.
What’s also striking is that posting a link into a Facebook group is penalised. Just 0.2 per cent of all posts are to a group that contains a link.
How many Facebook group memberships do people have?
There’s no upper limit to the number of Facebook groups you can be a member of. On average, based on research I’ve carried out for clients across the UK I’d estimate that people in London were on average members of two Facebook groups. Move outside the capital, counties and districts are likely to see twice that number.
Can a Facebook page join a group?
First, remember that you have no rights as a Facebook page to join a Facebook group. This is a space created by an admin and they decide who can use it.
However, the new update has edged the door open slightly.
Facebook group admin have been sent an advisory note that Facebook pages will be able to ask to join a group by default. Previously, admin had to go into their group back end and give permission for a page to join before pages could even try and join.
In other words its easier for pages to join.
How Facebook pages can join a group
As an admin of a Facebook page you can use Facebook’s own search tool to look for a relevant Facebook group. Before you ask there’s no shortcut. I’d always look to join through the front door so it is very clear who you are.
Why a page posting to a group is a good plan
Engagement rates on pages have been flatlining for some time.
So, going out into the wilds of Facebook is a clever thing to do.
Go to where the eyeballs are.
So, if there’s a spate of break-ins you need to tell people about in Quarry Bank you can do so best in a Quarry Bank community group.
When motorways were built in the 1960s Transport Minister Ernest Marples spoke of building a ‘golden triangle’ of roads across Britain.
Nowhere, he proudly said, would be a day’s drive away and Britain would come closer as a result.
There was even, bizarrely, a plan to build Motopolis, a town in the sky of 30,000 served by slip roads where the ground below would be given over to parks and greenery.
When new ideas emerges the broad arcs of imagination can build an impressive vision. The motor vehicle would be important. Just not like that. Detail follows later.
And so, AI. There has been a fair amount of attention paid to headlines surrounding Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s predictions of £46 billion of AI savings. That’s between four and seven per cent of every pound UK Government spends.
Most of the savings it appears a piece in the Financial Times says [paywall] will be through automated delivery. But the detail is yet to follow.
“This would involve the widespread use of AI to perform administrative tasks, such as transcribing meetings, sorting and analysing state consultation responses, summarising policies and conducting legal and parliamentary research. The government’s AI incubator is currently developing “Humphrey”, a package of tools to cover each of these areas named after the mandarin from TV series Yes, Minister.”
The strengths of a comms person
Many communications people are worried about the impact that AI will have on their jobs. I’ve spoken to one or two who are just hoping they can get through to retirement in one piece. That’s understandable but I think they are overlooking the strengths they have and the impact AI can make on their jobs.
As a public sector communicator, you have years and maybe decades of experience in spotting problems and issues. You can steer around icebergs and may have developed a useful sixth sense.
It’s amazing how we can take that for granted. In all the time I worked in local government communications, there was only one person I worked with who didn’t have such basic common sense. They didn’t last long.
AI tools can be helpful. They can automate tasks, they can help you create content but it still needs the oversight of a savvy comms professional.
AI and the hype cycle
At the moment, AI is on what’s known as a hype cycle. This is Gartner’s astute assessment of how we view technology. It starts with an innovation trigger and then climbs into a peak of inflated expectations. This is where so much of AI now is, they say. After this comes the inevitable fall into the trough of disappointment. What follows if the tool is any good is that it slowly climbs the slope of enlightenment.
Remember the dot com boom? At first AI companies had money chucked at them. Then people realised that every two man start-up wouldn’t have a billion pound turnover in five years. Remember boo.com? Most companies fell away leaving some useful ones behind.
The dot com bubble didn’t mean that the internet wasn’t going to change things. It just meant that it would take time to work things out. In 2025, we are in the early days of working these things out.
The common sense test
There’s a test I ran with a head of comms a while back who was worried about what to say to his chief executive who joked how he could run his team with AI.
He ran some of his to do list through ChatGPT and for a green travel to work scheme. He came back with a list that included a balloon release and IT building a car share app. The balloon release would be met with protests had they gone ahead and the app would cost £7k and not work as well as something already available.
The point was proved.
The line I heard a while ago that AI won’t replace a comms person but a comms person who can use AI will replace someone who can’t holds true.
There’s no escaping that a lot of public sector communicators are worried about their futures right now.
In England, swathes of local government are looking to merge which may mean smaller looking organisations. In addition, UK Government has announced plans to scrap NHS England and make a series of changes. Arms length bodies may be next under the microscope.
When I was 21, in my first job within two weeks the newspaper I was working on got put up for sale and everyone was told their jobs were now at risk. This was a learning curve for working in local government.
In all this turbulence, I thought I’d offer some advice from my own experience. This is purely my own experience rather than legal advice and if you are in any doubt seek independent advice.
Speaking of which…
Join a union
A union knows the law backwards and can give you clear advice. They can represent you and sit in on meetings with you. They are an insurance policy against bad employers. My first experience of this on a newspaper was the printer’s union rep making mincemeat of plans made up on the back of an envelope which were illegal.
I’ve been a member of the NUJ for 30 years and I wouldn’t leave home without it. This TUC union finder may come in handy. If you are already in a process this may be too late.
Oh, and a reminder, HR aren’t there for you. In fact, you are the last people they are for.
Stop listening to rumour
This is tricky because it’s a natural reaction to want to try and have your ear to the ground. However, by doing just that you’ll end up listening to a load of dog mess.
Every time I’ve seen this play out, following rumour has been tiring, time-consuming and unproductive.
It’s useful just to summarise your understanding of that meeting by emailing the person you met with with a recap. This can also capture a point that may have been made. They are keeping a written record on your file? Great. So are you.
Think of what’s best for you
As someone once said, if you want loyalty buy a dog. They’ll be the most loyal pal you can imagine. Don’t expect loyalty from your employer because it’s unlikely to happen. No accountant decided to keep someone on because they worked late that time.
Seek someone removed from the process
If you have a network of friends or relatives now is the time to lean on them a little. People away from your work colleagues or immediate family are the best people for this. They’re not being directly affected by what’s coming down the track.
Chat to work colleagues and you may find yourself talking to people who may end up going for the same job as you.
Whatever happens
Whatever the outcome, it’s unlikely to be the end of the road for you in life. There will be other things that you can do whether you depart for pastures new or stay where you are. There will be new things to learn and new skills to acquire.
If you go, go with good grace without burning bridges. You’d be surprised how paths cross and while that TikTok of you working your notice dressed in a clown’s outfit ‘just to fit in’ may be good for clicks in the short term it may fluff up the soul of your shoe further down the line.
So many of the skills you have are transferable and you can pack-up and take with you. In six months time I’ve ever confidence you’ll be sat somewhere better relieved that all this happened.
Picture credit: By Holy Island – 1983 by Helmut Zozmann, CC BY-SA 2.0.
They were right, there will be no memorials in every village and town.
It was too traumatic and was too painful.
In the early days of the COVID-19 I looked back to Spanish Flu to see how the pandemic would play out. It will be awful, I read. People will die. But once it eases we won’t want to look back.
In the years after the First World War, 220,000 people died in Britain. There are no memorials and no great art was created.
During COVID even more people died – 232,000. I got my calculator out to work out some sombre facts. Stack their coffins end to end and you will travel the 307 miles from London to Carlisle just passing pandemic victims. I began to work out how long that giant funeral cortage would take if it drove at 20 mph but I’d had enough. I got the point.
Five years today as I write this, it is the national memorial day to the victims of the pandemic. There are no church services in the borough I live in but the council is lighting up the Council House. The post to announce this on Facebook attracted 11 comments. Twice as many have commented about temporary traffic lights in Amblecote.
Too Soon?
When I posted a COVID-era image to a Facebook group I’m admin of the post was met with a reaction the same as if I’d punched a cracked rib.
‘Too soon,.’ one person wrote.
‘Instant PTSD.’
‘no, no. no, no, no.’
Wondering if this was just the public sector comms community I asked my daughter what her memories of lockdown was.
“Bad,” she replied. “All bad.”
It was too traumatic and too painful.
When the theatres re-opened after the plague in Shakespeare’s day there were no plays marking the subject.
It was too traumatic and too painful.
The impact of COVID on public sector communicators
I kept a tracker survey up during the height COVID that measured the impact on public sector communicators.
In the macabre league table, police PR and comms were the most stressed group with civil servants having least faith in their leadership.
I think all those who took part would be quick to say that those who died and their families had it far worse. It would be trite and thoughtless to say any different. My work colleague lost her Mum and I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.
But there’s no doubt that COVID had an impact on teams. Overnight, people had to work from home, wear masks and work a 16-hour-a-day treadmill without end.
People walking off the job burnt out became commonplace.
After lockdown eased and things opened up I was struck by the number of teams who had new staff. A team of 10 may have two or three veterans who had worked through the pandemic and the rest were new.
Me? I went down with COVID in the first wave. My wife was briefly hospitalised and I suffered mild long COVID symptoms that saw me unable to work a full day for nine months.
A common purpose
One thing the survey at the time captured was a lasting sense that people were working for a common purpose.
Without public sector communicators so many more people would have died.
I hope people can bring themselves to remember that when they look back.
Creative commons credit: North John Street, 1988 by Keith Edkins CC BY-SA 2.0
Now, a few years LinkedIn was often derided as being ‘Facebook for accountants.’
But since Twitter changed into X with the attendant issues that’s brought the Microsoft-owned platform has become one of several ports in a storm.
LinkedIn is the platform for professional people and guards against some of the worst excesses of other platforms by asking people to add to their profile their online CV.
So, how to use it as an organisation?
Using LinkedIn effectively
As an organisation, there’s two routes. Firstly, encourage your staff to use it as themselves. That’s particularly useful for staff who may well be contacting business people as part of their job.
A bloke called Dan when I worked in local government used it brilliantly. His job was to connect businesses in the borough we worked. He told me he would get answers far quicker by going through LinkedIn and finding the buyer than he would going through the company’s generic email address.
But more than that, the chief executive or even comms person sharing the good work and contributing to discussion on LinkedIn is an advocate for the place they work just as they are for themselves.
Encourage people in your organisation to use LinkedIn but know that it’s not mandatory. But beyond that, asking an accountant to share a corporate health and safety message aimed at engineers is the wrong way to go about it.
What content works?
There are many more tools available to a LinkedIn page admin than any other channel.
You’re probably aware of being able to post a picture, a text update and maybe a video. But did you know you can post a pdf, a landscape video, a vertical video and also post artwork and text as a video? You can repost too which mimics the retweet function.
Here’s the data from 250 posts as a cross section of the public sector.
What surprised me is that carousel content – that’s a spread of three or more pictures – topped the charts. That’s exactly the same as the 2025 numbers for Facebook and Instagram.
Take a look…
The carousel of images certainly makes sense. It’s visually interesting, and it’s likely to hold the scroller’s attention for longer.
What is surprising to me is that artwork is comparatively high. It’s third in the table. At the bottom is toolkit content. No surprises there but the repost function also didn’t connect that well.
Here’s an example of a carousel. In this case, Manchester City Council has used images with permission from Instagramers. They post to Instagram and I’ve also seen them post to Facebook.
Here, the images celebrate Spring. The lack of call to action is a strength. It’s just good content that encourages engagement. By posting things that aren’t selling you are tapping into what social media really used to be. It’s a conversation rather than a marketing technique. Besides, the algorithm will show that important update to more people next time around if people are engaging.
I’m not surprised that NHS England have created a good example of the vertical video genre. For me, their LinkedIn page is one of the best. It celebrates staff as well as communicating big picture messages. As a result, almost 800,000 people follow it.
Landscape video isn’t rewarded as much as vertical. This should inform your future content.
In addition, there is the genre I detected of artwork as video. This is text on a screen or designed images to make a point. As the scrolling passer-by, this seems maybe less likely to reach a wider audience. But if its for your niche then it can work.
Please, post jobs as a separate jobs post
You may be wondering why jobs aren’t featured in this review.
That’s because jobs are a separate stream from routine updates. When you post using LinkedIn’s own jobs functionality you are adding the position to a large pool that users can search. For example, there are 800 jobs on LinkedIn 40 kilometres from where I live. That’s an entirely separate thing. Please, don’t post jobs into the main posts. Few people will see it. Far more will look at the jobs stream and look what’s there. It’s the difference between using a trawler and a kid’s fishing net in the canal.
Good content
Of course, what this analysis doesn’t factor in is the nature of the content. It doesn’t differentiate between the story of the daughter following in the footsteps of her mother to be a paramedic illustrated with a picture or the picture of the building where the training happens. One is more engaging than the other.
For me a good LinkedIn page needs to celebrate staff, celebrate success, celebrate partner’s success as well as promote jobs using LinkedIn’s jobs functionality.
Pages included in the review
I looked at 25 posts on 10 UK public sector pages including NHS Fife, NHS England, NHS Supply Chain, Local Government Association, Manchester City Council, Powys Council, Metropolitan Police, Police Service Northern Ireland, Dorset & Wiltshire Fire Service and Scottish Fire and Rescue.
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